Feds pump millions into private marina

I was critical last month when Gov. Dannel Malloy announced an incentive package of some $83 million in grants and loan deals for Electric Boat, a rich defense contractor with endless federal contracts on the horizon and no conceivable plan for ever leaving Connecticut.

Incentives for what? Why do Connecticut taxpayers need to subsidize this wildly profitable corporation with money that must be borrowed?

I winced again when the governor later promised more borrowed money, $15 million, to improve State Pier in New London and make it wind-farm-construction friendly, even though one wind power company already has promised to spend $15 million of its own money on the pier.

The wind companies, eager to start their offshore projects, seem to be jostling to be able to use New London’s well-situated port, with or without the governor’s generosity — development, which, by the way, won’t generate a dime in new real estate taxes for poor little New London, starved for taxable property.

Oh yes, the governor did find some crumbs, less than a million dollars in bond money, for New London itself, for some basketball courts and park improvements and a dispatch system the city will share with Waterford.

Malloy also turned up in New London last week to celebrate another astonishing giveaway of public money, this time a $1.4 million federal grant administered by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, that helped build new floating docks at the Thamesport Marina on Pequot Avenue.

Some in Connecticut’s Washington delegation, Rep. Joe Courtney and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, also chimed in last week to praise this lavish gift for a private business, promising the new floating docks for yachts will go a “long way to helping revitalize the port” of New London. Really? You could shoot water cannons across most of the floating piers in downtown New London and never hit a transient boater, even in the height of summer. The many moorings off the waterfront park, a pet project of Mayor Michael Passero, also installed with federal assistance, also get little or no use by visiting boaters.

And yet, Ari Yasgur, the owner of Thamesport, assured me, when I stopped by Monday, that the big new floating docks at his marina are going to be much more popular than the ones at City Pier downtown, because they are more convenient to the mouth of the river. They can accommodate up to 54 large boats, according to DEEP, including yachts of 100 feet or more.

Yasgur said they are more accessible and therefore will make the city more convenient to visit for boaters, and more people will come.

He added that the grant was awarded competitively in a national review of applicants.

I’d like to think he’s right about increasing visits to the city by boaters. But I don’t see a transformative wave of new transient boaters descending on the city, maybe for the same reason the wind developers want to come. It is in large part an industrial port.

Dozens of unrented slips — granted, not using the more convenient floating piers that make it easier to dock — languish each season on the market.

I’d like to see New London develop more boating traffic, though I doubt even a wave of dozens of visiting boaters a night would bring the promised revitalization of the port. The industrial landscape of Groton and the wakes from frequent ferries make it generally a less popular stop for boaters than more recreation-friendly places.

Yasgur bought the marina in 2008 for $1.5 million, just a little more than the government has now invested. He has done other improvements, including renovations for a new restaurant. His contribution toward the new floating piers was $529,000, according to the DEEP coordinator for the program, which is funded through a federal excise tax on boating-related things like fishing equipment, trolling motors and motorboat fuels.

I found a listing online offering Thamesport for sale for $2.75 million.

Yasgur told me it is no longer for sale and the listing I saw is outdated, even though it mentions the new docks. He said he couldn’t recall when the property was listed for sale but it was before the new docks were put in.

He called back later and said he instructed the real estate agent to take the listing I saw down. The real estate agent, with the national firm CBRE, also returned a message, saying the property was listed early in the winter with the idea it might be taken off the market when the season started, to generate a higher history of revenue because of the new docks. They rent for $3 a foot a night.

When I told Yasgur my objection to the grant money is that it went to a private business, one in competition with others in the area, he noted that it is not unusual for the government to provide assistance to businesses when there is a public good to be realized.

He noted that apartment complexes are often given tax abatements, which he said is an example of the same kind of assistance as the money for the floating docks.

He quoted Sen. Blumenthal as saying that businesses that collect the federal tax on boating equipment like the infrastructure program because it promotes boating.

That may be true. But I would remind the senator that it is usually the people who pay a tax who object to it, not so much the ones who collect it.