Forward Look in Connecticut

It took young Democrat Richard C. Lee three tries (missing on the second by two votes) to unseat plodding Republican Undertaker William Celentano as mayor of heavily Italian, heavily industrial New Haven, Conn. (pop. 167,700). It has taken aggressive ex-Reporter Lee, 41, only 3 1/2 years to give his cramped old birthplace (founded 1638) new pride in something more than its elm trees, Yankee traditions and Yale University. Firmly scuttling nostalgia ("Our greatness lies in the future"), Lee has put New Haven foremost among New England cities in striking at the illnesses that plague all U.S. municipalities: the exodus to the suburbs, slum growth, downtown decline.

Last week, touring the rubble of New Haven's Oak Street, stocky, boyish Mayor Lee watched the bulldozers grunt and roar, clearing the last of the city's most infamous slums. Razing was almost completed; masons poured concrete for a new $10 million Southern New England Telephone Co. building; apartments and stores were going up. It was all part of a 42-acre, $40 million public-private redevelopment project, sparked by Lee's successful wangle of $6,600,000 in U.S. grants and loans. Cost to the city: $1,700,000 in cash--plus $3,000 spent to exterminate some 50,000 rats before demolition could begin. Said Mayor Lee: "Redevelopment is not a luxury--it is an absolute must."

In for the Outs. Motto in mind, Dick Lee unveiled last week plans for an even bigger facelift: a mammoth $85 million, five-year downtown project drastically upgrading 96 blighted acres off New Haven's historic Green. Private investors, including Manhattan Real-Estate Broker Roger Stevens (whose past deals included the purchase of the Empire State Building), will replace century-old structures with a glistening, 18-story hotel-office building, new retail stores and office space. The Federal Government has earmarked $39 million for land purchases and clearance. Out of the city funds will come $7,000,000 for parking facilities (3,200 autos) to lure suburban shoppers. Says Lee, whose coup inspired envious comment in other Connecticut cities: "We are reversing the trend. In five years families will be moving into the city instead of out to the suburbs."

In his fight to reverse the trend, Dick Lee epitomizes a long-needed new look in U.S. city government. Says he: "The old type mayor was a ceremonial figure, concerned with marriages, wakes, strawberry festivals, ribbon-cutting. Today a mayor has to be an administrator and planner." A shipping clerk's son, Lee grew up in New Haven's Irish 17th Ward, after high school cut his political teeth covering city hall for the Journal-Courier. A peptic ulcer gave him an Army medical discharge in World War II; he went to Yale not as a student but as publicity director in 1943, four times handily won election as alderman from his home ward before he took over city hall in 1954.

Swamps for Industry. Despite widespread protests, Lee refused to cut real-estate taxes ("We need that money for a better city"), plowed $750,000 of payroll "fat" into new schools and redevelopment, streamlined the city government. To help boost his program, Lee crossed party lines to enlist a hardworking, 500-man Citizens Action Commission (chairman: Republican Lucius Rowe, head of Southern New England Telephone Co.), borrowed Yale talent to advise on city traffic and finance.

Lee has backed up planning with shrewd business sense. When Yale, urgently in need of room for expansion, offered him $1,900,000 for three old high schools adjacent to the campus, Lee held out for and got $3,000,000. Anxious to make room for manufacturing, Lee pushed a program for filling wasteland and swamps, sold cheap new locations to industry; he expects to boost tax assessment on one new 19-acre factory "park" from zero to $7,000,000 by 1960. "Our boundaries hem us in," says Lee. "We can't expand. We must redevelop, reclaim, or die."

"Lee for Anything." Dick Lee's success in city management has almost overnight made him a bright new star in Connecticut politics. When he ran for re-election in 1955, the voters "gave him a record 20,000-vote majority; today, confronted with Lee's announced bid for re-election this November, local Republicans have yet to find a solid candidate to run against him. Lee's friends elsewhere in Connecticut have high hopes for his future. Many Democrats believe that Irish Catholic Dick Lee is just the man to run against Irish Catholic Republican William Purtell for Purtell's U.S. Senate seat next year, or even to run for governor if Democratic Incumbent Abe Ribicoff changes his mind and runs against Purtell. Said powerful Democratic National Committeeman John M. Golden: "I'm for Dick Lee for anything."

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