Amid Hard Times, Biotower Plan Advances

Plans for a new 10-story, 500,000 square-foot bioscience lab and office tower to be built atop the former Route 34 corridor advanced with enthusiastic community support and a tweak to include Hill and Dwight residents in the benefits.

Such was the outcome of Wednesday night’s Community Development Committee public hearing on the proposed Development and Land Disposition Agreement (DLDA) regarding 101 College St.

As City Hall remains indefinitely closed to the public because of the state of emergency around Covid-19, the meeting took place online via the Zoom videoconferencing app.

The committee alders voted unanimously in support of recommending that the full Board of Alders approve an amended version of a proposed DLDA between the city, the city’s parking authority, and the prospective building’s Massachusetts-based developer, Winstanley Enterprises.

The amendment, introduced by Hill Alder Ron Hurt, structures the agreement’s community benefits to more specifically prioritize students and workers in the surrounding Hill, Downtown, and Dwight neighborhoods.

“It’s only New Haven that can do something like this in a pandemic,” Beaver Hills Alder and Committee Chair Brian Wingate said in praise of the project and the collaboration between his colleagues, city officials, and the developer. ​‘We can force through. We can force through. I always say that we’re leading the pack, and we will continue to do that, looking at this project.”

Click here to read a summary of the originally proposed DLDA, here for the full 165-page agreement, here for a previous article about the DLDA, and here for Hurt’s amendment that was positively referred out of committee.

City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli and Winstanley Enterprises Principal Carter Winstanley along with the developer’s architects and engineers walked the alders through the parameters of the estimated $100 million construction project.

They explained how the project fits in with the years-in-the-making Downtown Crossing public infrastructure upgrades designed to reconnect Downtown, the Hill, and the city’s medical district. 

And they followed closely a pitch that the public-private partners have made at public meeting after public meeting this month, including before the Development Commission, the Downtown, Hill North, and Hill South Community Management Teams, and the City Plan Commission.

“It’s our responsibility as public servants to have a lens towards the future,” Piscitelli said, particularly during times of hardship and uncertainty. ​“Who does our economic resiliency look like? What does our economic rebound look like? We need to plan for that.” He said 101 College St. is a key part of that plan.

He said the DLDA would have the state convey to the city a 1.75-acre parcel atop the former Route 34 Connector between College Street, South Frontage Road, Temple Street, and M.L.K., Jr. Boulevard, right across the street from 100 College St., which was also developed by Winstanley.

The city would then convey that parcel for $1 to a holding company owned by Winstanley Enterprises, which would construct a ten-story, 350,000 to 550,000 square foot lab and office tower with a 20,000 square foot privately owned public plaza on the east site and no more than 175 on-site parking spaces.

The final building would include up to four pedestrian bridges connecting to the Temple Medical Garage and the Temple Street Garage, where the developer has agreed to lease up to 550 spaces.

Winstanley said the building would include an incubator space for startups, ​“second-generation” lab space for new companies looking to grow and hire in New Haven, classroom space specifically dedicated for New Haven Public Schools teachers and students, a cafe, and a public conference room.

Architect John Martin flipped through myriad digital renderings showing the publicly accessible entrances, exists, and indoor corridors that anyone will be able to use, 18 hours a day, seven days a week, to walk east-west alongside MLK, Jr. Boulevard or South Frontage Road.

He showed renderings of the privately owned public plaza that will look east towards Temple Street and the next parcel of soon-to-be-demolished roadway that could bear another large building in the future.

Engineer Ted DeSantos talked through the privately constructed, publicly owned service driveways that will be built underneath the plaza and the new building to connect with the spaces under 100 College St and the Air Rights Garage.

Winstanley said the project should lead to the creation of roughly 1,000 construction jobs, for which is company has agreed to hire 25 percent local contractors, 25 percent minority-owned contractors, and 6.9 percent women-owned contractors, per city guidelines.

“We forecast somewhere between 700 and 1,000 permanent jobs at many different skill levels in this building,” Piscitelli said. ​“Those will support over 3,000 jobs throughout our economy and generate more than $250 million in wages.”

He said the DLDA includes provisions that Winstanley partner with New Haven Works to prioritize hiring locally, help develop a source local initiative to promote buying New Haven-made goods, conduct local job fairs, help create an ​“innovation workforce pipeline” focused on preparing Career High School and Gateway Community College students for careers in the biosciences, and contribute a minimum of $400,000 to a ​“Together, We Grow” community benefits fund.

The building will also remain taxable for at least 30 years, even if it is ultimately purchased by a tax-exempt nonprofit like Yale University or Yale New Haven Hospital.

Winstanley said that he’s spent the past 22 years working on trying to create a bioscience ​“cluster” of lab buildings in New Haven, including at 100 College, 25 Science Park, and 300 George St.

Thirty years from now, when the proposed DLDA is up, he said, ​“I will probably still be trying to construct something in and around this area.” And is he looking to sell 101 College to Yale or any other potential owner. ​“I would be hesitant to give these buildings up to anybody.”

Winstanley said that construction on the building should begin in August, pending regulatory approvals, and that the building should take roughly two years to build.

“Hope And Light In The Hill”

Hurt introduced his amendment by praising the overall project, as well as the team behind it.

“I believe that 101 College St. is a great project given the unprecedented moment that the city is in with Covid-19,” he said. Just yesterday, he said, he learned that several of his constituents in Ward 3 had passed away from the virus. ​“This project helps spread some hope and light in the Hill.”

His amendment, ultimately passed unanimously by his colleagues, targets community benefits towards the immediately surrounding neighborhoods.

It would create a New Haven Works Board of Directors responsible for overseeing the community fund, and would designate a $200,000 scholarship fund from that larger sum to be used to fund education at Gateway Community College or Southern Connecticut State University for programs associated with the new Innovation Workforce Pipeline.

These scholarships would be reserved for students who live in the Hill, Downtown, and Dwight neighborhoods as well as for New Haven Works members who live in those three neighborhoods.

The amendment would also designate Career High School as a ​“feeder school” for the workforce pipeline to Southern’s existing BioPath Program, which the city and Winstaley created as part of the 100 College St development agreement.

And it would require the developer to provide bi-weekly updates during construction to the the Downtown and Hill alders.

“I’m a big believer in the project,” Mayor Justin Elicker said about 101 College St. during a Wednesday afternoon press briefing.

“The vision of this project to undo a highway and re-link a community together that was destroyed decades ago and to do so in a way that” increases taxes and better uses land that produces pollution and separates neighborhood from downtown … ​“I am very optimistic that we will be able to accomplish this.”

“The Essence Of The Next Economy”

Hurt and Elicker weren’t the only ones bullish on the proposed new development Wednesday.

Nearly every member of the public who testified at Wednesday’s public hearing through their support behind the project, with local business boosters pushing for construction to start as soon as possible and neighbors and labor organizers stressing the importance of the developer sticking to the proposed local hiring agreements.

BioCT President Dawn Hocevar said that the bioscience industry thrives in communities that have adequate infrastructure, such as incubation and lab space; investors; skilled workers and talent; stellar academic centers; and entrepreneurs.

“New Haven really has all of that, except the infrastructure,” she said. This project would work towards filling that gap.

She said she has heard from multiple New York City and Boston-based companies during the pandemic that are looking to move out of bigger cities to less populated metropolitan areas to continue their work.

“If we don’t build it, then the talent and the companies are going to go elsewhere.”

District Co-Founder David Salinas agreed. ​“Time is of the essence here,” he said. ​“New Haven has a real chance to be a mecca for [bioscience]. And that could be absolutely incredible for this great city and the people in it and around it.”

“In a time of economic insecurity, we have to look beyond the current horizon and plan for the future,” added Yale New Haven Health Senior Vice President Vin Petrini. ​“This is the essence of the next economy.”

Kevin Rocco, the CEO of a startup medical device company based out of District, said that 101 College will go a long way towards helping companies like his stay in the city, attracting plenty more to relocate, and developing a new generation of local life science entrepreneurs.

During the pandemic, it should be a ​“no brainer to support all investment into the health care industry and all investment into our local economy,” he said. ​“It seems this project does both.”

Winthrop Avenue resident Carlos Hernandez added that he wants to see ​“a strong commitment for residents from our neighborhoods to get into good jobs at 101 College St. We need strong language and an agreement to ensure that our neighborhoods see the benefits come to us.”

Community organizer Jaime Myers-McPhail praised the local hiring commitment in the proposed agreement. ​“I’m really hope that this is going to push all developers” who come to the city to agree to work so closely with New Haven Works. ​“I hope this is a turning point that the developers and the city and everyone beyond is committed to do everything” they can to promote new local jobs.

And Sylvan Avenue resident Lena Largie said she supports not only 101 College, but also Hurt and the work he’s done to make the proposed agreement work even better for Hill residents.

She said she hopes 101 College helps ​‘those who will be in need of a job and those who will be in need of an education to access those jobs” in the wake of the mass unemployment caused by the current pandemic.