State loses veto power on Fort Trumbull

I t was 13 years ago, in October 2005, that six members of the New London City Council voted to sever ties with the New London Development Corporation, now the Renaissance City Development Authority, moving to take title and control of the redevelopment parcels on the Fort Trumbull peninsula.

“I think we’re divorced,” then Mayor Jane Glover, who died this month, said after the 2005 vote. “It’s over.”

It actually wasn’t over, and because of complications and legal tangles, including mortgages held by the state, representing its investment in the redevelopment project, the council eventually rescinded its vote to sever ties with the NLDC.

“The state has a $70-plus million mortgage on the (affected) property,” Thomas Londregan, then city director of law, warned the council before they moved against the redevelopment agency. “We need to hear from them.”

Londregan guided the council through an NLDC reinstatement vote a few weeks later, after the agency agreed to some leadership change.

Those mortgages, which for some 15 years gave the state legal input and a veto over what happens on the peninsula, have now expired, according to the state Department of Economic and Community Development, having run their natural course of time.

This news does not come from the RCDA. I asked the DECD about it after hearing from someone who was puzzled why, at a signing for the now-stalled Shipway apartment development, a representative of the DECD attended the ceremony but didn’t sign any documents.

David Kooris, the DECD deputy commissioner who has been involved as a liaison to the Fort Trumbull redevelopment, told me this past week that the state will remain involved and continue to serve in an advisory role, even though the mortgages are gone.

“By no means has our participation dropped off,” said Kooris. “The character of our relationship has not changed dramatically.”

Still, the state’s legal participation has ended, the power of its mortgage leverage, one of the things that brought the City Council back from the brink of cutting ties to the NLDC and demanding title to all the property, is gone.

State funding is also winding down. The RCDA has been drawing for some operating expenses from a 2007 urban assistance grant which is now almost depleted. The agency this month drew $66,500

for salaries, rent, legal and consulting fees, and $131,780 remains in the fund, according to the DECD.

Curiously, the NLDC concession to the City Council in 2005 leading to the decision to rescind the vote cutting ties was the resignation of the agency’s executive director, David Goebel, who had run the agency through its most controversial period of taking people’s homes. Goebel remains a board member of the RCDA today.

Glover, who served several terms as ceremonial mayor, eventually worked for the city’s first full-time paid mayor in many decades, Daryl FInizio, as the city’s chief administrative officer.

Finizio and Glover moved again against the agency at the start of Finizio’s only term in office, changing a campaign pledge to abolish the agency to a measure to take more control, changing the name and some of the leadership on the board.

Those mortgages may have gotten in the way again of the city taking full control.

The current mayor, in beating Finizio in a Democratic primary, made a prominent promise to breathe new life into the RCDA, which he has kept, directing city money its way, enabling the hiring of new employees.

Mayor Michael Passero doesn’t take criticism of the agency lightly and has placed a big bet on turning around 20 years of failed development projects and disappointing results in the bulldozed neighborhood.

I wish him all the best, but I would side with the prevailing political will of many years, that it would be best to cut ties with the agency so closely associated with the dark past of eminent domain. After all, it was set up by then Republican Gov. John Rowland to circumvent control by Democrats who dominate city politics.

Instead, at this juncture, why not put the decision making for the still-largely-vacant waterfront peninsula with professional city employees and the city councilors who are elected by and accountable to voters.