ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Urban Renewal Creating a Model City for the 21st Century
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t is hard to say just what went wrong. The economy was the best it has ever been, a growing middle class was settling down after the Great Depression anchored by the victorious United States GI coming home from the war front. The Baby Boom created a need for housing and infrastructure like no other time in American history. But cities struggled. The neighborhoods bearing William Levitt’s name grew into towns, complete with shopping centers and schools for the newly affluent to attend, and we started calling them suburbs. This was all supported by Eisenhower’s grand plan to connect America in the same efficient manner he saw in Germany during the War. The suburbs and highways go hand in hand, feeding people into the city where the jobs were, and getting them out to their homes with the new cars they could afford. Unfortunately that left many cities empty at night. Those in charge of City Planning had to do something to stop the tide of people leaving the city. In New Haven, that person was Ed Logue. His Urban Renewal amounted to a mixed bag of developments — he would tear down one neighborhood only to work to put affordable housing in the middle of another — all under the guise of suburbanization. Under their stewardship, New Haven was the Model City, the shining example of what a city can be and do. Perhaps his most famous project was the Chapel Square Mall, the former home of CCM, which aimed to mimic the allure of suburban retail. Now, in 2020, New Haven can be said to be going through an Urban Renewal Renewal. No longer are city planners looking to put highways everywhere nor are they modeling themselves on the suburbs. After the larger part of a century, it appears that New Haven has made its way back to being a city again, the only question is how, and can it once again be the Model City, and this time for good?
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ou can hardly pass by a block in New Haven that doesn’t have some form of construction. Whether it’s a Wendy’s fast food restaurant, a medical research center, or a five-star hotel, the city has become a large construction site. According to figures put together by the New Haven Independent, the city is already put out 150% more building permits than they had last year at the same time. There are several factors pushing this growth, but the tax incentive has been one of the largest influences on investment in the Elm City. At the end of 2019, the city’s Board of Alders once again extended the tax assessment deferral program. The belief is that investors might balk at opportunities 24 | CONNECTICUT TOWN & CITY | FEBRUARY 2020
Mayor Richard Lee and Frank O’Brion of the Redevelopment Agency examine plans for the Oak Street Connector
in the City where improvements will grow the assessed value of a property. Per the city: “In order to encourage the fullest development of property and to encourage investment in New Haven’s existing commercial and residential building stock, the City Wide Assessment Deferral Program freezes the property tax assessments on certain eligible properties at pre-construction or pre-rehabilitation values and then phases in the taxes assessed on the improvements over a period of five years.” The question that should be on everyone’s minds is: is it working? Figures recently reported in the New Haven Register suggest that it is. According to their numbers, the grand list of taxable properties increased from $6.591 billion to $6.64 billion, a total of $33.2 million in increases, while exemptions from all of the buildings that qualify for the tax assessment deferral program increased from $609 million in 2018 to $624 million. From early reports, it appears that the grand list is growing, at a faster pace than the exemptions are, according to Mayor Elicker, who is now overseeing much of this growth in his first year as mayor. The Alexion building at 100 College Street is starting to phase out in their tax deferral, going from $57 million to just under $68 million, according to the Register. The Winchester Lofts, Novella Apartments, Union Apartments, and College Square Apartments all increased their assessment under the tax deferral.
