by Thomas Breen | Nov 13, 2018 10:23 pm

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Posted to: Arts & Culture, Music, Downtown

Cue up the concerts: The College Street Music Hall’s proposal to open a new mid-sized music venue emerged victorious in a months-long bid to fill a vacant downtown commercial space.

That was the result of a half-hour-long special meeting of the New Haven Parking Authority, held Tuesday night at the authority’s headquarters at 232 George St.

The meeting was dedicated to figuring out who will next occupy an empty 10,000 square-foot, publicly owned commercial space on the ground floor of the Crown Street Garage at the corner of Crown and College streets.

The commissioners voted 4-0 in favor of a bid put forward by the New Haven Center for the Performing Arts (NHCPA), which is the nonprofit that runs the College Street Music Hall across the street, over a bid put forward by a consortium of the Shubert Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, and Albertus Magnus College.

The vote approved NHCPA’s plans to build a 450-to-900-person-capacity music venue at the vast downtown commercial space, essentially replicating, on a smaller scale, the successful venue that it has run across the street since 2015.

“What’s going to provide definitive revenue and pay the rent and bring dollars and people into the city?” asked Parking Authority Commissioner Andy Orefice. Those considerations, he said, led him to vote for the NHCPA proposal.

The Parking Authority will now enter into legal negotiations with NHCPA to put together a lease for the commercial space.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) that the Parking Authority issued for the space in May required that all applicants pay a minimum $6-per-square-foot triple net monthly rent, a $60,000 signing fee, and an annual Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) based on the city’s assessment of the property. The RFP also stated that the duration of the lease be no longer than 10 years, with an option to renew.

“We’re very, very pleased,” NHCPA attorney Steve Mednick said after the meeting. “It’s been a long time coming.”

No board members voted in support of the application put forward by the Shubert / Long Wharf / Albertus Magnus consortium, which had proposed dividing the commercial space into a 200-person theater, a 90-person cabaret, and a rehearsal studio and teaching space.

Nearly everyone on the board, however, praised the consortium’s proposal as more community-minded than the College Street Music Hall’s bid. Ultimately, however, they decided to vote in favor of which proposal they think will bring more dollars and cents to the city, which will bring more people and cars downtown, and which will be a more viable long-term business in a space formerly occupied by the Alchemy night club.

“I love the idea of the diversity that the consortium talks about bringing,” Orefice said, noting the student internships and public school collaborations promised by the Shubert, Long Wharf, and Albertus Magnus. “I get worried about the stated length of time it would take to establish the business as well as finding the capital.”

The consortium’s proposal stated that it would need around a year to fundraise the $6 million needed for its proposal. NHCPA, on the other hand, said that it will need to put only $2 million into its project, and that it already has the money on hand and can begin construction as soon as a lease is signed.

“I like the big picture,” Parking Authority Commissioner Pedro Rivera said about the consortium’s proposal. “I like the idea. I like what they offer to bring to the downtown area. That being said, it’s also a real big budget. And it seems like it’s going to require a lot of time.”

Parking Authority Executive Director Doug Hausladen praised both proposals, and the organizations behind them, but reiterated that the authority needs to prioritize its financial stability at a time of state and city fiscal stress.

“Getting butts in seats and getting cars in parking garages as fast as humanly possible to continue to support all of the investments around our parcels is a big interest from my perspective,” he said.

Orefice said that, despite his vote for NHCPA, he would like to see the lease negotiations press the College Street Music Hall team on why it needs to operate the new prospective venue as a non-profit, rather than as a for-profit, particularly if that team does not plan to have the same educational and community-oriented programming as included in the consortium’s proposal.

Ultimately, Orefice, Rivera, Parking Authority Chair Norm Forrester, and Parking Authority Commissioner Larry Stewart voted in favor of the NHCPA.

Two board members, Donna Curran of the downtown restaurant Zinc and Parking Authority Executive Director Doug Hausladen, abstained from Tuesday’s vote.

Curran said she abstained because she is the on the board of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas (A&I), which wrote a letter of support during the application process in favor of the Shubert / Long Wharf / Albertus Magnus proposal.

Hausladen abstained because he had served as staff to the seven-person committee that the Parking Authority convened in October to assess and issue recommendations on the two proposals, and therefore wanted to remain impartial.

After the meeting, John Fisher, the executive director of the Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), which is the nonprofit that runs the Shubert, congratulated the winning team and said he is optimistic about future collaborations among the Shubert, Long Wharf, and Albertus Magnus as a result of this RFP process.

He said that the consortium has asked the Parking Authority and the city to continue looking for other open commercial spaces downtown that might be a good fit for realizing the consortium’s three-venue theater proposal. One idea that has been floated involves using storefronts across from the Criterion movie theaters, on the ground floor of the Temple Street garage, to house the consortium’s planned activities.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full Parking Authority meeting.