City Rushes To Buy State Office-Warehouse

By Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent

June 21, 2021

The city is hustling to buy a state-owned warehouse, garage and office building on the eastern edge of Wooster Square — with plans to put the Health Department and snow plow and streetsweeper maintenance operations there.

Those plans are detailed in nearly a dozen documents submitted by the mayor’s office to the Board of Alders on Friday for a planned special meeting of the city legislature scheduled to take place Monday night.

The sole subject of the special full Board of Alders meeting will be the city’s bid to purchase the two-story, 58,481 square-foot building and abutting parking lot at 424 Chapel St. from the state Department of Transportation (DOT) for $2,101,000. The city last appraised 424 Chapel St. as worth $2,523,900.

If the alders sign off on the proposed purchase, the city would tap into $10 million in capital funds that the alders included in the city capital budget three years ago for a planned overhaul and rebuild of Department of Parks and Public Works headquarters at 34 Middletown Ave.

“The opportunity is one that we really shouldn’t let pass by because there’s a significant financial savings to the city by acquiring the property and using it for DPW and the Health Department,” Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent Monday morning.

That’s because the city currently pays rent for a first-floor clinic and ninth-floor office space for the Health Department at 54 Meadow St., he said.

Elicker and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said the cost of demolishing and rebuilding a new vehicle maintenance garage at 34 Middletown Ave. would be significantly higher than buying and renovating the garage at 424 Chapel St. and using that space for tuning up city snow plows, street sweepers, and other publicly-owned vehicles, excluding police cars and fire trucks.

“The building is in generally good condition, has been continually maintained by the State of Connecticut, and can be quickly occupied by City operations without major renovation,” Zinn wrote to the alders in a letter supporting the proposed purchase. “The large garage space in the back would be very well suited for the Vehicle Maintenance Garage of the Parks and Public Works Department. The rest of the building would be suitable for housing other City activities, with an emphasis of moving operations out of rented spaces such as the Health Department.”

If the purchase goes through, Zinn said, the city would still demolish the main garage at 34 Middletown Ave. and create new storage space in that building’s footprint.

Zinn pointed out that the bonded money that the city intends to use to purchase and renovate 424 Chapel St. and to undertake less-costly repairs at 34 Middletown Ave. is largely state money. That’s because the state awarded the city a $10 million grant in 2019 for the public works demolition, construction, and renovation project. That $10 million state award requires the city to spend $5 million as a local match.

“Due to the existing configuration and suitability of the garage portion of 424 Chapel St, this represents a much faster and more economical approach to fulfill the need for a new vehicle maintenance facility for Parks and Public Works,” Zinn wrote in his letter to the alders. “The ability to possibly house other City operations is a plus, however the purchase of this building makes financial sense even purely for the vehicle maintenance activities.”

Click here, here, here, here, and here to read some of the documents associated with the city’s planned purchase of 424 Chapel St.

What’s The Rush?

How did the city settle on the proposed $2,101,000 purchase price? And why the rush to have the Board of Alders convene a special meeting Monday night just to vote on whether or not to buy this building?

Zinn told the Independent Monday that the proposed purchase price comes from a request for proposals that the state recently put forward when soliciting potential buyers for the empty, publicly-owned property.

The highest bid that the state received from a potential private buyer for 424 Chapel St. was $2,101,000.

Per state law, the municipality where that state-owned property is located has an opportunity to purchase the property first, so long as the local government pays no less than the highest private bid.

Elicker and Zinn said that state statute gives municipalities a 60-day timeline between their initial expression of interest in buying the state-owned property and when they have to actually close on the transaction.

That 60-day window ends on June 23, the mayor and top city engineer said.

“The Department of Transportation provided the City with the closing documents only on June 4, 2021, and the City immediately requested an extension given that the timeline was incompatible with normal processes of the City,” Zinn wrote to the alders. “CT DOT staff suggested that the City submit a letter to the Commissioner requesting an extension, and the City believed in good faith that by following this instruction there would be ample time for normal City processes. However, this week the CT DOT indicated that they may not be able to provide an extension and that the June 23, 2021 closing date is still in effect.”

Zinn told the Independent that the city had mapped out a local public process that went through September. That had to be curtailed dramatically, he said, when the city found out last week that the state would not extend the June 23 purchase deadline, even after the state sent over the closing documents only on June 4.

“If this conveyance is not completed by June 23, 2021,” Elicker wrote in a separate letter to the alders, “the City will lose its opportunity to acquire this much-needed property.”

From Electrical Instruments To Highway Repair

Zinn said that the state currently has 24-hour security at 424 Chapel St., and has done a good job of performing routine maintenance at the otherwise-empty site.

An environmental site assessment report from 2016 provided by the state to the city gives a brief history of how this property has been used over the past half-century.

The property is bounded by South Wallace Street to the east, Chapel Street to the north, I-91 to the west, and I-95 and the ramp connecting I-95 to I-91 to the south.

Prior to 1967, that report reads, the property was home to residences, a bakery, and a school.

From approximately 1967 through 1986, it was used by J.B.T. Instrument Co. for the manufacturing of electrical instruments and switches and metal plating operations.

After 1986, some of the property’s tenants included a flooring company, an engineering consulting firm, offices, a recycling company, and a maintenance garage.

The state purchased the building in 2006 and used it as its District 3A office starting in November 2008. The property served as the headquarters for the state’s I-95 New Haven Harbor Crossing Corridor Improvement Program, including the construction of the Q Bridge.

Towards the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state partnered with an Ohio-based applied science research and development organization called Batelle, which ran a mass mask-cleaning operation out of 424 Chapel St.‘s garage.

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.