STRONG INDUSTRY SUPPORT
NEEDED
PRESS CONFERENCE - TODAY
Join us
as we support Governor Lamont and Commissioner Giulietti as they push for
transportation funding!
10AM
TODAY - MONDAY
MARCH 18
HOUSATONIC BOAT LAUNCH
MILFORDGPS: 686-672 Naugatuck
Ave
Directions: I-95
Exit 34, West on Rte 1., North on Naugatuck Ave., Boat Launch is on the left
immediately prior to driving under the Moses Wheeler Bridge.
Just as it was nearly 40 years ago
on the state income tax, Connecticut is at a crossroads — this time on highway
tolls.
Concrete details are emerging about pricing, locations and
discounts for in-state residents, with the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont
expending precious political capital to try to convince the circumspect
traveling public and the legislature that tolls on I-84, I-91, I-95 and Route
15 are a critical need.
While there are a number of tolling bills under
consideration, they are mostly conceptual in nature and none of them delve into
the complicated logistics of tolls. Decisions on collection points, congestion
pricing and other facets of tolling would likely be delegated to the state
Department of Transportation or a new transportation authority, which would be
established by the legislature and governor.
With emotions running high on both sides and a deadline for
a tolls vote looming, it is still unclear exactly what the General Assembly
will vote on. One bill would create a transportation authority to oversee
tolls, a model used by many states to collect toll revenue. Toll opponents
worry that legislators will leave critical decisions about tolls up to this
transportation authority, instead of asking members of the General Assembly to
vote on the specifics.
Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, who has I-84 running through is
city, said a critical decision on tolls shouldn’t be “pitched off” to a
transportation authority.
“I think there will have to be a lot of discussion in the
state with the guy and gal on the street about what is this impact to you,”
Boughton said.
Toll supporters say without revenue from tolling all cars
and trucks — estimated at $800 million annually by the governor’s office —
critical repairs and upgrades of state highways and bridges won’t get funded.
The state’s special transportation fund is on the road to financial insolvency
and will be unable to pay for long overdue road and bridge upgrades.
Lamont’s tolling allies include state Sen. Carlo Leone,
D-Stamford, co-chairman of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which is
facing a Wednesday deadline to advance tolling legislation to the full House
and Senate. A final vote by the legislature could take place in late spring,
with the state Department of Transportation eyeing the summer of 2023 for
rollout.
“It’s not about what people like. It’s about what’s
necessary,” Leone said. “I think we’re a critical point where we need a revenue
stream to deal with our infrastructure.”
Opponents of the governor’s transportation initiative say
that Lamont broke his campaign promise to only toll out-of-state trucks and is
placing another financial burden on the state’s already overtaxed residents.
“I don’t trust these people to take out my garbage, let
alone how much they get from tolls and what they’re going to do with it,” said
House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby.
A user fee, with discounts
The annual cost of a round-trip daily commute from Hartford
to New Haven at rush hour would be about $823.46, based on pricing information
provided by the state DOT.
Drivers with Connecticut-issued E-ZPass transponders would
pay an average of 4.4 cents per mile during off-peak travel periods, which DOT
officials said is a 30 percent discount off the 6.3-cent-per-mile price for
out-of-state vehicles. The rates would go up 25 percent during rush hour as
part of a congestion mitigation plan proposed by the DOT.“Any part of this is
still subject to change, with guidance that we get from the governor and
legislature,” said Joe Giulietti, Lamont’s transportation commissioner and a
former president of Metro-North Railroad.There would be no toll booths, which
were removed from Connecticut’s highways in the 1980s after a number of fatal
accidents. Overhead gantries, similar to those used in New York and
Massachusetts, would be spaced out every six miles. DOT officials initially
eyed tolling collection points just one mile apart, but quickly moved in
another direction because of the close proximity of exits on I-95, especially
in Fairfield County.
The total number of collection points would be 50, according
to a DOT map, which the agency noted is for preliminary planning purposes.
There would be six gantries along I-91 between Hartford and New Haven, for
example. An earlier study showed 83 locations.
“It’s truly a user fee for using that highway,” Giulietti
said.
The density of tolls, even on the latest DOT map, is a major
point of contention for tolling foes, who pointed out that Massachusetts has 13
highway tolling locations and four bridge and tunnel tolling points.
“In little Connecticut, half the size and half the people,
their frugal number of tolls is 50? That’s the deal they want to make?”
Klarides said.
DOT officials emphasized that there are no plans to build
express lanes with their own separate entrance and exits ramps, like the widely
publicized one on I-66 just outside Washington, D.C., in northern Virginia,
where the rush hour toll rate reached $40 in 2017 for a 12-mile stretch. The
onerous toll was based on dynamic pricing, which DOT brass said is designed to
keep traffic moving at 50 mph and not something planned for Connecticut.
There would be discounts for off-peak travel. In addition to
the in-state discount, drivers who make more than 20 round trips per month
would receive a 20 percent toll discount, according to the DOT.
“There are people that have to drive and they’re going to
drive regardless of the price. Then it becomes an equity issue,” said Samuel
Gold, executive director of RiverCOG, a council of governments for 17 towns and
cities in the Connecticut River watershed.
Gold testified earlier this month in front of the
Transportation Committee and has raised concerns about whether Connecticut is
jeopardizing federal highway funding if it puts up tolls.
“What kind of agreement will there have to be that sort of
outlines what Connecticut can do and can’t do?” Gold asked.
DOT officials said they are in regular contact with their
federal transportation counterparts, who have given them assurances that the
toll proposals will not impact Connecticut’s highway funding formula. The state
gets about $700 million from the federal government annually.
Questions about a transportation authority
Lamont’s transportation czar, Giulietti, said that tolls
collected on I-95 must be reinvested in I-95 and cannot be repurposed for other
activities, including for Metro-North. Tolling proponents are counting on the
lawmakers and the public warming up to tolls if they know the revenue won’t be
raided for something else. Last year, a referendum passed creating a
transportation “lockbox” for that purpose.
“Believe me, we have the next 20 years of plans for what
needs to be done on those highways,” Giulietti said.
Boughton, a longtime tolling opponent who earned the
Republican endorsement for governor but lost a five-way primary last year, said
he is uneasy about a quasi-governmental transportation authority being in
charge of hundreds of millions of dollars of toll revenues.
“I think we have to ask questions about what happened to the
[transportation] money in the past,” Boughton said.
Lamont’s administration is making a two-pronged case for
tolls — one focused on infrastructure and the other on the state budget.
“The governor is trying to make the tough choices for
strategic reforms,” said Melissa McCaw, Lamont’s budget director.
McCaw said the state is already mired in debt and pushing
the upper limits of a bonding cap, which she said have drawn notice from
ratings agencies such as Standard & Poor’s. If Connecticut used all its
bonding capacity for transportation, she said, it would have to delay other
critical infrastructure projects such as school construction.
Lamont’s office and Republicans have clashed over the flow
of auto sale tax revenues to the special transportation fund, which was
supposed to gradually increase to 100 percent over the next few years. Klarides
said the money could be used for transportation improvement, while McCaw said
it is not enough to keep the fund solvent.
Not all lawmakers have taken a position on tolls, even
Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, who, with the other three
Democratic caucus leaders in the legislature, sponsored the bill to create a
transportation authority.
“How that all fits in with the DOT remains to be seen,” said
Duff, who hasn’t decided whether to endorse tolls yet.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s stumbling start in his effort to win
approval of tolls on Connecticut highways has created what some well-connected
political consultants and lobbyists apparently see as a lucrative business opportunity
— and now they have drawn up an unusually blunt playbook for how to sell
Lamont’s tolling plan to state legislators and citizens who are sharply divided
on the question.
The 23-page plan was prepared for presentation during the
past week to at least one private engineering firm by a seven-member team of
consultants — including Roy Occhiogrosso and Brian Durand, two former top staff
members in the office of recently departed Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy —
outlining a strategy to "engage advocates and supporters to coalesce
around a winning and unified message on tolling to ultimately achieve
legislative passage.”
The firm or firms to which they made their pitch would
presumably seek to participate in some way — which is not discussed in the plan
— in the development of the Democratic governor’s proposed system of electronic
tolls that would collect hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Major
engineering firms have made large sums of money performing studies and planning
for construction of such tolling systems in other states. There’s no mention in
the proposal of who would pay the consultants’ team, but it appears that at
least part of the money would come from firms that might be involved in the
tolling project.
The consultants’ 23-page pitch, obtained by Government Watch
from a confidential source, says a March 6 legislative hearing on tolls at the
Capitol complex in Hartford “cemented the partisan divide and frightened
vulnerable legislators.”
Whether or not this particular proposal goes forward, the
document provides an insight into the strategy and execution of campaigns to
approve big legislative initiatives, which can be lucrative for people and
companies that work in conjunction with the government on such projects. It
plots how to marshal support and overcome opposition. It illuminates the sort
of political business that gets proposed outside of public view, and is often
consummated between private interests and the people’s representatives.
Lamont has already signaled he would be open to such ideas,
having said on March 7 he is exploring bringing in private investment to help pay
for constructing electronic highway tolls through a partnership with the state.
The state would eventually issue a request for proposals to get specific plans
from businesses if tolls win approval, but details of the public-private
partnership have not been worked out.
The consultants involved in this new proposal are
experienced and have built up many years of familiarity with the Democrats who
control the governor’s office and legislature. They clearly have perceived the
obstacles that the new governor has created for himself in his first big
initiative — after promising repeatedly during the campaign that he’d only toll
trucks, not passenger cars, and now going back on that pledge less than three months
after taking office.
The consultants have not yet responded to a list of 12
questions from The Courant — including which firms have been presented with the
proposal, what would make it worth their while financially and how the
consultants would hope to make money on it.
Meanwhile, Lamont’s director of communications, Maribel La
Luz, said in an emailed statement: “This is the first we have seen this, but it
isn’t a surprise because a lot of advocates have come forward to show their
support for the Governor’s plan to improve our aging infrastructure and get
CT’s economy moving again.”'Drive message’ in ‘aggressive fashion’
The consultants’ 23-page document, entitled “Connecticut
Campaign for Transportation, 2019 Legislative session,” says:Popular support
exists for tolling “when messaged properly” to say it would pay for maintenance
and improvement of deteriorating state roads — because research shows that “by
far, voters are more concerned with keeping CT’s existing roads in good working
order than expanding or investing in public transportation.”
·
To overcome resistance, a strategy would be developed “to drive
legislative support for a tolling concept that will maximize revenue while
holding CT citizens as harmless as possible (example: resident discount)."
·
Political horse-trading might be useful. For example, the Democratic
governor’s office and legislative majority could “use tolling to trade in on
other issues; namely budget proposals for Republican issues.”
·
“Convincing the legislature to vote for a comprehensive tolling bill —
one that includes trucks and cars, albeit with a substantial discount for CT
drivers, won’t be easy. Opponents have already framed this in simple terms:
‘it’s another huge tax increase.’ In order to win this fight we’re going to
have to first reframe the debate — so that’s about ‘jobs and economic
development,’ and not just another tax increase."
·
“And then we’re going to have to drive that message home in an
aggressive fashion, using digital advertising to reach people where they now
spend most of their time online: on their phones. The campaign will incorporate
targeting insights and the best-polling messages from statewide and regional
research.”
·
Goals of the campaign would include demonstrating "the availability
of popular support for a polling initiative and combat[ing] the well-organized
vocal minority opposition that has seized the advocacy vacuum” — as well as
creating “a favorable landscape for majorities in the legislature to cast a
vote in favor of authorizing tolling.”
·
“Government Relations Tactics” would include: showing legislators “how
money earned via tolls can significantly improve their specific districts —
driving the correlation between tolls and local improvements to infrastructure;
highlighting the “vs.” factor by using “polling data to share statewide how CT
residents feel when you compare tolls to an increase in gas taxes, property
taxes, car taxes, etc.” and providing “legislative leadership the necessary
political data to ‘whip’ their caucuses” into support for tolling. “[D]oes this
data exist for Republicans?” the document asked.
·
Another such tactic would be to “highlight the digital program to build
confidence amongst rank and file members that the media landscape won’t be
controlled by the opposition.”
·
“Executing a digital advertising campaign will help demonstrate a
groundswell of support, drive traffic to the website, and encourage people to
take action. ... Social media advertising on Facebook and Twitter will raise
awareness and reach constituents and policymakers across the state” — and “high
impact display advertising on publications with a high reach among influencers,
such as CT Capitol Report, the Hearst Network, and the Hartford Courant, will
get our message in front of policymakers.”
·
“Targeting” methods would include using “geographic, demographic and
interest-based targeting to reach the right audiences at the right time. ...
For example, with geographic targeting, you can target a town, a cluster of ZIP
codes, or a Congressional District.”
A roster with Democratic political pull
The seven-member consulting team’s full roster is:
- Occhiogrosso,
the former senior adviser who served as Malloy’s chief spokesman and
oversaw his communications operation before leaving to become managing
director in the Hartford office of the national political and public
affairs consulting firm Global Strategy Group, whose clients
included Malloy’s campaigns for election and re-election as governor.
Occhiogrosso has registered with the state for several years as a lobbyist
for HNTB, an international firm that does engineering consulting,
construction management and architectural services. HNTB, which has an office
in Rocky Hill, is expected to pay $150,000 this year for Occhiogrosso to
lobby the state Department of Transportation, lobbying registration
records at the Office of State Ethics show. HNTB says it "serves as engineering consultant to more tolling
agencies than any other firm in the country.”
- Lauren
Amaio, director of digital communications for Global Strategy Group.
- Durand,
who was chief of staff for Malloy’s final few years in office, had worked
prior to Malloy’s becoming governor with Occhiogrosso at Global Strategy
Group. In January, after Malloy’s term ended, he launched a new consulting
firm, Intersect Public Solutions, with Michael
Mandell, another Malloy alumnus.
- Mandell,
a former executive director of the Connecticut Democratic Party, was
Malloy’s deputy re-election campaign manager in 2014.
- Lobbyists
Chris VanDeHoef and Liam Sweeney, founder/CEO and principal, respectively,
of Penn
Lincoln Strategies, which bills itself as “a local full service
public affairs strategy and communications firm.” (Editor’s note: Among
Penn Lincoln’s other clients is the Connecticut Daily Newspaper
Association, of which The Courant is a member.)
- Ben
Josephson, senior vice president at the Boston-based O’Neill Associates, “which bills itself as
New England’s leading public relations and government affairs consulting
firm” and was founded by Thomas P. O’Neill III, former Massachusetts
lieutenant governor and oldest son of the late U.S. House Speaker Tip
O’Neill. Josephson has been active for years in Connecticut politics with
fundraising/consulting work. He says on the O’Neill Associates website he
played a part in “the successful 2018 ballot referendum to create a transportation
funding ‘lockbox.’”
Josephson registered as a lobbyist in Connecticut about a
week ago for HDR, an international firm that provides engineering,
architecture, environmental and construction services that has Connecticut
offices in Glastonbury and Cheshire. HDR has experience in tolling, having
performed a major study on that subject in Indiana in the past couple of years.
It says that its staff is “experienced in progressive technologies such as open road
tolling and adaptive traffic control systems that provide you more options in
managing your projects and budgets.” Josephson is expected to be
paid $72,000 this year by HDR, according to his lobbying registration form.
One possibility Lamont has mentioned to pay for development
of tolls is that private investors could provide upfront money to construct an
overhead toll system before motorists start depositing hundreds of millions of
dollars a year into state coffers. The construction costs for Lamont’s plan —
which includes tolling all vehicles on I-95, I-91, I-84 and Route 15 — are
currently projected at $213 million. Tolls would not be fully implemented until
the 2025 fiscal year. They would raise about $800 million a year.
Groton — The town plans to hold another referendum
and seek special legislation to ensure it can move forward
with building two new elementary schools, because the notice for the most
recent referendum was not posted within the correct time frame.
It will be the third vote the town has held on the project.
In 2016, voters approved a plan to renovate the middle school
buildings into elementary schools. Then, last December, voters approved a
proposal to amend that plan, authorizing the town to construct two new
elementary school buildings instead.
Town Manager John Burt said the town's bond
counsel found that the December referendum didn't meet the
30-day legal requirement for notification, as the legal notice was published in
the newspaper only 20 days before the referendum. The publication of
the notification falls under the town clerk's responsibilities, he said.
After discussing with the bond counsel the options for
moving forward to fix the issue, the town is taking a "two-pronged
approach," Burt said.
The town has scheduled a referendum on May 6 so
residents can again vote, as they did in December, on revising the
plan to allow construction of two new pre-k through
fifth-grade elementary schools, rather than the renovation and
conversion of middle schools into elementary schools.
The town also has requested that the General
Assembly approve special legislation to validate the Dec. 11 vote despite the
improper notification, Burt said.
Town to keep working on plans
Voters in 2016 approved spending $184.5 million, with
$100 million in state reimbursement, for the Groton
2020 school plan that featured a new consolidated middle
school and renovating the current middle schools into elementary
schools.
But it later proved more cost-efficient to build new
elementary schools, as converting the middle schools would require alterations
and the new buildings would last longer and have energy-efficient technology,
Superintendent Michael Graner said in an interview last fall. The plan for a consolidated middle school didn't change.
After the state gave approval to the town to construct
new elementary schools, the town held the Dec.
11, 2018, referendum to get approval from residents to build new
elementary schools. Voters approved the updated plan 1,092-239.
Burt said he doesn't expect the need to hold another
referendum or seek special legislation to delay the construction of
the elementary schools, which is anticipated to start early next
spring and wrap up on June 30, 2021. The town will continue
working on the design plans for the elementary schools to avoid any
delays.
Graner said Burt met with him and Board of Education
Chair Kim Shepardson Watson and informed them of the situation, and they're
pleased with the two options.
"We're just keeping our nose to the grindstone and
we're going to keep working away, making sure we have two new elementary
schools that will be online and open hopefully in the fall of '21," Graner
said.
Burt said the need for a new approval will
not impact the state reimbursement for building the two new
elementary schools.
But if the referendum and special legislation fail
to pass, the town would have to look at options for the elementary schools.
"One option that would need to be discussed is to
request the state allow for renovation instead of new construction on the
elementary schools," Burt said. "The earlier referendum vote to allow
renovation is still valid."
He said that while it's a shame the town has to
hold another referendum, it's better to do it and make sure the town is on
schedule as much as possible with the schools and keeps moving forward.
Burt noted that the Dec. 11 referendum passed overwhelmingly
and said hopefully people will support it again. He added that building new
elementary schools has the same cost as renovating the middle schools, but
residents will get a better product.
The issue has no effect on the building of the new 155,000-square-foot consolidated middle school,
which the town will soon break ground on, he said.
Registrar of Voters Kristen Venditti estimates it costs
$20,000 to $23,000 to hold a referendum in all of the town's seven
districts. Burt said the town scheduled the referendum on May 6, the same
day as the city election, which will save about a quarter to
a third of the costs, since two of the polling places already are running
that day.
Special legislation
Burt said the town is pursuing the referendum since special
legislation could take until as late as early June to make it through the
General Assembly and, as it's a political process, there's no guarantee it will
pass.
If the May 6 referendum passes, the town no longer would
need the special legislation. But if the referendum were to fail, the special
legislation, if approved, would validate the results of the Dec. 11, 2018,
referendum, he said.
Burt said he met with state Reps. Christine Conley,
D-Groton, and Joe de la Cruz, D-Groton, and state Sen. Heather Somers,
R-Groton, regarding the special legislation.
A bill to validate the referendum results has been
introduced by the Planning and Development Committee chair at the request of
Conley and will go to public hearing at 10 a.m. Monday at the Legislative
Office Building in Hartford. Conley said similar legislation has been done in
the past, as items pop up every year where dates were missed for a variety of
reasons.
She said everyone she has spoken to, including Speaker
of the House Joe Aresimowicz; Majority Leader Matthew D. Ritter; Sen.
Cathy Osten, D-Sprague; and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, all have been
supportive. She said they know that this has been a longstanding
project in Groton, that the schools are aging and need to be
addressed, that the project includes a diversity school to address
racial imbalance and that voters twice have supported the plan but
now it's facing an issue with paperwork.
Somers said that, based on conversations she's had with
legal experts, it wouldn't be easy to get the bill through the
legislature. She said it's a difficult argument to make to validate a
referendum in which the legal notice isn't off by a day or two, but 10 days.
"It doesn't mean we're not going to try, but repeatedly
we've heard the cleanest way to make this correct is unfortunately to have
another referendum and make sure it's noticed on time, like it should have been
in the first one," she said. "There's no reason this should have
happened. I met with the town manager and the superintendent and the
delegation and we all agreed we should try to have two pathways to correct this
problem."
Public notification
At issue is that less than the state-required 30 days of
public notice was given before the Dec. 11 referendum, said Judith Blank, the
bond counsel.
A return of referendum notice signed by Town Clerk
Betsy Moukawsher certified that the notice was published in The
Day on Nov. 21 and that it was done not less than 30 prior to the referendum.
That date however was 20 days before the referendum.
Moukawsher said she was following a schedule of actions from
the bonding attorney that called for publishing the notice as soon as
the Representative Town Meeting approved the ordinance, which
triggers the referendum. Thirty days' notice is required before a special
election, and she said she had called the bonding attorney,
because she can't publish notice of a referendum before it is
authorized.
Moukawsher said that as soon as the RTM approved the
ordinance on Nov. 14, she sent the notice of the referendum to be
published, but it was short of the 30-day requirement before the Dec. 11
referendum.
"I followed it as closely as I could under the
circumstances," Moukawsher said of the schedule.
Blank said she provided the town with a checklist of
procedures to follow and, in all her communications to the
town, conveyed that the notice of referendum has to be published at least
30 days prior to the referendum.
She said RTM approval was not needed before the
publication of the notice of referendum, because the notice later can
be canceled should the RTM not approve it.
"I knew that December 11 was targeted for the
referendum and we had discussed publishing notice prior to RTM action and then
cancelling if the RTM were not to approve going forward," Blank said.
"I thought I had made clear to the town that 30 days' notice was
required."
Continuing to expand natural gas service in Connecticut, as
well as replace older mains and pipes, has created plenty of work for
Eversource.
As a result, Connecticut's largest utility needs to ensure
it has a healthy pipeline of up-and-coming workers, especially as retirements
accelerate and its competitors and other contractors compete for the same
talent.
To sate that need, Eversource recently decided to try an
approach it's tested in a few other New England states, but never before in
Connecticut.
Eversource and Middlesex Community College last year
announced a certificate program to train natural gas field technicians.
The first class of 11 students recently graduated the
13-week program, and Eversource hired nearly every graduate, said Sarah Millot,
the utility's manager of training programs and compliance.
A few didn't work out, but eight have lasted, she said. Most
will work as paid apprentices for the next two years or so, averaging $24 an
hour to start.
If all goes well, the apprentices will become entry-level
journeymen, averaging $35 an hour to start, she said. After five to 15 years of
experience, journeymen can be promoted to a "lead" or even
"chief" position.
That's pretty good pay for a program that takes less time to
complete than an associate degree.
However, the program is more likely to accept applicants
with previous mechanical skills and physical capabilities.
That meant Darrell Kuhne, who ran a residential construction
and renovation business for 18 years, had a leg up.
Kuhne, 44, said the Great Recession's effect on the housing
market forced him to reduce headcount at his Middletown-based contracting
business to around seven, down from 24 before the bubble burst. He was looking
to make a mid-career change when his wife came across a flyer for the Middlesex
program.
With a long list of technical skills and experience in
managing employees, Kuhne caught Eversource's eye, and once he graduated the
program, the company hired him for a management-track position.
He's telling his story to former construction colleagues who
might be looking for new options.
"I thought so highly of the program," Kuhne said.
Based on the success of the program's first year, Eversource
said it plans to continue it for a second year this fall.
As Hartford's Dunkin' Donuts Park readies for its April 11
home-opener and its third season hosting the Eastern League Double-A Yard
Goats, the downtown stadium has already logged some impressive milestones.
It's been ranked the nation's best minor-league park two
straight years. Last year, more than half, or 47 of the ballpark's home games
were sellouts — drawing more than 400,000 visitors in all — better than each of
its first two seasons, Yard Goats team officials said.
Though not yet title bound, Yard Goats fans rave about their
team-stadium's intimacy and its affordability, which were priorities, the city
and team says, in the design and construction of the $71 million publicly
financed stadium.
However, amid those successes, the ballpark is barely into
the early innings of fulfilling what proponents say is its ultimate mission and
the reason it was built: Serving as an economic-development magnet to leverage
tens of millions of dollars in public funds to attract hundreds of millions
more in private investment around Hartford's newest entertainment venue.
While the stadium has brought new energy and fans to the
city during the spring and summer months, it has so far largely struck out in
delivering on its promise to spur development in Hartford's Downtown North
(DoNo) quadrant, a linchpin of the city's plan to pay for the stadium.
The addition of taxable DoNo development was supposed to
help the city pay the approximate $4.6 million annual debt on the ballpark's
bonds. Currently, the city only draws about $1 million from its ballpark lease
and a share of the team's non-baseball revenue, leaving city taxpayers to foot
the more than $3 million annual deficit.
The state, in its more than $550 million bailout of the city
last year, refused to pay off the stadium debt. It also yanked Hartford's
ability to collect a stadium-ticket sales tax to pay for it.
Lingering skepticism, fueled by a pending,
multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the city by the stadium's ex-developer,
remains about whether the ballpark will deliver on supporters' ambitious vision
for sparking redevelopment of the adjoining DoNo parcels just north of I-84.
At least one Hartford promoter still calls the ballpark a
financial albatross for the city, reigniting the debate over whether it's smart
policy for state and local governments to use taxpayer money to fund sports
stadiums. Many economists say it's not.
But there is some hope for the future.
Fairfield County developer Randy Salvatore, who is the city's
choice to redevelop DoNo, said he is eagerly awaiting the go-ahead with his
$200 million vision to transform acres of mostly surface parking into a mixed
development of apartments, condominiums/townhouses, a supermarket, other retail
and office space and a parking garage.
He says his project is nearly shovel ready.
Standing in his way is the pending litigation between the
city and Centerplan Construction, which was fired from the stadium and DoNo
project and then sued the city for $90 million, alleging wrongful termination.
Centerplan has placed liens on all the city's DoNo parcels, which means
development can't move forward until the nearly two-year-old case is resolved.
A verdict may come sooner than expected: The judge in the
case recently agreed to Centerplan's request to speed up the trial's start by
three months; it's now scheduled to begin June 18.
What's not clear is the impact a Centerplan court victory
might have on DoNo redevelopment or a timetable for the project.
When asked at a recent MetroHartford Alliance event when
DoNo work might commence, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, who inherited the
ballpark project from his predecessor and was originally skeptical of its
financial impact, was blunt and honest.
"I have no idea," he said, adding that the city is
seeking the ability to move forward with development on the land prior to
completion of the Centerplan court case.
"When we have a clear legal avenue, we can move forward
as quickly as possible," he said.
Salvatore says the city-Centerplan scrap hasn't discouraged
his plans. Indeed, he says Hartford's prospects during the wait have only
gotten better with news of Infosys' plans to bring at least 1,000 jobs downtown
in the coming year or so. Also, his existing downtown property, The Goodwin
Hotel, is performing well, he said.
"The litigation is the big obstacle,'' Salvatore said.
Best option
One of the ballpark's earliest and biggest boosters, while
acknowledging the city's stadium lease/non-baseball revenue sharing pact tilts
in the Yard Goats' favor, is confident that building the ballpark was the best
way to jump-start DoNo redevelopment.
"I've said we ought to use this as our
Bloomingdale's,'' said I. Charles Mathews, who oversaw the park's development
and operation while, until last January, chair of the Hartford Stadium
Authority. "You know what happens when you build a big mall?"
First, it draws other larger retailers, which in turn lure
other small, merchants who want to thrive in the shadows of their larger
brethren, said Mathews, a former three-term city councilman who was Hartford's
deputy mayor in the early '90s.
Economic redevelopment of the 32 properties aggregated into
four distinct clusters surrounding the ballpark was always the aim, he said,
akin to what happened to West Hartford Center when the Blue Back Square
mixed-use development debuted more than a decade ago.
"It would be our Blue Back. And Dunkin' Donuts Park
would be our Bloomingdale's,'' Mathews said.
From city hall's vantage point, the stadium has won over
some skeptics. City council President Glendowlyn L. H. Thames admits being
among the stadium's early doubters.
A lifelong city resident, she recalls Hartford leaders'
previous stalled attempts at jump-starting development around downtown's
gateway to the city's Clay-Arsenal and other North End neighborhoods. Thames
said she has enjoyed attending Yard Goats games with her family, reminding her
of days when the Hartford Whalers hockey team filled the then downtown Civic
Center, now the XL Center.
"OK, we have something here,'' she said of the Goats
and their new home.
She said communities like Hartford that harbor deep
economic-development ambitions often miss opportunities to get community buy-in
on publicly financed projects because they don't take time to explain why
projects exist or situated where they are.
"Somehow elected officials and residents need to do a
better job of communicating the value proposition of taking risks,'' said
Thames, who manages the small business innovation group, CTNext, within
Connecticut Innovations, the state's quasi-public technology-investment arm.
"Government plays a role in that,'" she said.
"We can always debate that as good or bad. But sometimes we have to take
those risks.''
State Treasurer Shawn Wooden, who was Hartford city council
president and a supporter when the stadium deal was announced, said "there
is no question'' the team and ballpark "have delivered badly-needed new
energy and economic life to the city."
Still skeptical
Not everyone is convinced the Dunkin' Donuts Park investment
will pay off for the city.
City council member Larry Deutsch, a physician and member of
the Working Families Party, says he remains suspect that the ballpark can
trigger DoNo development sufficient enough to benefit city coffers and
residents.
"In the final analysis,'' Deutsch said, "the overall
benefit to the people of the city cannot yet be measured.''
Still, Deutsch says he hopes the city's DoNo vision comes to
fruition, but that it does so in a way that its benefits cross the lines of
race and socioeconomic status.
"Of course, along with meaningful community-benefits
agreements, which we don't have, and including affordable housing,'' Deutsch
said. "It's important so that we don't have a downtown exclusive by
economic level or race.''
Some experts point to U.S. municipalities' checkered histories
using public money to finance development of sports arenas as a cautionary tale
for Hartford's economic-development ambitions.
Andrew Zimbalist is an economics professor at Smith College
in Northampton, Mass., who authored "Sports, Jobs & Taxes: The
Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums." Zimbalist says that once
communities commit to a stadium, they effectively divert money and other vital
resources that could be used to improve school curricula or fix roads, among
other public services.
Also, land on which a public ballpark sits no longer
generates tax revenue to a city, further impinging its finances, he said.
When asked about Hartford's DoNo ambitions tied to the
ballpark, Zimbalist said, "It doesn't look very encouraging to me.''
Neil deMause, a Brooklyn, N.Y., journalist-author, has
examined dozens of stadium deals, including Hartford's, over the last 20 years,
and concludes their overall economic contributions are minimal at worst, and
difficult to measure at best.
"There's an impression in the sports world that, if you
build it, they will come,'' said deMause, a Wesleyan University alum and
co-author of "Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public
Money into Private Profit." "If there is a positive impact, it is so
small that it's not going to be measurable in the data.''
In an interview, Mayor Bronin acknowledged his concerns
about his predecessor's decision to publicly fund the stadium.
"My objections to the ballpark,'' the mayor said,
"were that the numbers never really made sense to me. And that concern has
been borne out.''
He also defended his decision to fire Centerplan, even
though it's led to a prolonged court battle that has delayed DoNo development.
"There really is no question in my mind" that
firing Centerplan as stadium contractor was in the city's best interest, he
said. He pointed as proof to the $42 million that Centerplan's bond insurer
spent fixing some of the contractor's early work and completing the stadium.
The project also went millions of dollars over its original budget.
Bronin also credited the "beautiful park'' for drawing
tens of thousands of baseball fans into the city.
Public-private investment
David Panagore, Hartford's chief operating officer from 2009
to 2012 and who for a brief period also doubled as the city's director of
development services, points to the city's long track record of using public
infrastructure investment to spur private development.
It has worked in the past, said Panagore, now town manager
of Provincetown, Mass.
For example, the city invested in the redevelopment of the
former Colt Armory in the South End, expecting to spur additional private
investment and property-tax collections in around the historic ex-gunmaking
campus, a portion of which is now a national park.
That's worked to some extent with the addition of new
apartments and office tenants in the area. Bloomfield's Thomas Hooker Brewing
Co., which years ago had plans to open near Dunkin' Donuts Park, debuted in
2017 a tasting room on the ground floor of Colt's South Armory.
Panagore said Hartford's payback from the ballpark will come
not from revenues shared with the Yard Goats, but from increased property taxes
and economic activity from a revitalized DoNo. Increased job prospects for city
residents and other intangibles also will accrue.
Still, other challenges await Hartford's DoNo redevelopment
vision, Panagore said. There is the pending plan to lower the I-84 highway
viaduct to grade, which Panagore says threatens to further bisect Hartford,
essentially creating two downtowns. City leaders also must be certain as to the
type of development they want in the DoNo corridor.
"If you build a supermarket,'' he said, "would
people want to go grocery shopping if there's a ballgame that day?''
Another lesson painfully learned from the city's experience
of first choosing Centerplan and later firing it and CEO Robert Landino as
developer-builder, says Mathews, is that whenever developers come aboard on big
projects, "they need to have some skin in the game.''
"That means if the project gets into hot water, they'll
stay and fight it out, not cut and run,'' Mathews said.
Asked for the Yard Goats' redevelopment vision around
Dunkin' Donuts Park, team President Tim Restall would only say, "I think
whatever is built will complement the ballpark and will complement the ballpark
experience.''
Even if the stadium is a financial drag on the city's
finances it has provided a boost to downtown, luring hundreds of thousands of
people to Hartford during the traditionally slow summer months. That's helped
local restaurants.
The Yard Goats, too, have embraced the community. City
residents hold many of the seasonal stadium jobs — groundskeeping, ticket
sales, gate admissions and concessions — as mandated by the team's lease. The
Goats, too, provide in-stadium space gamedays to a rotating roster of local
restaurants and merchants who can expose fans to their wares. The team also
supports city and area youth with giveaways of free tickets to school groups,
churches and other nonprofits.
Development agreement
Salvatore, of RMS Cos., the new proposed DoNo developer,
said he has found the city open and reasonable.
Indeed, Salvatore, whose Stamford partnership bought and
reopened downtown Hartford's Goodwin Hotel, said his interest in remaking DoNo
has only grown since the city announced his selection of his $200 million
development bid last July.
He recently reached a development agreement with the city
for the first phase of the project, which will get a public hearing March 18.
It calls for a $46 million investment at 1212 Main St.,
which will include a 200,000-square-foot mixed-use building containing 200
living units, plus 11,000 square feet of retail, and 259 parking spaces.
There will be an affordable-housing component to the project,
which is angling for some public financing.
Salvatore is asking for funding assistance from the Capital
Region Development Authority averaging $60,000 per unit of housing to be built
in DoNo. The balance of the project pricetag will come from bank financing and
equity, Salvatore said.
CRDA Executive Director Michael Freimuth said the
quasi-public co-development overseer for Hartford and neighboring suburbs has
pledged $12 million towards RMS' first-phase "Parcel C'' development.
The entire project, if completed, could include up to 800
apartments and 60,000 square feet of retail.
However, until the Centerplan v. Hartford lawsuit is
resolved, CRDA has shifted its funds to raze the city-owned vacant data center
on Windsor Street and make other pre-development site preparations in DoNo,
Freimuth said.
He added that it's critical for development within DoNo to
occur sooner than not.
"Revenues from the subsequent development are important
to not only service the debt on the ballpark and maintain a solid capital
reserve for it, but to also generate tax revenue and jobs to the city that were
envisioned as the upside to the actual ballpark's contributions," he said.
"Delaying the development obviously prevents the city from meeting these
objectives."