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Hot downtown location. Three-hundred seventy-one spaces. Six stories of concrete. Name your price! But you’d better raise the dough by June 30.
The city is making that offer as it scrambles to fill this year’s budget gap.
The city is seeking bidders to buy its share of the Temple-George Garage (pictured) at 230 George St. The Request for Proposals (RFP) was posted Feb. 7; bidders are asked to respond with their best offer by March 1.
Click here to read the RFP.
City budget chief Larry Rusconi said the city’s “overarching goal” in selling the garage is to balance this year’s budget and thereby keep the city in good standing with bond rating agencies.
The city’s portion of the garage is assessed at $7 million, according to Rusconi. Selling the property could fill the city’s current gap for this fiscal year, which Rusconi estimated at $5 million to $8 million.
“This would be the largest single action item to help balance the current year’s problems,” Rusconi said.
Looking ahead to tough financial times, Mayor John DeStefano told the Independent last month that his administration would be reviewing the city’s portfolio of six garages and 22 surface lots to see which, if any, to unload. One argument DeStefano made is that it makes sense to sell garages that serve one primary user, in the way the Air Rights Garage mainly serves Yale-New Haven Hospital. The city is also selling other assets, including an old East Rock school and a house on Prospect Street.
The Temple George Garage, which has 371 spaces, was built in 1977 to service the Temple Medical Center. The so-called Temple George Redevelopment Project, financed by $3 million in city bonds, included the medical center office building, street-level retail, an office building and parking to service the medical facility, according to city documents.
Since it was built, the parking garage has been co-owned by the New Haven Parking Authority and Temple Street Associates, according to the RFP.
The city owns 66 percent of the garage, according to deputy economic development chief Tony Bialecki. The city is now looking to sell its share.
The buyer would run the garage.
Matthew Nemerson, chair of the New Haven Parking Authority, said the mayor asked his agency to “figure out different strategies” to help with the budget crisis. The authority decided to look at “selling some of our garages that are not part of our mission,” which is to provide available parking to people who come and leave from downtown. It settled on Temple-George.
“It’s pretty much a single-purpose garage,” Nemerson said Tuesday. “It has to do with a single building. It was created as a way for the city to help provide some capital to help that project get off the ground.” The city’s role in the project was “more about the structure of the investing than it was about the need for us to control parking in that building.”
The Temple-Garage represents an old public policy that began in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when the city built garages to support private development. That public policy has changed, Nemerson said.
“If it happened today, we wouldn’t have been involved in the garage,” Nemerson said.
The parking authority has spent $4 million in maintenance and repair since 2005, including “resurfacing parking decks,” and installing new rebar, light fixtures and railings, according to the RFP. Nemerson said it does not make sense in the long-term to maintain it because the garage doesn’t fit the parking authority’s mission.
Because of the city’s partnership with the company, the Temple Street Associates would have a right of first refusal, according to Nemerson. That means Temple Street Associates could match any bidder’s offer, he said.
Temple Street Associates is a limited partnership run by Dr. Alvin Greenberg. Greenberg couldn’t be reached for this story.
Nemerson said the parking authority doesn’t mind whether the buyer is Temple Street Associates or another entity.
The RFP doesn’t say how much money the city is expecting to get for the sale. City appraisers will come up with a number based on occupancy, size, cash flow and expenses, Nemerson said.
The RFP does give a sense of haste, and a strict deadline to make sure the money goes in the bank this fiscal year: “The operator must be qualified to execute this project in its entirety – including but not limited to operating a public parking garage and raising sufficient cash to purchase the property not later than June 30, 2011.”
All interested parties are invited to a pre-bid meeting on Monday at 1:30 p.m. at George Street entrance to the garage.