Yale hands New Haven $4.6M for building permit Latest portion of more than $5M in fees for new science lab

NEW HAVEN >> Just in time.

Yale University, which is often in building mode to the delight of city officials, handed over a check for $4.6 million in exchange for a construction permit for its new biology building on Whitney Avenue June 30, the last day of the 2016-17 fiscal year.

It already had paid an estimated $500,000 for permits for site work and demolition at the 260 Whitney Ave. site, exceeding $5 million in permits for this one project.

The building, which will replace the Gibbs Laboratory at 260 Whitney Ave., is costing Yale an estimated $168 million, according to city records, and is scheduled to open in late 2019.

“Estimated revenue from building permit fees is factored into the city budget each year. Higher fees generated by larger projects — like this one, planned by Yale — help the city meet its revenue projections,” said Laurence Grotheer, spokesman for Mayor Toni Harp.

The 280,000-square-foot building was delayed for much of 2016 as the project got caught up in Board of Alders legislation on Yale’s Overall Parking Plan, even though the biology lab did not represent an increase in parking needs. It was one of several run-ins between the university and the alders.

The new teaching and research building will bring together multiple disciplines. Constructed over seven levels, it will feature a rooftop greenhouse, physics labs, a 500-seat lecture hall, aquatic and insect labs and state-of-the-art imaging technology.

“As a result of Yale’s construction projects, New Haven has received about $5 million per year in permit fees from Yale to the city over the past 10 years,” Karen N. Peart, director of external communications at Yale, said in an email.

The university is getting close to finishing the two new residential colleges off Prospect Street — the Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College — at a cost of $500 million.

The next big upgrade is the $150 million Schwarzman Center, which will improve the Commons and three floors of the adjacent Memorial Hall. Both, located at Prospect Street and Tower Parkway, originally were built at the turn of the 20th century.

City Building Official Jim Turcio said Yale New Haven Hospital, in the last month, pulled a permit for a $20 million musculoskeletal center on the Saint Raphael campus, paying the city an estimated $600,000.

He said the university and the hospital account for some 75 percent of the building permiting fees paid in New Haven.