by Paul Bass | May 4, 2015 8:19 am

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Posted to: Business/ Economic Development, Ninth Square

A $400-plus-million plan to transform downtown’s southeastern edge could have been signed and on its way by now — if not for a trench.

Or, specifically, where to put the trench, and how big it can be.

The plan is for the former New Haven Coliseum site. Montreal-based developer LiveWorkLearnPlay (LWLP) reached a deal with the city and state to build a new urbanist mini-city with 1,000 apartments, 200,000 square feet of offices, 30-40 storefronts, a pedestrian plaza, and a luxury 160 to 190-room hotel on the 5.5. acres bounded by George, State, and Orange Streets and MLK Boulevard (aka North Frontage Road, aka Water Street Extension).

Last October, after the governor committed $21.5 million of state bond money for the project, officials said a deal with a hotel chain was “imminent” and shovels would soon be in the ground.

Now it’s May. A deal has yet to be signed. No work has started. The state money hasn’t been released. Because:

• The state money is contingent on a deal being in place with a hotel chain, and ...

• A final deal with a hotel chain is contingent on the developer knowing the exact parameters of the land it can build on; and ...

• The city can’t tell the developer those exact parameters until it settles on the design for reconfiguring the intersection of Orange and MLK, as part of a broader rebuilding of Orange Street across what will become the former Route 34 Connector as part of the Downtown Crossing project. (Read about that here.) And ...

• The city can’t settle on that design until it knows where the underground electrical, water, and gas pipes will go ...

... a question which merited little attention when the original development agreement was signed.

“It’s just turned out to be a much more complicated question that we imagined,” said city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson (at right in photo at an unrelated announcement last week of a food-truck festival). “The developer has been very consistent: Until we could give them a sense of where the intersection is, they couldn’t go with the final presentation to the hotel. Without intersection details, we couldn’t know where the right-of-way needed to be moved to.”

Currently three utilities share the same trench running parallel to Route 34 on the block from State to Orange, Nemerson said. But the right-of-way will be smaller once the streets are reconfigured. That means there won’t be as much room for as big a trench. Therefore planners had to find other spots for two of the utilities’ pipes.

All parties—the city, LWLP, United Illuminating, Southern Connecticut Gas, the Regional Water Authority—have worked hard on a solution, Nemerson said. “We’ve had meetings when there have been 18 engineers in the room.” He said Friday the city finally has a new utilities plan about ready for signing.

Developer Max Reim of LWLP confirmed that he needs that final plan in order to know the exact land he’s working worth, so LWLP can decide how many rooms the hotel can have, where customers will park and drop off people. Reim said the conclusion of the engineering process is imminent. He said he believes shovels may be in the ground this summer.

“Almost all of [the utilities question] has been completely resolved. It took us a lot longer to get a agreement between the engineers and the utility companies on how to do that effectively,” Reim said.

“All along MLK and the [Coliseum] property you have old antiquated sewers, water systems, utility lines,. What we all decided was in order to have the absolute best possible project with the best possible hotel complex, we need to make sure that portion of the property is free and clear of all the utilities.”

Engineer Ted DeSantos, of the Fuss & O’Neill firm (which LWLP has hired to help with the project), said the water and gas companies found nearby mains they can use as alternatives to the current trench running parallel to Route 34.

Reim said LWLP has selected a hotel chain from a number of interested parties. He declined to name the chain until he has the final plans and can sign the deal. Executives of Stamford-based Starwood Hotels and Resorts—which builds Sheraton and Westin luxury hotels—was a leading finalist; two of its execs, Director of Development John Salvatore (pictured with Reim), were present when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy visited the corner Oct. 30 to announce the state’s agreement to chip in the $21.5 million for the project’s needed road work. Malloy insisted that Reim have a committed hotel developer on board, and that the hotel be part of the project’s first phase, for the state to release the money.