Thomas Breen photos
270-290 State garage (left), soon to be acquired by city. Sherman-Tyler lot: Future housing? Below: Hausladen outlines changes.
The city’s parking authority is about to pick up a 278-space garage downtown, a few months before it is set to lose a 470-space surface lot in West River.
Adding the former could bring in around $600,000 a year, as well as bolster parking options for downtown’s red-hot building boom.
Dropping the latter would mean an annual $700,000 loss, but might also encourage the development of an empty lot in a neighborhood eager for housing.
That discussion of public parking change-ups amidst the city’s broader development trends and needs took place at Monday night’s New Haven Parking Authority meeting at the authority’s headquarters at 232 George St.
On the agenda were two seemingly unrelated items: the city’s upcoming acquisition of the 278-space parking garage at 270 – 290 State St. as part of a larger public-private deal that will see the Boston-based Beacon Communities LLC purchase the Residences at Ninth Square apartment complex; and the upcoming expiration of the authority’s permit to run the publicly owned, 470-space Sherman-Tyler parking lot in the Rt. 34 corridor in West River.
The two changes will essentially balance each other out in the authority’s roughly $25 million annual budget.
Monday evening’s Parking Authority meeting.
Meanwhile, they describe an imminent shift in publicly-owned parking away from a neighborhood where city officials and alders are hoping for more residential development on top of currently empty lots, and towards a city center that is swollen with market-rate apartment developments, many popping up on top of formerly empty lots.
“With the State Street station opening up,” Parking Authority Acting Executive Director Doug Hausladen said at Monday night’s meeting in support of the State Street garage acquisition, “with the Hartford Line, with more investment happening at Union Station and around Union Station, with the Coliseum site breaking ground this year on at least Orange Street crossing, there will be a dearth of parking in that neck of the woods.”
The State Street garage, he said, could meet some of the parking needs of current and future apartment developments that do not have bountiful onsite parking.
And in regard to the West River lot, city anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI) Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo told the Independent on Tuesday morning that the city would love to see the Sherman-Tyler parking lot converted into housing. It sits right next to a vacant stretch of land soon to be developed into 56 affordable townhomes, converted into more housing.
“The city has been in discussions with the community and developers interested in Parcel 2,” she said via email. “We are currently working on a strategy for pre-development that will enhance the West River SHIP project [and] build on the work outlined in the Hill to Downtown Community Plan and other planning docs. We will continue to work on projects that will provide affordable rental and homeownership units throughout the city.”
State Street Garage Coming Online
Parking Authority Attorney Joe Rini: State Street garage deal should be done by April.
The city doesn’t own the State Street garage yet. That acquisition will likely take place soon.
On Monday night, the Parking Authority commissioners voted unanimously in support of a resolution providing for the authority’s purchase and operation of the State Street garage for $3.6 million. That money will be paid to Beacon Communities LLC, the soon-to-be new owners of the 335-unit Ninth Square apartment complex, in $60,000 payments made twice a year over the course of the next 30 years.
The Board of Alders signed off on the residential, commercial, and parking garage deal in October 2018 and the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) signed off on its part in helping finance the deal in January 2019.
Parking Authority Attorney Joe Rini said on Monday night that he expects the deal to go through and the State Street garage to fall under the city’s ownership, and the authority’s operations, by April.
Once the deal goes through, the authority will be responsible for paying for operations, repairs, and maintenance, just as it does at its other downtown parking garages. The authority will also have to pay the $60,000 semi-annual payments over three decades. If the authority ever can’t make those payments, then the alders will have to pony up, or, per the terms of the deal, Beacon will be allowed to deduct the unpaid amount from its $660,000 annual Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) to the city.
Hausladen and Parking Authority Chief Financial Officer Brian Seholm said that the authority should be able to make the semi-annual payments comfortably, despite current unknowns around how much the authority will need to invest up front in capital improvements to the garage.
Seholm estimated that the garage should bring in upwards of $600,000 a year in parking revenue.
“There is solid occupancy and solid demand over there,” Hausladen said, based on the latest parking user information he had seen for the still-privately-held garage.
“We believe we can very much cover the payments.”
He added that the boost to city-owned parking downtown could not come at a better time, as former and current surface lots on are being snatched up left and right for development projects. That includes Audubon Square, a proposed 60-unit tower at State Street and Chapel Street, as well as some of Stamford developer Randy Salvatore’s projects in the Hill, which Hausladen said will soon render half of the city’s Tower Lane parking lot inoperable thanks to the storage of construction equipment.
“Those parkers are going to have to go somewhere,” he said about the current occupants of the Tower Lane lot. The State Street garage, he said, could meet that need.
West River Lot Going Offline
Parking Authority CFO Brian Seholm.
The Sherman-Tyler lot, meanwhile, came up on Monday night in the context of Seholm’s budget planning report to the authority members.
Seholm said that, come Oct. 1, 2019, the authority will likely lose its the 470-space surface parking lot it runs between North Frontage Road and Legion Avenue near Tyler Street.
The authority paved and built that lot in 2014, when it got a special permit from the City Plan Commission that allowed it to run the vacant land as a parking lot for four years with a one-year extension. In 2018, the commission granted the authority that one-year extension, which expires on Oct. 1.
For the past five years, the authority has leased out the entirety of the lot to Yale-New Haven Hospital, which runs its own shuttle from the lot to the hospital’s campus. The lease with the hospital brings in $704,000 each year, Seholm said.
“It’s a huge impact to us on cash flow,” he said.
But come October, the authority expects that it’s right to run the lot will not be renewed, since the land falls within the Rt. 34 corridor, a tract of vacant land the city has long hoped to develop with residential, commercial, and office uses.
Late last year, the alders signed off on a tax abatement deal that would allow for the development of 56 affordable townhomes right next door to the current Sherman-Tyler lot. That neighboring project, Seholm and Rini estimated, will likely make the parking lot land that much more of an attractive site for future developments.
As much as the loss of the parking lot would represent a financial hit to the authority, Seholm said, ultimately the authority is in support of the city’s efforts to encourage the development of vacant land, which should bring more residents and visitors to New Haven, which should result in more long-term parking revenue.
“We’re here to support development,” Seholm said.