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Nemerson: “You can’t always get what you want.”
City Hall’s efforts to move the New Haven Register downtown have met with a final “no.”
The Harp administration had lobbied the owners of the print daily for months to follow through on an original plan to relocate its offices downtown or near downtown.
“You can’t always get what you want,” concluded city economic development chief Matthew Nemerson, who led the lobbying effort.
The Register has to vacate its 220,000 square-foot Sargent Drive headquarters by the third week in August to allow its new owner, the Jordan Furniture chain, to move in.
The paper’s parent company, Digital First Media, had planned to move editorial employees to the 900 Chapel St. building downtown and other employees to a less expensive, car-friendlier spot. It needs around 15,000 to 20,000 square feet overall for an operation that has shrunk considerably over the years.
The company is believed to be in transition now to new ownership. Decision-makers at the company decided to keep all 160 employees in one location, and to seek the cheapest possible space with adequate parking. That quashed the 900 Chapel deal.
The company instead is moving forward with plan to move to a suburban office park-style complex on Gando Drive off Middletown Avenue, technically in New Haven right by the North Haven line.
The Register has submitted an application to city zoning officials seeking a site plan review for the renovations. The building, which had previously housed offices, is currently vacant.
Proposed floor plan.
The Register would occupy 18,000 square feet on two floors of the 160,000-square-foot building at 100 Gando Drive, according to the proposed site plan, submitted on April 17 by Journal Register Company CFO John Collins.
“The Register plans to renovate the space in order to create an open work environment,” Collins wrote in the application. “The Register will demolish certain walls, erect new partitions, install new ceilings and carpet,” and “modify the electric distribution, HVAC and sprinkler systems.”
Plans show an open central area of desks, with offices, conference rooms and small “huddle rooms” along the perimeter. Renovation would begin on May 1, 2014 and be complete by Aug. 1.
In an attached memorandum, Carolyn Kone, the attorney handling the Register’s proposal, argues that the move does not require a zoning variance. Although the area’s zoning regulations do not specifically allow newspapers, they do allow “news distribution enterprises.” Kone argues that that category applies to a newspaper in the digital age, when news gathering, writing, and distributing happen simultaneously. The Register will “distribute” news from Gando Drive over the internet, Kone writes.
Nemerson said his staff had hustled to work with property owners to steer the paper more toward the center of city commerce.
“I think newspapers should be downtown. Reporters and editors should breathe in the air of the whole region. They should be near the courthouses. They should be able to hang out in the local diners and interact with real people,” Nemerson argued.
He also argued that a downtown or near-downtown location would have had a better impact on the local economy because employees would work right by restaurants, dry cleaners, and other businesses.
To that end, Nemerson’s staff arranged with owners of four central-city properties to obtain discounted spaces at New Haven Parking Authority lots to offset the higher cost of parking — and compete better with Gando Drive, where parking is free. The properties included 900 Chapel, the old Fugazi Travel building at Brown and Water streets, and Science Park, according to Nemerson. He said the Register needed 135 spaces, double or triple the amount companies usually required per square foot of office space.
“Each [offer] was rejected” by the company, Nemerson said. “It seemed there were two different ownerships during negotiations. Whoever was calling the shots — and it wasn’t the people we were dealing with — said, ‘We prize lower costs’” above all.
Even with the discounted parking, Gando came out cheaper and more convenient, he said. In some ways that reflected the strength of the downtown real estate market, Nemerson argued.
“Thank God the market rate downtown is still $17 to $22 a square foot” and parking spaces cost $140 a month, he said. If the rates were lower, “I would think this was Schenectady.”
The Register used to be located on Orange Street. In the early 1980s the paper’s then-owners threatened to move to the suburbs. Then-Mayor Biagio DiLieto instead offered the company a heavily discounted price on city-owned land on Long Wharf to keep the paper in town.
Mayor Harp “was very clear that we would love to have the Register downtown, but it wasn’t worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in city subsidy,” Nemerson said.
Register officials could not be reached for comment for this story. Asked about the pending move, an official with Star Supply Company, which owns 100 Gando Drive, reported: “We have signed a confidentiality agreement with a potential tenant and as a result we are unable to disclose any information.”
Thomas MacMillan contributed reporting.