POKO: You broke it, now you own it
Election cycles are dangerously short in Norwalk, so you never know why the mayor does what he does in the final weeks — to run up his numbers or to run cover for his missteps. Examples? Wall Street has been asking for help with trash bins and street lamps for over a year. Et voila! The week before the election City Hall announced they’d fund both.
New YMCA in SoNo? Done (albeit without a pool or gym). New mall? Sort of done. New parking on Wall Street? Oops! Mayor Harry Rilling blamed the Parking Authority. Well, he owns that, too. He appoints all the commissioners, and the senior staff member is Harry’s direct report. So much for Harry’s willingness to own his mistakes. But like it or not, Harry’s fingerprints are all over changes made to the POKO agreement that continue to haunt the project to this day. The mayor can’t tear up the Land Disposition Agreement because if he did, we’d all know the truth — that Mayor Rilling lost $6 million in cityowned property, the two downtown parking lots, in July of 2015.
POKO’s complexity is boring unless you’re a real estate geek like me. So I’m not going to tire you with all the minutiae. The LRAA alone — the Loan Recognition Agreement Amendment — is worth reading a half dozen times because it is chock full of city giveaways. But if you want a basic understanding of why that rotting hulk, the Tyvek Temple, is still sitting there, and much the worse for wear, four years after the late Ken Olson pulled the permit to begin construction, hang with me for a primer on POKO blunders.
First, Harry gave Citibank and POKO an unbelievable second chance at life. Norwalk mayors are always campaigning, so what Harry did in October 2014 — extend the deadline to give POKO another 150 days to comply with the LDA — was clearly an early campaign ploy. I suppose he may have been trying to be “nice” and give POKO a second (or third or fourth) chance. But extending their default deadline was a bad move. Then Harry and state Sen. Bob Duff went to work. Duff obtained a $5 million grant for the wacko vending machine parking garage and $9 million in LIHTC tax credits. Duff was happy. Harry was happy. But POKO blew past the 150day extension. Some on the council wanted to scrap the whole project, which would have killed the byzantine taxpayer funding Duff and Harry had spun from hay into gold. They had cut ribbons at POKO. Harry had invested considerable political capital in the project, and they were close to closing a big deal, one with the potential to cement Harry’s legacy in the Norwalk Mayor’s Hall of Fame.
We could maybe forgive the 150day extension blunder if Harry hadn’t signed the LRAA in July of 2015. That changed everything. That July Harry gave away two parking lots worth $6 million in the middle of downtown, and he’s been trying to bury the truth ever since with frivolous lawsuits, nondisclosure agreements, closeddoor meetings and secret handshakes. Harry may have surmised we’d never find out about the loss of the parking lots so long as the LDA (Land Disposition Agreement) was intact, not torn up as everyone’s been telling Harry to do and as he keeps telling us he can’t. Harry’s amendment forfeited the city’s “right of reentry” — one of four possible “cures” in the event of a default — once construction commenced. As we all know, construction did commence, and the mayor lost the Isaacs and Leonard Street lots at a cost of $6 million.
True, the city can still terminate the LDA if the redeveloper defaults. But if Harry were to do this, the forfeiture of the two public parking lots would be exhumed from its burying place, and Harry would have to admit his role in a $6 million mistake.
Jason Milligan is a Norwalk developer and is in litigation with the city.