As neighbors grapple with a developer’s plan for major construction across Sylvan Avenue, Eunice Chambers wonders about the future of her block, where Yale-New Haven Hospital has slowly acquired plot after plot, leaving several vacant homes.
Chambers is among the neighbors who live near the soon-to-be-built cancer center at the hospital and a related development planned by Intercontinental Real Estate. They’ve watched the hospital’s affiliates gradually buy up land over the years by their own homes, and are concerned about what their neighborhood will end up looking like. Will a tough neighborhood become more stable? Or will affordable homes disappear?
Chambers owns a home at the corner of Vernon Street and Sylvan Avenue, on a block bordered by Howard and Davenport Avenues, a stethoscope’s throw from the Yale-New Haven Hospital campus. From her front porch, she’s been watching a path cleared for a major development by Intercontinental Real Estate that will complement Y-NHH’s new cancer center. Neighbors, who were taken by surprise after developers bought up properties piece by piece then asked for a zoning change to facilitate as-yet-undisclosed complex. Fearing “monstrous” buildings, neighbors have been fighting the zoning change.
On her own block, Chambers has watched the area change as hospital affiliates bought more and more property on her side of the Howard Avenue line. From 1979 to 2007, through affiliated companies headed by board members and upper management at Y-NHH, the hospital acquired seven of the nine lots on the Howard Avenue side, mostly for small medical practices; in 1999, it bought four lots on Davenport, creating valet parking for the Children’s Hospital.
In the late ’90s, the hospital, through affiliated companies, acquired five lots on Vernon Street, a small, porch-rich strip of modest townhouses. One of the lots is now a surface parking area. Two (including number 47, pictured) host construction staging and field offices related to the cancer center, according to Y-NHH spokesman Vin Petrini. The remaining two homes, acquired in early 2006, remain vacant.
Chambers just saw the last home (number 55, pictured below) get purchased in March of 2006. Her cousin moved out of number 51, relocating to a different part of town. Both remain vacant, leaving Chambers in one of the last three occupied homes on her side of Vernon Street.
Her tenant of a year and a half, Pepe Huaman, has welcomed the hospital’s presence. He enjoys having Yale-New Haven Hospital buildings close by: “Two blocks down, people are selling drugs,” Huaman said in Spanish, gesturing down Sylvan Avenue. When Y-NHH owns properties, he said, the area is kept safe.
Petrini called the number of vacant buildings on the block common. “If you pick any street in the Hill, you could probably find something similar.”
Chambers, however, has not welcomed the change.
“I hear rumors that they’re trying to take over,” said Chambers of the hospital, “I’m not happy about that.” She’s already gotten interest from land-speculators: Fliers popped up in her mailbox six months ago asking if she’d like to sell her home. She declined: “I’ve been here 27 years,” she said, leaning against her doorway after work one recent afternoon. “I raised my kids here, so I’m gonna put up a big fight” if anyone tries to buy the property.
Hill Alderwoman Jackie James (pictured), who lives with her family on nearby Sylvan Avenue, echoed Chambers’ concerns.
“They’re buying property to take over the community,” James said of the hospital. James said she isn’t “against development,” but she is against “the process” by which the hospital buys and develops land.
“It’s apparent that they have a master plan” for the Hill, including the Vernon-Sylvan- Davenport-Howard block, asserted James. “People feel like their homes are going to be taken.”
Reached by phone for a response, Y-NHH spokesman Petrini sought to assuage neighborhood fears. The hospital has “no specific plans” to develop the Vernon-Davenport-Sylvan-Howard block, he said. “There is no development on the table.” Most of the properties it owns are occupied by “long-standing” medical use or parking lots, he noted — the block contains town houses with clinical offices used by physicians, a urology center, and parking for medical facilities.
One of the properties — a pediatric dentistry center (pictured) that opened in 2004 — is a great benefit to the community, added Petrini: “I think anyone would be hard pressed to take issue with a facility that has provided more than a thousand local kids, who have little or no insurance, with access to dental health in New Haven.”
For evidence the hospital is helping improve the surrounding community, Petrini pointed to the other side of the street on Vernon, where the hospital is encouraging the creation of affordable housing stock. The hospital is donating three vacant homes to the Hill Development Corp, and contributing up to 20 percent of the costs of renovation and construction of those properties, said Petrini. HDC’s David Alvarado said the affordable-housing group will take ownership of 38, 46 and 56 Vernon St. and start construction in about 90 to 120 days. The rehab project is part of the community benefits agreement worked out between the hospital and neighborhood surrounding the Yale-New Haven Cancer Center, Petrini said.
To those like James who see the hospital’s slow acquisition of properties across the Howard Avenue line as “a major encroachment” on residential territory, Petrini responded in an e‑mail: “Y-NHH has done more to maintain the residential integrity of the Hill neighborhood than any other organization.”
“The hospital has made investments worth more than $1.5 million in affordable housing, emergency home repairs, funding to support community groups like the Boys and Girls Club, Casa Otonal, Hill Development Corporation and support for a wide arrange of initiatives such as affordable daycare options, youth services and community liaisons,” Petrini wrote.
The unoccupied eastern side of Vernon Street (including number 45, pictured, where the lot is used for construction staging for the cancer center) still gives neighbors pause, said Maurice Peters, a Hill neighborhood activist and member of CORD, a union-affiliated neighborhood advocacy group that wrangled with the hospital over that community benefits deal.
“Everyone’s worried ‘cause they see what happened on Congress Avenue,” where homes were cleared to make way for the sparkling new John C. Daniels School, said Peters. “People are concerned the hospital will acquire that [Vernon-Sylvan-Davenport-Howard] block, then turn it into medical zoning.”
“Who knows what big development is going to happen there?” posed Gwen Mills of Connecticut Center for a New Economy, a union-affiliated advocacy group. “Is that expansion process planned in collaboration with residents and the neighborhood?”
“The pressure for the hospital to expand is not going to stop,” said Mills. “It can be done piecemeal, or it can be done in collaboration with the residents as part of a shared and open comprehensive plan.”
Petrini called the comparison between the Intercontinental block and Chambers’ block “a stretch.” Whereas Intercontinental is moving ahead with a development, the hospital “has no plan at this point for any of those [vacant] properties” on Vernon, Petrini said. “The hospital has worked very cooperatively with the neighborhood for years.”