This boarded-up ugly duckling along the Quinnipiac River just might become a swan as soon as July — although blight-weary neighbors have heard that song before. For 25 years.
The property is at 974 Quinnipiac Ave. For 25 years it has been an undeveloped appendage to the Hemingway Cove condos.
For the last two and half years developer Joseph Pryor has sought to buy that portion of the property and build it himself. But he too has run into obstacles, Meanwhile neighbors have pressed city officials to do something about the aproperty that lay fallow, the subject of several demolition orders and fair game for druggies and the elements.
Pryor said he’s finally on the verge of obtaining the property and building. Bob Henninger, who lives across the street, simply doesn’t believe it.
“They’ve been telling us that for 25 years,” Henninger said. “We’re tired of it. It’s an example of the failure of New Haven. This wouldn’t happen in Branford.”
Henninger (pictured with poodle Boo Boo at the top of the story) and the block watch of which he’s co-captain are not the only ones frustrated. The city’s building department is frustrated. Even the developer Pryor is frustrated; he’s waiting for title to the property to clear so he can get to work.
In the meantime, the eyesore that won’t go away was the subject of a recent flurry of complaints to SeeClickFix.
In November 2007 developer Joseph Pryor took over the unfinished phase 3 of the Hemingway Cove condo project and received site plan approval to build the 15 units as a new entity, Hemingway Bay. That approval is good for six years.
In all this time, however, he has yet to close. (Click here for another story on an interrupted condo development along the river.)
Pryor, of Riverside Realty of Cornwall. doesn’t blame the recession. “We have the money for the first three units,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “Without financing.”
However, after more than two years of planning his company don’t even yet own the property. The property consists of one building and several unfinished foundations from 15 units of adjacent Hemingway Cove, which was abandoned when the economy tanked in the mid 1980s.
The current Fair Haven Heights Alderman Alex Rhodeen is frustrated too. He
sympathized with those who’d like the place demolished. However, he landed in a more
temperate spot: “I believe Joe’s [Pryor’s] intentions are fine. The legal
entanglements are real and mind-numbing. If work can begin in July, that’s terrific,
but as every resident of the Heights [knows], I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Pryor said the villain in the story is not the recession but the mandates of Connecticut’s condominium laws.
His complaint: the law’s requirement that the mortgage holder of each of Hemingway Cove’s many condo owners must clear title, because each unit owner has an interest in the unfinished future common areas of the future Hemingway Bay.
Henninger dismissed that explanation as “bullshit.” He said previous lawyers and developers before Pryor have said the same thing.
Pryor said, however, that his team is making legal progress. He said he expects a closing at the beginning of 2010, work to begin in the spring, and perhaps a finished model unit by July.
However, only then, after the first unit is available, would his team test the waters for the financing to allow them to finish. How that will turn out is anybody’s guess. Still, he said, “Everyone should know that we’re very hopeful it’s going to succeed.”
Even though they don’t own it yet, Pryor’s team put on a new roof last summer. They’ve secured it against entry as well.
Told neighbors had complained en masse, city building department chief Andy Rizzo personally inspected the building front and back on Tuesday. He said the front steps are a little iffy, but that front and back the building are secure. He said the grass was cut; he found some scattered trash.
“As long as they keep it secure and exterior looking good, I can’t see knocking it down,” Rizzo said. “We’re as frustrated as they [the neighbors] are.”
“Twenty-five years is too long to wait,” said Henninger. “Is he [Pryor] going to be able to get approval from every mortgage company when there are foreclosures in play? Nobody wants to be practical. We’re tired of it. Almost everyone who’s lived here in Fair Haven [is tired of it]. If he could afford to put a roof on it, he could have put windows on it and painted it.”
Henninger said it’s time for someone really to speak up for the area, where the overdevelopment of condos has resulted in a huge density of inhabitants, a perilous sidewalk along Quinnipiac Avenue, and no park space.
“It’s still wrecking our neighborhood. I don’t believe it’s going to happen. The last three aldermen were told it’s going to get done, and it’s the same story.”
“In the 1970s the city gave permits out like crazy. Now it’s time to give back,” said Henninger.
He said he’d like to see the building torn down and the site made into a local park for neighbors and dog walkers. “I would like this property to be restored to a park where everyone on the river could enjoy. The people in the neighborhood need some lawyers to protect us from this being here for another 25 years.”
If Pryor’s plans come to pass, Henninger will not get a park but only public access from the avenue to a walkway along the river. That requirement was part of the November 2007 site plan approved by the city.
The units will also look very much like Hemingway Cove’s. If they are ever built.
"He said he’d like to see the building torn down and the site made into a local park for neighbors and dog walkers. “I would like this property to be restored to a park where everyone on the river could enjoy."
Yes.