Hill neighbors had a message for consultants studying how to build atop parking lots and stitch their neighborhood and downtown back together: Don’t price us out of our home.
That message was delivered Monday night at Hill Central School on Dewitt Avenue in the Hill. Some 75 people gathered there to for a meeting on “Hill-to-Downtown” development.
It was one of a series of meetings being organized by the city and the Economic Development Corporation to help plan the future of an area that includes the medical district south of Rt. 34, the train station, Church Street South housing complex, a number of residential blocks, and lots of surface parking lots. (Click here for a previous story about that.)
Monday’s meeting featured a presentation by Goody Clancy, a consulting agency studying the area. Afterward, as neighbors raised concerns, a theme emerged: We want a range of housing options in the area, not just high-end condos and token Section 8 housing.
Goody Clancy’s Reese Fayde said she heard the call for “worker housing” loud and clear, and said she would make sure that features into plans moving forward.
Barbara Montalvo (at right in photo), who lives in the Hill with her mother, Alderwoman Dolores Colon (at left in photo), said it looks like the consultants are looking to build high-end housing. “I want middle of the road,” Montalvo told Fayde. She said she’s looking for housing for people like her, college graduates who aren’t wealthy or poor — places that would be “reasonable” to rent or buy.
Luz Colville spoke up with a concern about people getting “priced out” of the Hill: “Where are they going to go?”
Evelyn Rodriguez also worried aloud about what might happen if the rents rise to downtown New Haven levels. “I see my neighborhood gone under these circumstances,” she said.
Fayde (pictured) sought to reassure people that the plans for the area have not yet been written. She said that’s why the meetings are being held — so that neighbors can help shape the plans. It’s a “sausage making” process, she said.
The key will be finding a plan that lies at the intersection of neighborhood desires and the needs of the market, Fayde said. Developers will need reassurance of a return on their investments, she said. “Somebody’s going to have to write the checks. Let’s understand how they think.”
As the meeting wrapped up, Fayde spoke with Montalvo and Alderwoman Colon. Colon said she’d like to see the Hill develop as the Ninth Square has, and not like 360 State, which she said is not built for families but only for “high-end” tenants. (The tower includes some public-housing apartments.)
Asked if she was reassured by Fayde’s promise to consider “worker housing” as the plans move forward, Montalvo said, “Yes and no. A lot of it is all talk unless I see it.”
“I’ll settle for an apartment that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg and half of my liver,” she said. “Maybe just a kidney.”
Unlocking The Donut Hole
Goody Clancy representatives presented an overview of the area’s salient attributes: An “extraordinarily high” 15,700 jobs, 790 housing units including 429 senior housing units, and a whopping 6,500 parking spaces.
Nearly half the land in the study area is surface parking lots, said Goody Clancy’s David Spillane. “It’s hard to get a strong sense of place with so many parking lots.”
The area is now a “donut hole” because of all the parking lots, said Goody Clancy’s Sarah Woodworth (pictured). Planners hope to fill in a lot of lots with new buildings.
“Our job here is place-making to create an environment that can support” retail and other uses,” she said. To “unlock” building opportunity will require structured parking (i.e. garages and underground lots).
Instead of thinking only about how to rearrange surface lot parking into parking garages, “we need to think about transit,” said Anstress Farwell, head of the New Haven Urban Design League. Having lots of parking encourages people to come in and leave without really engaging with the neighborhood, she said.
Church Street South Panned
As people came in to Monday’s meeting, they were given two red and two yellow stickers to place on two maps of the area under study. The red dots went on one map, to indicate places that need improvement. The yellow dots went on another, indicating places that are assets. (See photo at the top of the story.)
At the end of the evening, the Church Street South housing complex was almost completely obscured by red dots, Trowbridge Square was filled with yellow dots.
“It’s so enclosed. It’s almost like a jail,” Leslie Radcliffe (pictured) said after putting a red sticker on Church Street South.
“Level it and build new homes,” she later told the consultants. “Not cinderblock city.”