Coliseum Coming Down!
Christopher Arnott, New Haven Advocate, 11/16/2006




November 16 2006

The New Haven Coliseum’s dates with death have come and gone over the last 18 months like passing teenage fads. Yet the monster still stands. Carrion cranes have now taken to picking every bit of concrete and steel possible off the structure to lighten the load when the city finally does get around to blowing it up. But amid the rumors, memories and bad jokes swirling about the city is a spot of real news: those delays will cost taxpayers real money. Upwards of $1.4 million, according to a knowledgeable source.

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. says the city is negotiating “a revised contract amount” with demolition contrator Stamford Wrecking to cover unanticipated costs. AT&T and United Illuminating are worried the Coliseum’s colossal fall will crush the phone and fiber optic cables buried in brittle clay conduits under George Street. The contractor has hired Weidlinger Associates Inc., an engineering firm specializing in building implosions, to redo the plan for felling the arena. Part of that plan involves piling up more dirt and tires to cushion the Coliseum’s fall. Another approach has been to remove as much steel and concrete decking as possible to lighten what’s left.

“We went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate their concerns and that caused additional costs to be incurred,” DeStefano says.

The mayor doesn’t know the exact cost, but a source with knowledge of the situation said Stamford Wrecking wants $600,000 more, and also wants to keep profits of $800,000 which will come from recycling the Coliseum’s steel. The original plan was to split the steel profits 50/50 between Stamford Wrecking and the city, but DeStefano said more may go to the contractor to mitigate the cost overruns.

The city signed a $6 million contract with the contractor to take down the arena so a new Long Wharf Theater, hotel and public space could be built there.

Asked for his take on the situation, Hill Alderman Jorge Perez, D-5, comments, “It looks to me like the city’s trying to avoid a lawsuit.”

How right he is.

“It doesn’t serve anybody to have them walk off the job or us to end up in a lawsuit with each other,” DeStefano said. “So reasonable people should find a way to compromise this, and I think we will.”

If you look now, you can see the Coliseum is being readied for the explosive charges that will bring the beast down in a chest-vibrating 18.5-second blast, said Tony Bialecki, New Haven’s deputy development administrator.

“We are now near the very end,” Bialecki said.

But when?

“I would like to think we’ll see demolition before the end of the year,” DeStefano said, before adding, “That’s our hope. It’s not a guarantee.”

If you’re sick of waiting, just build the mini-Coliseum inside these pages, lay it on your coffee table or front porch, and smash the damn thing yourself. Throw a party and play old Kiss records. Then tell your grandkids how you personally crushed the New Haven Coliseum into oblivion.

e_SEmDAndy Bromage

A Long Wharf Time Coming

When the Long Wharf Theatre’s new managing director, Joan Channick, walked through the ruins of Veterans Memorial Coliseum a couple of weeks ago, she could finally see the future.

“Things are gearing up. When I walked the site with with [New Haven’s deputy development director] Tony Bialecki and [her Long Wharf colleague] Josh Borenstein, they were laying the charges to do the demolition. The news that the Coliseum is coming down is terrific news from our standpoint. We’re moving forward.”

One of the reasons Channick says she joined Long Wharf this year was for the “thrilling opportunity” of helping the theater achieve its long-awaited move downtown. The project has been buzzed about for over a decade, but there have been no blueprints, no fixed plans, only wish lists and rumors. For years, the growth of the Long Wharf has been linked with the demise of the Coliseum, since the arena’s destruction could open up a vast patch of land on which to put a new theater, and keep that part of downtown arts-driven and tourist-friendly.

This year, Governor Jodi Rell allowed the release of $750,000 from $30 million of state funding originally pledged to Long Wharf by Rell’s predecessor John Rowland. Rell has agreed to keep those promised millions set aside for Long Wharf, but to get them the theater essentially has to raise an equivalent amount itself. Even calling the move a $60 million project (with $45 million earmarked for a new Long Wharf building and $15 million to build an endowment the theater would need for such a shift) may be off by many millions. That figure comes from years-old studies and, as the Coliseum demolition (or lack of it) proves, construction costs can fluctuate. In any case, the $750,000 will be used to finally hire some consultants and begin the planning and preparatory work for the theater’s relocation.

“My first season at Long Wharf will be focused largely on strategic planning,” Channick says. But with such a long-range project, she also has to worry about Long Wharf’s existing space, where she says buckets must be placed on the floor of the costume shop on rainy days. “It’s a bit of a funny situation to be in—to know you won’t be in your current theater forever, but to know that you will be there for quite some time.” There is a deadline looming; Long Wharf’s current lease on its longtime space amid the meat-delivery docks on Sargent Drive is said to be up in 2010.

“There’s a lot that’s wonderful about our current space—ample parking outside our front door, the intimacy we have...It’s early days yet, and we’re not even to the point of talking about the style of the new theater. But we’re thinking about all these issues. We’ll be talking to consultants about what we’ll need. We’ll be talking internally with our board and our staff about who we are. We’ll do a survey of our audience, to see how they feel about the impact of the move. We’re studying operating costs. We’ll have to rethink the whole structure of our operation. There’s been a great deal of progress made already, but it’s been on the quiet side.

“We’ve been looking at the [Coliseum] space from the outside for so long. When the Coliseum comes down, everyone will have a fresh perspective.”

—Christopher Arnott