I call the order of the February fifth, twenty twenty-five public hearing and regular meeting of the Committee on Administration, Finance and Law and Public Services.

The time is now six thirty two P.

M.

Mr.

Clerk, will you kindly call the roll?

Alderman Connors.

Present.

All opposed, nay.

Motion carries.

The reading is waived.

Having been properly noticed, we will begin the public hearing.

Are there any speakers for this item?

Are there any speakers for this item?

Are there any speakers for this item?

Do we have anyone online?

Yes, good afternoon.

Members of the committee, Mr.

Chairman, Attorney Michael Carrier, 24 C to Street, New Britain, uh, here for uh Mr.

R.

Schaeler, Shaler Auto World, and also the uh man manager of uh Wheezy LLC and La Provence Realty LLC, which are the actual legal title owners of one and twenty-five veterans drive.

You all know the area we're talking about across the uh the Schaler Honda dealership has been here uh and prior to that Oldsmobile uh for 71 years in the city, tremendous uh corporate citizens.

And we're here tonight to ask uh it for a uh it was phase in of the increase in the tax assessment um due to the um the major project that Mr.

Shaler um has been undertaking for probably almost 10 years now, right?

Ms.

Schiller, yeah.

Um it's uh been an amazing uh go around.

We actually um received a tax modification uh agreement for this project um in 2021.

Uh and then the um there was some latent environmental conditions that needed to be uh remediated, um some purchase and sale agreements, and then um Honda decided to change its um prototype for the new new dealership.

Sure.

So that it everything basically had to start from scratch.

So here we are four years later, and uh now the uh ready to you know kick off the uh construction, and um as you know, this is a gateway to the city.

It's um you know it's a it'd be a tremendous boom uh when you're coming off the highway going to the the events at the Willowbrook Park or just coming in from Berlin to see this um brand new state of the art facility.

Um and Mr.

Shaler will speak to some of the details about it, but um you're authorized as you as you know under uh 12 uh 65 B to enter into this, and uh it's we're talking about uh probably north of 12 million dollar investment uh in this property, and it's gonna change the look.

There's the uh Schaler Honda, the existing Shaler Honda, but there's also the Schaeler uh Mitsubishi, which is going to um that's going away and it's just gonna be all all Honda, you know, and he can explain some of the details of that.

But the um you know, this is uh um uh corporate citizen in New Britain that's uh given uh freely to charities in town and helped out when when uh whenever they've been asked to.

And um, so uh I'll um uh our ask is a 10-year phase in.

So starting at the 101 25, uh would be uh 10% of the um the increase and and so forth.

Um so or um yeah, so with the uh you know over the period of the the 10 years, it will be a the full additional assessment over 12 million.

So the the taxes will never uh go down, they'll actually just increase over time because the the initial investment is is so much again that uh to get hit with a 12 million 12 million dollar increase uh or whatever that would equate to, you know, uh eight million dollar assessment increase or something, would be pretty hard to take on top of the costs of just getting started with this project.

So um if you uh will allow us, we'll have Mr.

Schaler give you a little more detail on the project.

Yes, uh Mr.

Schiller, come on up if you'd like.

Thank you for your time.

Uh I'm Art Schaler Jr.

Uh I know some of you uh from previous meetings.

Um I don't know how much you'd like to share me to share with you, but just to give you a little history of the project and why it's taken this long.

We started out voluntarily wanting to add on to the building in like 2016, and then Honda announced a market study.

And and in the world of car dealerships, when the manufacturer announces a market study, that usually means they want you to move.

And uh so we stopped the voluntary project we were gonna do.

And they did indeed tell us to move to the Berlin Turnpike, and that led to me fighting with them for a long time over the fact that we've been in that location since 1953, and I really don't want to leave.

New Britain's been very good to us, and I think we're good to it, and there was no reason for us to leave.

Um, you know, of course, manufacturers they like big fancy roads with all the traffic on them, and uh and I tried to convince them that with the internet today and GPS in everybody's pocket that you know it doesn't matter where your location is, and let us stay where where we're where we want to stay.

And uh ultimately I won that fight, and uh as uh uh Michael said, we uh we had we had everything ready to go, and then they said stop.

We're changing and we're coming up with a new plan.

And and if and if you've been by any Honda dealerships of late, most of them have a big blue cylinder in the front.

We still have a big blue cylinder in the front of ours.

Well, that got they got rid of that and they replaced it.

This is now called blue stage is what they're calling it.