Allan Appel Photo
As a not-for-profit pulled out of a plan to build supportive housing in a prime waterfront spot along the Q River, the city approached neighbors to explore a new idea: subsidized, workforce housing.
The property in question is an empty acre and a half on Quinnipiac Avenue between Aner and Oxford that falls in a steep declivity down to the water. Local families use it for a beach. Local homeless people sometimes set fires. Everyone wants something to happen there.
Continuum of Care has dropped its application to develop the land. The city has a memorandum of understanding with the not-for-profit to potentially pick up the land for affordable housing. Everything is in the exploratory stage.
LCI’s Johnson, Chris Ozyck, Esther Armmand, Fair Haven Alderwoman Brenda Jones-Barnes, and Miguel Quinones.
This land has been skirmished over for at least a decade. Developers proposed condos and neighbors, especially on the eastern side of the avenue, fought back over obstructed views, inappropriate massing of the buildings, and a density that could overwhelm with new cars an area with already many driveway-less homes.
The site is in the Quinnipiac River Historic District. All plans therefore must also past muster with the Historic District Commission (HDC).
The latest developer to back out is the not-for-profit Continuum of Care. It has withdrawn its application to build a condo complex of one and two bedroom apartments for the disabled adults in its care. Click here for a story on neighbor response to that proposal as it came before the HDC in the fall.
Continuum Executive Director Patti Walker said her organization found out in late November that the agency had not won the Housing and Urban Development 811 Award. That program funds housing for people with disabilities.
Walker said her organization had been counting on the grant as the main source of revenue for the development.
Continuum, a $30 million, 500-employee organization, had won two previous such awards. This time the pool was larger.
Neighborhood opposition to the plan was also in evidence.
“In the meantime, [Livable City Initiative Executive Director] Erik Johnson said if we wanted to get rid [of the property], [the city] had some wonderful uses. So we decided to have the city have a crack at developing the property.”
Walker called it a good outcome.
A memorandum of understanding was signed. Johnson approached Q River activist Chris Ozyck to arrange a meeting with neighbors.
That informal, getting-to-know meetingy occurred Wednesday night. A dozen members of the Quinnipiac River Community Group gathered to hear Johnson’s pitch around the dining room table at Ozyck’s late Victorian house on the avenue not 25 yards from the property in question.
The property looking south.
“For the record, there is no plan. This is a conversation,” Johnson said.
LCI has generally worked in poorer neighborhoods of the city. Under Johnson that appears to be expanding.
He said one of the mayor’s priorities is to continue to improve neighborhoods, diverse neighborhoods. That includes neighborhoods that, like the Q Avenue area under discussion, are “destination” neighborhoods.
“We know there’s a demand for workforce housing in diverse neighborhoods where people choose to live. That commitment extends to those [like Q River] that traditionally have not gotten public investment from the city,” Johnson said.
He broadly defined such neighborhoods as places where a house doesn’t cost a million bucks, but not $60,000 either.
Johnson described Wednesday night’s kitchen table talk as part of a continuing conversation of the kind he is involved in in Trowbridge Square about how to build such housing and how to mediate the concerns of preservationists with the requirements of young working and expanding families who might prefer new construction.
In effect, he said: Tell me what you want, and what your concerns are. Then let’s see if what’s feasible.
Eleanor and Ray Willis live across from the property.
Eleanor and Ray Willis live directly across from the property. They cited parking as a serious concern. A development of 20 to 25 units would mean 50 new cars.
Jon Pauzano, who also lives nearby, said, “It’s so steep and with the tides, I don’t see how it can be developed [at all].”
Willis said the last thing the area needs is a developer who begins work and then abandons the project. She and her husband have seen too much of this already, she said.
Johnson listened patiently.
“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,” he replied. “I don’t believe in over-investment. If the river gets higher and higher, if it’s in a flood plain, could we get insurance? I’m hearing concern about additional density. The waters are coming. I get the concerns.”
Johnson repeated for the second of many times: “There isn’t a plan and maybe there won’t be.”
Other suggestions included a maritime, camp, or park use. Johnson said park use was unlikely given current conditions. A decade ago Ozyck said his first foray to transform the land into the park met with a “no” from the city. He was told development has to have an economic component.
Chris Ozyck called working with the city and with Johnson was “the best horse.”
The group concurred with Johnson’s ballpark goal of building 20 to 24 units of housing selling for between $170,000 and $215,000 each.
Ozyck urged Johnson to consider not condos but individual houses, of the kind that he pointed out on a 1909 map. They could would then face houses across the avenue and knit the area together. Access to the water along Aner and Oxford Streets, with an alley running along the water for kids to play. The cars could go in garages behind the individual houses.
What about the historic look of the new construction? Johnson, who in the past has been at loggerheads with the Urban Design League and other preservationists about his suggested demolitions of old houses in Trowbridge Square, said: “We need to agree to define what is the historical context of the neighborhood. We can’t let historical preservation make it a no deal.”
He began to take notes. He reiterated that without trust, there’s no point in even beginning.
Neighbor and historic rehabber Garrett DiFazio said he’d like to see one of the buildings have some mixed use, maybe a store. “What’s important to me is neighborhood, and we don’t have one” for want of such amenities such as what a Nica’s does for East Rock, he said.
The property looking north.
Johnson took some more notes. Then he posed a rhetorical question: What would you think if what turns out to be financially feasible is modular homes? Historic homes that are pre-fabbed and dropped onto a foundation?
Both DiFazio and Chris Ozyck said they have no problem if the buildilngs look right. Ozyck said some interesting buildings are being done that way in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Johnson appeared rather surprised that the idea was taken seriously.
“I know it has to be historic. I want people in the neighborhood to have as much say as people in Hartford,” he said.
DiFazio and others urged Johnson to walk the site.
Jon Pauzano said, “Throw on some boots and go down there. Make sure it’s high tide.”
Johnson accepted that tour as step one. He said he will set up a tour of the site with City Engineer Dick Miller. “You can come,” he said to the group. Contact information was exchanged.
In the meanwhile Continuum of Care continues to be the owner of record of the property. Patti Walker said the group must pay $7,500 in taxes on the acreage. “We’re a not-for-profit but we pay taxes on it when it’s not used for disabled people’s housing.”
She said she hopes the city will take on the project. “I think it’s a good outcome for the city and us.”