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Thinking About the Box
Great minds don't think alike about the fate of the New Haven Coliseum and the real estate it sits on
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Business New Haven
8/19/2002
By: Mitchell Young
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Karolyn Kirchgesler
Executive Director
Greater New Haven Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB)
How much meetings and tourism business is the Coliseum responsible for today?
It's been a benefit in that it has brought some people to the city who wouldn't be here otherwise. The Jehovah Witnesses take several weekends every year [for their national convention in the late spring]. We're working to relocate them possibly to the new [Citywide] Field House. It looks like that is going to be tough. We've not been able to hold many conference-related events because of the type of venue that it is. Most convention groups also need ballroom space and breakout rooms. The Coliseum really works for very few groups unless you're having a general assembly.
There have been some events, concerts and the circus that [are] positive things. When you look at in another light - like all the money that has been lost - it's a negative. I think there is a better use for that area. I would concur with the mayor that a conference center would bring more of the type of business that would really make a great economic impact on the city as opposed to the Coliseum.
What would you like see erected on that block?
I would of course like to see a conference center. A conference center is a place that would have ballroom space, breakout rooms, some space for exhibitors. Right now if we have a group of 600 people that want to come for a conference and they're going to have 100 exhibitors, a banquet and they need breakout rooms. We don't have any facility that we can host that in.
The Omni Hotel couldn't do that?
It couldn't do all of those things concurrently, and that's what most of those groups need.
We lose hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars not having any place to put these groups. We get calls from groups that are looking to come to the region. But there is no place to put them. We don't solicit many groups because we know we can't host them, and it would be a waste [of time].
I'm simply talking about groups that have contacted us or we have uncovered for some reason not knowing their event was that large who have wanted to come here for one reason or are willing to consider our region but are unable to [stage an event here].
Have there been any specific discussion between the CVG and City Hall since the mayor announced his intention to take down the Coliseum?
We did a study that indicated that if conference space was built there would be a need for it. The research came back very positive that there was a need for space and that New Haven specifically would be successful if they built a center. I know it is something the mayor supports - it's actually the mayor's idea.
Do you take for a granted that a hotel would be part of a conference center?
I would assume that if conference space was built you would need an additional full-service hotel in downtown New Haven. You have to have so many rooms you can commit. Just because a hotel may have 250 rooms, in the hotel business you have to hold rooms aside for your business travelers that are coming through on a regular basis and transient business. We would need an additional hotel facility - preferably a facility that would be physically attached.
Would existing area hotels be in favor of such a plan?
I can't speak for them. When you talk about conference space that is something they would definitely be in favor of. It would have a dramatic impact on the hotels in downtown, but it would even have an impact on hotels in Milford and Trumbull. It would push some of the business that is currently in New Haven further out. About seven percent of business travelers bring their children with them. Some of them would prefer to be in a suburban location. A conference center would impact the whole region.
Do we have everything else we need to attract conferences?
The thing about New Haven is that we're a walk-able city and it would be a great conference location. Typically the conferences that are most successful from a delegate's standpoint are those where you have great restaurants within walking distance, attractions, shopping within easy walking distance.
We have all of those. We have galleries, museums, theaters. We're really in line to be a great convention city. There is an international attraction with Yale University. Many of the people that come here who aren't looking [at colleges] for their kids still take the Yale tours because of the history and the architecture.
The top activity that travelers engage in is shopping. So you can imagine the impact it would have on the shops in downtown. History and museums are No. 3. No. 2 is outdoor recreation. We're metropolitan, but we also have a country flavor. I don't know any other city the size of New Haven where you can drive ten minutes or even five out of the city and there are great hiking and biking trails. Some of the towns we cover offer horseback riding.
We've got to have local air service. That will be the biggest determinant to bringing conference and meeting groups. Many people argue that Bradley is a quick trip up the highway, but an event or meeting planner doesn't want to add on the extra travel time, not to mention the cost of transportation. The average conventioneer spends $235 per day - almost double your average leisure traveler.
How well are travel-related businesses doing locally?
I think after September 11 people started to realize what an impact travel and tourism have [on local economies]. When all of that fell off you started to see all sorts of businesses dropping. It is starting to come back. Part of the [sluggishness] may have to do with the recession as well.
David Jurzak
General Manager
Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, New Haven
How is business and what's the fallout from September 11?
Business has been pretty good, pretty consistent. We are down slightly from last year, attributed to some group business that hasn't picked up. Our Yale business is as strong as ever. A lot of business indirectly related to Yale is still [coming] in. Bayer is one of our larger clients; that is leveling off, [but] we have most of their training so it's long-term stays.
Does the Coliseum in its present form have much impact on your business now?
It does for about six weekends a year - that's with the Jehovah's Witnesses [convention]. Most of the other events are regional events.
You can field a lot of different meeting options with a large banquet room and meeting rooms. Do you run into problems booking certain groups because of facilities?
We have 22,000 square feet of meeting space; our largest space is about 9,200 square feet. Where we run into trouble is someone wants to do a trade show. We can't handle large groups; 700 people are our max in one single area.
Are there enough hotel rooms in New Haven?
Presently there are enough hotel rooms. Many cities believe that [they should] build a convention center, build a lot more hotel rooms. Remember that if you fill a convention center 52 weeks of the year, it's worth it. I was just in St Louis before coming here. Their thought was build a lot more hotel rooms and [enhanced supply would] fill them with more conventions. They only really put on about six to eight more conventions a year. You have the same amount of demand coming into a city but more supply.
Down the road, [the region might support] a medium-sized convention facility - something like the size of the Arena [at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport] or the Connecticut Expo Center [a converted BJs near downtown Hartford]. One way we could be a step ahead of everyone is if you can expand [Tweed-New Haven] airport. If I have travelers that are flying into Hartford they're going to pass a couple of places they can have their function at before they get to New Haven. From New York they're going to pass Stamford and Bridgeport before they get here. If we can get people here, then a need for convention center and more hotel rooms would be necessary.
Could the current Coliseum building be reconfigured into a conference convention center?
Trying to be realistic with the economy and where we are, not only in the city but the state…We're going to pay $10 million in state funds to tear [the Coliseum] down. My fear is that in next three to five years will the money be there to build something? Are we going to look to a private company to build something? We have a structure that's already in place that clearly needs a lot of money - but you have a multi-purpose structure that's in place. You can still have the [UHL New Haven] Knights, the [arena2 football] Ninjas, the circus. You can still have concerts there, but you can also change that space into a meeting space. You may have only 35 events there annually for athletics, but you can also have 15 [event days] for meetings. That fills your year.
Would meeting space at the Coliseum or the site be close enough to the Omni?
The reason I say use the Coliseum as a convention center is because it is a structure that is already there. In a perfect world you would have something that is connected to it. If you look at New Haven as it is today, where are you going to build that? I'm not sure you could build a hotel and a convention center on that [single-block] footprint with adequate parking for the hotel. Even today here we'll have an event at our hotel that have to use the Temple Street Garage. You're going to experience that with every event.
If you have full hotel and 500 people attending the event, where are you gong to park? It almost looks like you're going to build the same thing you have today: a coliseum with a parking garage attached.
I don't know the building, so I don't know what it would cost to get it to where it needs to be. I strongly believe a convention [facility] has to be multi-purpose so you can have events.
Financing new hotels in Northeast cities has become problematic. Even the hotel planned for the new Boston convention center was stalled for two years because of financing difficulties. It's also been reported that there is trouble financing the hotel at the Adriaen's Landing in Hartford. Is that so, and why?
Smith Travel is a research firm that does a [study] on revenue per available room (RevPAR), a simple calculation of occupancy times rate. Throughout the country everybody is down. When demand is down and someone is thinking about increasing the supply…bankers aren't going to give money away. Someone who is going to borrow money isn't going to do it without a good return on investment. Building new projects unless they are in areas that are in need of a hotel is very difficult.
But isn't Boston one of the best tourism markets in the country?
Tourism is a Thursday-through-Sunday pattern. Our hotel in Boston is full every weekend. It's a huge tourist market. It's the other three or four days per week [in which hotel business has declined]. Massachusetts has the largest decline in RevPAR year-over-year.
Do you talk to many groups that you can't accommodate in New Haven in terms of space needs?
There is a limited number of weeks in a year and limited number that they want to come to New Haven. You take our opportunity for open space and you reduce it by what is really being asked for.
Our No. 1 customer, Yale University, has functions here on a regular basis from all the different departments. We're not going to say [to Yale], 'We're not going to take your business because we're going to attract a one-time business.' That's where the additional space would be needed. There are space-intensive groups that need a lot of meeting space. But maybe half of the attendees are going to be staying in New Haven. We might not be able take that event because we don't have the space. The other hotels have little space, but we have other hotel rooms in the city we can use when we need more rooms.
If a hotel is built on the Coliseum site in tandem with a conference center, would there be too much hotel capacity in New Haven?
At this time, yes - unless a dramatic move was made that could consistently bring business to the city. The way our market runs is similar to the school year. Yale University drives occupancy in the city.
These days there seems to be some kind of Marriott going in next to every gas station in the region.
If you look on the I-91 corridor there are limited services, but you have Stop & Shop, U.S. Surgical - all those pieces of business and industry right up into Meriden. If you go down toward Trumbull, the Trumbull Marriott does very well there; it's surrounded by businesses. That fills your mid-week there. For your leisure business on the weekends you can do your wedding blocks, your family reunions and the normal tourism [business]. We're not sold out all the time. There are peak nights when we could use more hotel rooms in the city. But then there are the other 35 weeks a year. The city is running approximately 65-percent occupancy a year. I believe if Tweed is expanded, then it's viable to [attract business from] Atlanta to Chicago, down the Atlantic coast. You can bring your association meeting to New Haven [if you] can fly right in. Then you'll see an industry grow and you'll see more demand for hotel rooms.
Henry Fernandez
Economic Development Director
City of New Haven
What are the principal obstacles to knocking down the Coliseum?
The most interesting first step will be the issuance of an RFP [request for proposal], which we will probably do by October, that will entertain proposals for how to demolish the Coliseum.
It is a relatively unique structure in terms of the way it is assembled; therefore the way it needs to be demolished will be somewhat unique. The first step will be to entertain proposals for a method and cost for demolition. We have had some preliminary looks at that and we think it is going to be around $10 million. Depending on how people engage in salvage and depending on the methods they use to demolish, it could have some pretty significant price swings.
Parallel to that will be an effort to put the money together to demolish it. We see this as something we've already begun working with the state bond funds. Working through that process in this budget reality will take a good amount of political work - making it very clear to the state this is a top priority for us.
But it was the governor who first publicly announced that the building would come down. So isn't he pretty gung-ho on this?
I think there is clarity of purpose. It still takes putting the application pieces together and bringing them up to speed. We've been working with DECD [the state's Department of Economic & Community Development] for the last month on that.
What if all of a sudden the demolition cost ballooned to $18 million?
I would be surprised if the numbers got anywhere near that big. We'll know, and that's why you go through the process and get some guaranteed maximum prices.
What kind of feedback have you heard about tearing it down?
Today [August 9] [Yale School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M.] Stern called for it not to be demolished. This is a building that needs to come down. During its life I don't know of anyone who [characterized it as] a particularly attractive building. Sometimes people come out at the 11th hour to claim grace where there isn't any. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but the finances are not. It's one thing when you're looking to save a house that obsolete; it's another when you're talking about a property that has been obsolete for a pretty long time and takes up to two city blocks in your downtown.
What would like to see on the site irrespective of cost?
I would like to see a real reinforcement of what is working in downtown now. I see that as a mixed series of uses. We've been clear about our belief it would be a great home for Long Wharf Theatre. We believe the city needs another high-end hotel. At a certain point you start to look at how much space you have; we continue to add to the residential and retail mix in the downtown as well. Certainly those [uses] would need the benefit of some additional parking as well.
One of the things the Coliseum did provide throughout its life was a venue for 'flat space' conference or meeting space. A study the Convention & Visitors Bureau did a few years back identified the need for around a 60,000-square-foot facility, which you could break up into multiple meeting spaces or open up into one large flat space. We see that [also] being beneficial to the hotel business downtown and the retail and restaurant business downtown.
Something like a conference center would have the potential to not only bring lots of people into the city but to put lots of people onto the street. Clearly, at the Coliseum it was those events [conferences, expositions and conventions] that had the greatest overflow into the business community.
There is support in New Haven for a conference center, although many hoped that need would be accommodated by the redevelopment of Chapel Square Mall.
I would take it either place. We tried to put that deal together and we weren't able to do so with the Omni. That would have required some concessions on the part of Omni that we weren't able to put together.
A theater, a hotel, some shops, 60,000 square feet. Are we going to end up with parking on top of the building again?
I think we're looking forward to not having parking up on the roof of anything - certainly not up on a roof that is several hundred feet in the air.
The Coliseum site looks like a big site because there is a big building there. But is the footprint really big enough for all those uses?
There are some vacant parcels nearby, and the redevelopment would take into consideration those additional vacant parcels. We have a lot of surface parking within a block or two. I think we would have to use all those piece cohesively.
That area of downtown doesn't have parking crunch now. With redevelopment of the mall, Ninth Square gaining some traction, this development and Gateway Community College, are we generating a need for more parking than we can create?
Any redevelopment is going to require some additional parking. We also just finished the Temple Street Garage. Hopefully we will have a new garage at Union Station, which would take some pressure off that area.
A good amount of the Coliseum parking now is [used by] people working [in spaces north of the Coliseum]. The construction of the mid-block garage is very important as well. There is no question we have to meet our parking demand as we go through this redevelopment. We're in an exciting time in the city because I think there is a sense of growth - businesses opening, new buildings being built - at a time when the country is feeling a lot of pressure economically.
Building new parking garages costs a fortune.
They certainly cost a fortune. The real question is at what level do you have to subsidize them.
The hotel planned for Adriaen's Landing in Hartford and even the hotel at the new Boston convention center have run into financing difficulties. New Haven hasn't really put up any large-scale, heavily financed projects in a long time.
The 125,000-square-foot building going up in the [Yale] medical complex is pretty significant - and that is private development. There also is the building that David Beckerman is currently building [on Audubon Street downtown].
The city has been unable to develop the Macy's site for ten years. What does that say about the prospects for a big development and a new hotel?
We can't put a hotel on the Macy's/Malley's site by agreement with the Omni Hotel for ten years post the completion of that development. I think there is no question that the hotel investment market is very tough right now. The way you address that is you start getting into that marketplace and asking people what makes a deal happen. Does an abutting conference space make a deal happen? At this point it is a little to early to say.
The deals that are having a hard time moving forward today are deals that were financed four to five years ago in a different market. If you're looking [today] at a hotel that will go up three to four years from now you're going to be talking about a different financial [model] than [projects now under construction].
How important is a new hotel?
The conference space would certainly feed our existing hotels, and that would be beneficial and also - with or without a hotel attached or next to it - would [benefit events such as the] Jehovah's Witnesses [convention] or the chamber Business Expo. It would continue to have that effect with or without a hotel. [But] you would like to have the additional higher-end hotel.
Is this a project for a single private developer?
We'll go out into the marketplace and see what the marketplace will bear. We'll do that preliminarily by having discussions and then we'll [issue] an RFP to have development teams put together. The kind of RFP we use [will give] us tremendous flexibility once we have tested the market.
In the August 5 BNH both Gov. Rowland and Democratic challenger Bill Curry went on record supporting the relocation of Gateway Community College to downtown. Is that actually going to happen?
Gateway itself is pretty supportive of the idea. Now [the project is] working its way through the state. Not bad that we got to the point that everyone supports that.
Aren't Gateway's own parking needs going to cost something like $20 million?
In most cases with parking you look for the parking to pay off the bonds, and there is gap of maybe $1 million to $4 million - as opposed to $15 million to $20 million [with no revenues]. If you don't have revenues [Gateway doesn't want students paying for parking], its not unlike a classroom: You have to pay for the thing entirely.
So that's $30 million [$10 million for demolition; $20 million for new parking] that will be spent without any new thing happening.
If we get the community college and we get Long Wharf Theatre and the hotel and the flat space - and to do that we needed to spend $20 million or $30 million on parking - that's a number that's well worth spending if we could get this series of opportunities fulfilled. The reason you need that amount of parking is because you have that many people in your downtown.
A hotel and a conference center will generate revenue themselves to build garages. A community college probably won't.
The biggest criticism of tearing down the Coliseum is that you're eliminating a productive use and replacing it with nothing - at least for some years. What's the best-case scenario for a time frame?
Our best-case scenario is that you would see something actually built three years out. It will be a combination of [private and state investment] plus use of the existing hotel-motel tax revenues. We wouldn't be using the hotel-motel tax to pay for a new hotel, but we would be using it to make available the conference space that would benefit all the hotels and the entire tourism business.
Joel Schiavone
2001 Republican Mayoral Candidate
During your mayoral campaign you asserted that the city should knock down the Coliseum. Now the mayor is taking you up on that suggestion. Why do you think it should come down, and what should go in its place?
The Coliseum has not been a functioning building from the first day it was built. It was way over-constructed. They put the garage on top, which shoved the cost from say $5 million or $6 million to about $22 million or $23 million [for the parking facility].
[Coliseum architects] Kevin Roche-John Dinkeloo [& Associates] had never and hasn't built [a civic center] since. They didn't have a clue as to how to build a coliseum. You ended up with an architectural monstrosity outside, and making no sense from a financing point of view and absolutely no sense from an operating point of view. The way the [heating and electrical] systems were designed made no sense.
The city has lost something like $48 million on the Coliseum so far and that does not include the hotel-motel tax [on hotel stays, which subsidizes Coliseum operations], which started at $800,000. It's up to $1.5 million now.
Adding that up over 30 years they probably spent $75 to $80 million so far on the Coliseum. I have no idea why the mayor didn't [raze the building] sooner. It's an insane thing to pour that kind of money into. It has absolutely no impact on downtown, it has no impact on people coming into New Haven, spending money going out to eat and all that kind of stuff.
When you owned the New Haven Nighthawks [hockey club], didn't visitors come in for that?
They came in for the games, but they did not go out to eat. They drove in, parked their car upstairs, came down went to the game, went upstairs and went home.
What should replace the Coliseum? That block is a big piece of real estate.
It's a complicated question. The city has done a terrific job of driving the middle class out of New Haven over the last 40 years - primarily through excessive taxation and the poor schools. If you're middle class earning $50,000 to $70,000 and you and your spouse work, you cannot afford to stay in New Haven because of taxes and the bills for private schools. You have to leave.
This has been the best possible thing for the Democrats because it has enshrined them in [control of city government]. They can't lose. What you have is on the one side is the relatively poor and impoverished people and the Yale people - and both groups vote Democratic almost 100 percent.
According to [city economic development director; see above] Henry Fernandez and the mayor, every housing project has to contain a significant percentage of low income subsidized housing. As a result, the middle class has fled and continues to flee. I'm not talking just about the white middle class, but the African-American and Hispanic middle class. The white middle class left years ago. Now the African and Hispanic middle class move as soon as it can from a financial point of view.
If you move a few blocks into Hamden your test scores at the schools go up about 150 percent. All you have to do is move one block. There is obviously an enormous incentive to get out of New Haven, and [middle class residents] have taken full advantage.
So what do you do? What the mayor is suggesting is the same old crap - coliseums, retail space, aquariums, office space. All of which have been tried for the last 50 years and all of which have failed. The one he hasn't done - because No. 1 it will work, and No. 2 because it will destroy his political base - is to restore the middle class.
That's a broad philosophical perspective as to why he continues to push these types of projects, such as bringing Long Wharf Theatre downtown. All of which have been proven in city after city all across the entire U.S. to be a total mistake and stupid ideas.
Why would having an amenity like conference center/hotel type development of the site be at odds with that?
You only have two sites [remaining] for [new] middle-class housing in New Haven: downtown and the waterfront. [Mayor DeStefano] has basically removed the waterfront [from the possibility of residential development] because of his insane policy of putting commercial establishments on the waterfront. This is the only city in the world that continues to do that - again, 50 years behind the times. In terms of downtown, thousands of people would love to live downtown. We should have another 5,000 housing units, upscale residential, for people of means downtown. That means sites such as the Coliseum site or [former] Malley's site should become high-income residential space.
Their proposals [include] office space and some high-income space salted with low-income housing throughout the whole downtown. That's why it is vitally important when you get the Coliseum site back, not to turn it back over to another Coliseum/Long Wharf project which does nothing for the city of New Haven. You can talk all you want about [Baltimore's] Camden Yards, the Coliseum, the Shubert theater and every other failed project - they've done nothing for the cities where they have been built, and every responsible person says that.
The only thing that restores cities is neighborhoods, and we need more upscale neighborhoods in New Haven - period, end of story!
So that site should be residential development only?
You need retail on the first floor. There is no reason why the Long Wharf can't go on the first floor of a large residential project. There's no reason why other retail space - neighborhood retail, not destination retail - can't go on the first floor of these projects.
What about a hotel?
Why should they develop a subsidized hotel project to fight with the one hotel they've got? A hotel is for tourism and business, and they're isn't enough for that.
I thought you wanted to build a hotel downtown.
A small hotel with three floors of residential and four floors of hotel. The residential was for people who wanted to leave their house in Woodbridge, so I combined the hotel and the residential.
The mayor seems to agree that downtown needs many more residential units. But can you actually build residential space that's affordable for the middle class in downtown New Haven today?
Rents downtown at the Taft [Apartments] are up to $1,200 a month. You can build lots of apartment for $1,200 a month. The rents on College Street, which they just renovated, the old RKO building, are getting $1,500 a month.
The RKO is a building the developer got for $1. We don't see many non-subsidized apartments being built.
Would you rather subsidize - maybe through long-term financing or tax abatements - upper-income apartments or lower?
Could we build market-rate apartments on the Coliseum site?
The answer is yes, without a doubt. Rents in New Haven are now high enough so they can do that. Rents haven't been until recently; in the last five years rents have exploded in downtown New Haven.
If that's the case, won't we see an increase in the number of market-rate apartments anyway?
No, because the mayor is committed to this crazy development mentality of the 1950s. He has never mentioned extensive residential real estate development in downtown New Haven. He hasn't talked about residential development except when he gets pressed.
They're talking about small stuff - ten apartments, 20 apartments. You have to get 5,000 to 10,000 new apartments in the next five years. That's the only hope for New Haven. Otherwise, it will continue to fall apart.
Why would those middle-class people move downtown if we still haven't solved the taxes and school issues?
Because they don't have kids. I'm talking about younger people, people who are divorced or older people whose kids have already gone through school. Or people who can afford to send their kids to private schools. They would love to live not in the suburbs. With the Q bridge going down for the next 15 years, you're going to find more and more people are going to say, 'I can't stand that drive - I gotta get a place in New Haven.'
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