Part 2 (2/2)

”Well, it wouldn't work for us,” he said, dismissing the idea at once. ”We're down to two sites.”

”Well, okay, even if it wouldn't work for you,” she said, ”you would still be an important person to the board because you would know the kinds of things that a Fortune Fortune 500 company would look for in a building s.p.a.ce.” 500 company would look for in a building s.p.a.ce.”

Joining another board wasn't something Milne really had time for. His plate at Pfizer was pretty full: decision day was looming for selecting a development site for the new research-and-development facility, and the company was ramping up to put a full-court press on the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fast-track v.i.a.g.r.a through the approval process. With Pfizer projecting hundreds of millions in revenue from the impotence drug, a lot was riding on the FDA application.

But Claire pressed, stressing the virtues of the NLDC and the fact that she and Steve Percy were already committed to doing what it would take to market the mill property. ”It's a great piece of land, and it needs to be developed,” she explained. ”But the people in the city don't actually know how to do that. We are people who can make this happen.”

Milne found it hard to say no. ”What's the commitment?” he asked.

”I'm going to tell everybody at the first meeting that we're going to stay together one year,” Claire said. ”If we can't get something dramatic going in twelve months, we'll abandon.”

As a personal favor to Claire, Milne pledged six months. That's a long enough period, he suggested, to determine whether he had anything worthwhile to contribute.

Claire accepted that.

6.

POWER STEERING.

September 10, 1997 Become an RN without cla.s.ses. The advertis.e.m.e.nt on the hospital bulletin board caught Susette's eye. She folded one up and put it in her bag. The advertis.e.m.e.nt on the hospital bulletin board caught Susette's eye. She folded one up and put it in her bag.

After finis.h.i.+ng her EMT s.h.i.+ft, she went home to work on the house. In her mailbox she found a letter from the law firm Conway & Londregan, which had handled the closing on her house. She opened the envelope and found a bunch of papers and a cover letter. ”Enclosed you will find your owner's t.i.tle insurance policy,” the firm's real-estate paralegal had written. ”Please file this with your other important doc.u.ments. If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our office.”

Thinking nothing of it, Susette set the policy aside and retrieved the advertis.e.m.e.nt from her bag. The idea of going to school didn't thrill her, but Regents College in Albany, New York, offered a nursing degree through correspondence courses; she'd never have to set foot in a cla.s.sroom. That sounded good to her. After all, she had to find a way to make more money. A nursing career seemed like a natural choice, especially with her education as a paramedic. In a little over a year she could complete the courses and become licensed as a registered nurse.

She decided to apply for admission.

The same day, across town Jay Levin liked what he saw. Under Claire's leaders.h.i.+p, a competent group had already started a.s.sembling around her. Levin knew Steve Percy well-the two were friends. Despite having no track record in large-scale urban renewal, Percy knew a great deal about commercial real estate. Much of the NLDC's time would be spent acquiring properties and redeveloping them, so Percy's connections and experience would be a major a.s.set. Levin didn't know Milne well, but he certainly knew his reputation. As Levin had promised Claire, all necessary paperwork had been filed with the secretary of state to reestablish the NLDC as a legitimate nonprofit agency. Levin prepared a confidential memo to Peter Ellef in order to update him. Levin's contract with Ellef didn't include scoping out the old mill site for development possibilities. In fact, the mill site was a long way from the pier area that the governor had his eye on. But it didn't take an insider to realize that the governor would welcome a Fortune Fortune 500 company at the mill site. 500 company at the mill site.

”A focused development vision is already emerging,” Levin told Ellef. ”As you are also aware (and we are pleased to have happen) we have pursued additional projects for you.” He continued: ”Although not originally our primary concern, these efforts have involved extensive diplomacy with City officials and discovery of facts relating to the apparently collapsed Ocean Quest project at 3690 Pequot Avenue.

”Of additional significance is the rapid revitalization of the New London Development Corporation under the direction of Dr. Claire Gaudiani, President of Connecticut College.”

Levin a.s.sured Ellef that he would personally draft the new by-laws for the NLDC. ”City leaders are divided on its relevance and Dr. Gaudiani's leaders.h.i.+p,” he wrote, ”but we will work with you and the Governor's office to insure it ... carry out the ultimate plan approved by you and the Governor.”

Levin requested more money for all the extra work. ”Difficult local personalities and circ.u.mstances rendered our time frame overly ambitious,” he explained. ”Yet we believe that we have the vehicle to carry the project into the future, but we need to strongly manage the final production of that New London Development Corporation vehicle.”

The word ”vehicle” was appropriate. Levin had put the governor in the driver's seat in New London. And by carefully managing Gaudiani, the state would be able to control the project from Hartford, steering around the Democratic-controlled city government.

Ellef approved another hundred-thousand-dollar payment to Levin.

It didn't take Claire long to figure out that her primary opponent in New London was Democratic Party chairman Tony Basilica. Although Levin's efforts to appease Basilica had failed, Claire decided to reach out to him. She called his office and left a message inviting him to the NLDC's first board meeting, explaining it would be organizational in nature in order to map out the agency's vision and objectives.

A few days later she got a voice-mail message from Basilica, telling her he didn't give his permission for such a meeting. Claire didn't let that stop her. She knew plenty of Italian American men who thought Italian women needed their permission. She called his office back and left an equally direct message: the meeting would go on, and he was still welcome to attend.

September 19, 1997 Claire convened the NLDC's first board meeting in a downtown building. After her rousing pep talk, the group elected officers and issued committee a.s.signments. George Milne and Steve Percy agreed to co-chair the commercial-development committee. Tops on their to-do list was mapping out what it would take to attract a major corporation to the mill site. Milne decided he needed to see the site to get a better feel for its potential. Claire had never actually seen the site either. Percy agreed to take them to it.

Milne wasn't quite sure what to say when he first set foot on the property. It had been described to him as exquisite, but all he saw was acres of weeds and litter. The site looked a lot like a dump. It smelled like one, too. The neighborhood contained a big sewer-treatment facility, which essentially consisted of some oversized cesspools. Under the summer heat, the plant threw off a horrific odor.

”It smelled like you were in a toilet with someone who had a terrible illness,” Claire said.

Milne observed another problem: a huge sc.r.a.p-metal junkyard next door to the mill site. The place was an eyesore and no doubt had its own environmental issues with oil, grease, rubber, and other contaminants. Even the nearby historic Fort Trumbull was in shambles. Its overgrown brush and neglected buildings cast a depressing shadow on the entire landscape.

By the time Milne left, he had serious concerns about the prospects of marketing the site. ”The whole setting was not particularly attractive,” he said. ”It was one with enormous liabilities.”

Just the price tag for environmental remediation would scare off most corporations. Then there was the issue of indemnification. No company would settle into a site without some guarantees that it would not be liable for previous contamination. Milne saw other problems, too. ”The whole environment was so unattractive that it was unlikely that any serious investor would ever come in,” he said.

Claire heard all that. But she remained convinced that a junkyard could be erased. A sewer plant could be upgraded and capped if necessary. A fort could be refurbished and even turned into a tourist attraction. And soil could be removed and replaced. To her, the bottom line was that twenty-four acres of waterfront real estate weren't easy to come by. This land was ready to be had. It was simply too valuable to give up on.

While Milne stressed that all these costs were simply too much for a corporation to take on, Claire relied on her other strength-finding money. Jay Levin had given her reason to antic.i.p.ate state a.s.sistance. ”Jay said to me, 'Ellef promised that you are forty-eight hours away from a face-to-face with the governor if you can bring a Fortune Fortune 500 company to that land,'” Claire said. 500 company to that land,'” Claire said.

This made the prospect of state funding real. It also got Milne focused on what kind of state commitment was necessary. ”My entire focus,” he explained, ”was on trying to answer the question: 'If this was the one key empty piece of land and a.s.set that might attract major commercial development, what would have to happen to make that even plausible?'” He agreed to compile a list.

Privately, Claire hadn't given up on the idea of Pfizer ultimately landing on the mill site. Although Milne had offered her no hope that that would happen, three things remained true: Pfizer needed land; the city had land; and the state had the power and the resources to make that land financially attractive. There was still a long way to go, but once Milne identified the needs, the governor simply had to be convinced to fill them.

Claire had more ambition than both men. She came from a family of high achievers who were all about overcoming long odds. Her grandfather Augusto had arrived in the United States from Italy in 1889. Determined to become a doctor, he had attended Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and become the school's first Italian American graduate. He opened his practice in East Harlem, where he had an endless number of patients who spoke his native language.

Augusto and his wife, Rosa, clung to their Italian heritage. They spoke, ate, and prayed in Italian. Yet all six of their children were taught to speak perfect English outside the home. Together Augusto and Rosa helped Italian immigrants get into college and medical school; they helped found Cabrini Hospital; and they helped start schools for immigrant children in New York City. In 1919, with Rosa stricken with pneumonia, Augusto turned to his best friend for help. Dr. Vincent Gaudiani, a brilliant Italian American surgeon who had received his medical training in Rome, saved Rosa by operating on her at home. Augusto and Rosa went on to have one more daughter, Vera, who grew up and married Gaudiani's son, Vincent Jr., himself a doctor.

Vincent Gaudiani Jr. and Vera had six children. Claire was the eldest. Her father had a profound influence on her. Highly educated and an extremely demanding perfectionist, Dr. Gaudiani wasn't satisfied when Claire came home from school with a 98 on a test. If any other student had a 98 or higher, Claire had not done well enough. He taught her an order of priorities: ambition, focus, and intensity.

Claire's life became a quest to satisfy personal drives and ambitions. Everywhere she went she broke barriers and stirred controversy. At Indiana University, she became the first married woman with a child to complete a Ph.D. in the French and Italian department. The department had to take an unprecedented vote to grant special permission when Claire insisted on breast-feeding her baby during her doctoral exams.

Getting Pfizer to New London was just another barrier to clear.

7.

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

September 27, 1997 Her red hair tucked under a wide-brim sunhat, Susette rested on her hands and knees on the sidewalk in front of her house, surrounded by piles of weeds she had dug up. Sweating within a long-sleeved s.h.i.+rt, she yanked on a root as she heard a car pull up behind her. Remaining on all fours, she looked over her shoulder. A s.h.i.+ny Jaguar stopped at the curb, a few feet from her.

A middle-aged man wearing jeans and a loose-fitting, short-sleeved T-s.h.i.+rt got out.

”I heard this place got bought up,” he said, looking down on her.

She stood up. ”Yeah, I bought it,” she said, wiping the sweat from her face. ”Who are you?”

”Billy,” he said. ”Billy Von Winkle. I own some buildings in the neighborhood.”

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