Builder: Hotel Deal Near For Post-Coliseum Plan

Three companies are competing to build a ​“four-and-a-half-star” hotel at the old New Haven Coliseum site as part of the broader $400-plus million plan in the works there, according to developer Max Reim.

Reim (pictured above) said he’ll announce ​“within a few weeks” which company he’s choosing.

Reim runs LiveWorkLearnPlay, the Montreal firm the city has chosen to build a busy new $400 million new-urbanist mini-city of apartments, stores, offices, a hotel and a public plaza at the cleared former Coliseum land at George and State streets two blocks from Union Station. New-urbanist and preservation-minded activists often critical of city development projects applauded this one for its focus on creating a walkable, bikeable, mixed-use urban center.

The project depends on the state agreeing to contribute $21.1 million toward road improvements to reconnect Orange Street where the gradually-disappearing Route 34 Connector currently bisects it. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has made clear in recent months that he wants LiveWorkLearnPlay to line up a hotel for the project — originally planned for a later phase — before he signs off on the money.

So Reim got to work.

“We received several letters of interest from great hotels, most of which we turned down because we felt they weren’t as great as we’d like them to be,” Reim told the Independent Thursday. He said he narrowed the list to ​“three outstanding world-class world hotel companies,” with which he’s currently negotiating, and which he declined to name for now.

The hotel would now become part of the first phase of the envisioned Coliseum project, along with 370 mixed-income apartments, 34 restaurants and shops, and a seasonal marketplace with 15 – 20 small businesses, Reim said. He said the requisite $150-$160 million — a combination of LWLP funds and financing from an unnamed ​“real estate and equity investor from southern Connecticut” — is in place and committed for that first phase. Also under consideration: building 100 – 200 luxury apartments attached to the hotel; and then a two-part second phase consisting of $100 million in class A office space intended as a medical-related corporate headquarters and another $100 million in addition housing.

Assuming the state money comes through, Reim said, he envisions beginning construction of Phase One next spring or summer; and opening it to the public in the fall of 2016.

Reconnecting

Reim and state officials have been spending the past few months negotiating hard over that ​“assuming” part. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was hesitant to commit the money until he could be convinced that the financing was solid.

“I’m not looking to own infrastructure. I’m looking to be a catalyst” to getting projects built, Malloy told the Independent in an interview last week. He said he supports the overall concept of the project, and he was confident negotiations over details were moving ​“in the right direction.” Reim said Thursday that on Wednesday ​“we received some very positive feedback from the state with a strong commitment”; Mayor Toni Harp said Wednesday night that she now anticipates the bonding to be approved after the Nov. 4 election.

The total government money for the project wouldn’t go toward building it; it would all flow to the $33.5 million road repair project. The city has committed $12 million, leaving the state to cover $21.1 million.

That project fits into a larger vision underway to undo the mistakes of the mid-19th Century urban renewal, when construction for the Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere leveled a neighborhood and divided downtown from the Hill. The city, with lots of state help, has begun trying to stitch back those two neighborhoods and un-build that mini-highway. Two exits have already closed, as the state-supported construction of the 13-story Alexion Pharmaceuticals proceeds at 100 College St.

City development chief Matthew Nemerson said officials’ desire to build over the sunken portion of the connector at Orange Street dates back to the early 1990s, when the then-Daniels administration sought unsuccessfully to woo a Michigan developer to town to build a massive downtown mall. That mall would have in part covered the Connector at Orange Street, he said.

The current plan is to fill in the Connector at Orange Street, reconnect the road with South Orange Street, and build two arterial roads that would lead underground directly to the Air Rights Garage, Nemerson said. That would keep all that traffic off the existing side roads.