Duncan Boarders Start Getting Help Finding New Homes; Buyer Confirms Deal

The housing authority’s relocation team Monday began meeting with 45 boarders at the Duncan Hotel as the 123-year-old landmark readies a transition to an upscale university-themed establishment.

Longtime boarders like Elaine Sands, meanwhile, began packing — and wondering if they can still find a downtown room for $200 a week or less.

“I’m going to miss it,” Sands said.

The boarders of the 92-room part-hotel, part-single-room-occupancy (SRO) boarding house at 1151 Chapel St. learned at a meeting last week that they have until Nov. 1 to vacate the premises so that a new owner can transform the building into an upscale ​“boutique hotel” like the Study at Yale next door.

The soon-to-be owner has hired Glendower Group — a development and management non-profit affiliate of the Housing Authority of New Haven — to help the boarders find new apartments. They scheduled one-on-one assessment meetings with the boarders beginning Monday morning and continuing through the week. (The Glendower Group has also been helping tenants of another low-income spot in the city being vacated, the 301-unit Church Street South, find new apartments.)

The soon-to-be-owner is a division of Chicago-based AJ Capital Partners called Graduate Hotels. Graduate Hotels President Tim Franzen confirmed in a conversation Monday with the Independent that his company has a contract to purchase the building. He said he can’t discuss details of the deal until it closes. But he said his division ​“puts together hotels that are unique in character tailored to individual markets anchored by universities.” It has built such hotels in college towns like Ann Arbor, Madison (Wisconsin), and Berkeley.

Glendower has its work cut out for it given the desire of boarders like Sands to remain living in a rapidly upscaling downtown, where relatively new developments like 360 State St. and the Novella, and others under construction, are easily filling apartments charging thousands of dollars a month. Meanwhile, SROs have disappeared.

Mayor Toni Harp Monday said her administration is committed to making sure that renters like those at the Duncan continue to be able to find homes downtown.

“One of our challenges is to make sure that can happen” as New Haven prospers, she said on her weekly appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday” program. ​“If you don’t, you’re [creating] ghettos and undermining community.” She said the Ninth Square development proves that mixed-income housing can succeed downtown. She rejected the argument that lower-income renters shouldn’t be included in high-end real estate districts.

Boarders interviewed at the hotel Sunday said they pay between $170 and $240 a week for their single rooms, depending on the location within the building of the rooms and whether they have a bathroom. (Many rooms don’t; each floor has common loos.)

Developers competed to land a deal to buy the Duncan from a partnership headed by Stirling Shapiro, who, along with relatives inherited the hotel from the estate of Harold Shapiro, who died in 1987. Juan Salas, a developer whose company owns the extended-stay New Haven Village Suites on Long Wharf, was a finalist in negotiations to buy the hotel before losing out to AJ Capital.

AJ Capital in turn hired Glendower to work with tenants on finding new homes, according to Glendower Vice-President Shenae Draughn. She said AJ Capital is paying the group around $50,000 to assess renters’ finances and needs and then help them find apartments. She said Monday that the renters will be guided to private-sector apartments, not public-housing developments of Section 8 subsidies, which have long waiting lists.

Salas-Romer said several boutique developers contacted him seeking to partner on converting the hotel, given the tight market for high-end rooms. ​“I talked to the owner about a few weeks ago. He told me that they’re under contract” to the Chicago company, Salas-Romer said. ​“If it bounds back to us, great. We will pursue it.”

City Economic Developmoent Administrator Nemerson said the Harp administration stressed in discussions with potential buyers the need to help current tenants relocate. ​“They’re taking it very seriously. One of the things that we’ve said is we’d really like them to find places within walking distance. A lot of people there work downtown. This is one of our challenges. No city can hide from the fact that people in a boutique hotel are going to be the ones who pay for expensive restaurant meals and will be buying the art. At the same time, you want people working in the art galleries and the restaurants. We have to make sure we have a mix. That’s what it means to be a successful city.”

The question becomes: Who gets to live amid that success?

Daggett Refugee

“I thought it was going to happen for a while. I’m kind of surprised it took so long,” local musician and illustrator Kevin Sanchez Walsh said of the sale. Walsh first lived at the Duncan decades ago. More recently Walsh lived in the Daggett Street artist studio/lofts in the Hill until the city closed them down for safety reasons in May of 2017, leading him to return to the Duncan. (Daggett Street’s owner has upscaling plans, too.)

Boarders said they will miss the Duncan — because of its central location in a busy downtown, and because of what Tammie Harnett called the ​“family” feeling there. They praised the owners for hiring Glendower to help them find new places.

Harnett has had a special deal at the Duncan, paying about $200 a week for a room with a bathroom, because she also works there as a housekeeper. She landed at the Duncan when she moved to New Haven two years ago from North Carolina.

“Change is hard,” she said. ​“I’m a double whammy. I don’t have a place to live. And I won’t have a job.”

“I love it. I can afford it. I’m right here at my job. I’m safe,” she said of living at the Duncan.

Mike Stern, who’s 73, will also have trouble matching the deal he has at the Duncan.

Stern, a New Havener who reported for the New Haven Register from 1968 – 72, has lived at the hotel for the past 14 years. He also has his photography studio there. He has run the business, Studio Graphics, for 35 years. Now he has to find both a new home and a new studio.

Limited Options

Elaine Sanders, who’s 66, was trying to stay positive as she filled boxes in her fifth-floor apartment and prepared for her Monday morning assessment appointment with Glendower.

A retired Yale custodian, she pays $195 a week for her room, she said. She has lived at the Duncan for nine years. She is accustomed to the downtown location.

“I’m a senior citizen. I have a disability. I don’t have a car,” Sanders said. ​“I don’t depend on nobody. You go out the door, there’s the bus. Stop & Shop is right around the corner. Going to the doctor is right up the street for me. Two or three blocks down, there’s the movies.

John, a boarder in his 50s (he asked to have his last name kept private), moved to the Duncan from a Hamden apartment last November. Besides the convenience of living downtown without a car, he said (“I love walking”), he appreciates the Duncan’s thick walls. He’s sensitive to internal noise (though outside noise from Chapel Street doesn’t disturb him).

He contrasted the well-kept if worn Duncan to SROs in which he briefly stayed in New York, which were ​“seedy”; and to the more upscale Taft, where he lived in the 1990s. Unlike in the Duncan, people at the Taft didn’t generally get to know each other.

Jessica Jackson, who’s 68 and unemployed, said she has had a hard enough time meeting the $220 weekly bill at the Duncan. She said she can’t imagine where she’ll find a home next.

Nor can 61-year-old Dollette Harris, who was homeless before she came to the Duncan in April, she said. Her brother has been paying her bill at the Duncan. But she said she’s not worried because she has confidence in the relocation help she’ll receive.

Renters at the Duncan have spanned the economic spectrum. For instance, Benjamin Verdery, a world renowned musician, has stayed there for years while teaching guitar at the Yale School of Music.

In an email message, the New York-based Verdery called the Duncan his ​“home away from home” in New Haven.

​“The Duncan had tons of personality and a history. I shall miss it,” Verdery wrote.

“I was there on hot nights and bitterly cold nights. In rain storms and blizzards. It reminded me of my grandmother’s house in that some of the floors were not even, and I loved that! I loved that none of the furniture matched. And of course that the windows opened!

“Of course who could forget the elevator, the oldest in Connecticut! If I took it, I would always make small talk with the elevator man.

“And finally the lobby. I enjoyed looking at the photos of the actors that stayed there and The wonderful stairs going up to the front desk where Richard or Keith would greet me.”

Next Stop: The Towers?

Steve Bradley said he has has been living at the Duncan for the last year and a half, although he has spent longer and shorter stints there ever since college in the 1980s. A former reporter with the old daily Journal Courier newspaper, Bradley is currently writing a novel and teaching driver ed.

Bradley said he wasn’t able to attend the recent meeting with management and other long-term tenants because of work obligations. ​“I’m not worried,” Bradley said. ​“If I had my way, I’d like to move to University Towers.”

Joel Weinstein has stayed at the Duncan for the past month and a half after 30 years living at Madison Towers, where a conservator had been paying his rent. He made the move to Chapel Street after his conservator died; he’d walked by the Duncan for years, he said, never imagining he would one day live there. He attended last week’s meeting after learning of the change of ownership from a note left under room doors.

Weinstein, 73, was born in New Haven and proudly notes his membership in the Hillhouse High class of ​‘61. He said he’s been a writer all his adult life with a focus on current events.

He described the Duncan experience as ​“pretty nice” and expressed no alarm about an impending move, in no small part because he is going to have help finding new accommodations.

“We all have counselors to relocate us to new facilities,” he said. He said he hopes that by the end of 90 days he’ll have a new place, preferably back in the nearby Madison Towers.

A Graying Old Lady

The Duncan has remained a stubborn throwback to the old, old New Haven as the block around it, between York and Park streets, has been transformed several times over. From the remaking of the old Colony Inn into the $289-per-night boutique hotel the Study at Yale to the remaking of the old Jewish Community Center into Yale’s art school, the block that the Duncan and its residents have called home has seen an upscale makeover.

Meanwhile, the high-end housing market has exploded downtown, along with cultural offerings and expensive restaurants.

Now ​“there’s a shortage of hotel rooms” downtown, observed city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson. We know that the Study is sold out many times during the year. There’s definitely a need for more hotel rooms in all different price categories. That’s a very hot block now, between all the restaurants that are there and the retail that’s there, and all the arts community that’s coming for museums and events at the architecture school and the art school there. That’s one of the densest cultural blocks in New England. So it makes sense that someone would have an eye on that building.”

Nemerson said any new buyer will probably have to build under newer building codes (and want to) combine some of the current rooms that lack bathrooms.

The Duncan’s historic threadbare ambiance has continued to entice a certain brand of visitor; at least online the hotel is still charging $130 a night, although many customers have paid less. One 2010 Yale Daily News reviewer praised it as ​“shabby chic.” The New York Times more recently dubbed the hotel ​“a down-at-the-heels dowager.”

Here’s another tribute, written by a customer named Jim L in a 2014 review posted to the Trip Advisor website:

“The Duncan is like greying old lady. Once a magnificent hotel, now an aging property still with glimpses of its greatness. The hotel is located in the heart of New Haven close to theaters, restaurants and bars. Street parking as well as garage parking is nearby. The once grand hotel is in bad need of restoration. The neon sign outside now only reads ​‘can’ instead of ​‘Hotel Duncan.’ The rooms are very large but very basic. Double beds and basic furnishings. Heat is via old style radiators and there was plenty of it! So much windows had to be opened on a night where it was only 18 degrees. I noticed there is no A/C in this room so you should inquire if booking during the summer season. The room was clean but if your looking for modern amenities and fancy soaps & shampoos, this is not the place. The hallways are long and narrow with basic lighting. The floors creek as you walk down the hall. The room doors are 8’ tall and all wood and the room had 12’ ceilings. Very large and open. The furnishings are very worn as was the carpet. However the rates were most affordable. in the mid 80’s a night and in downtown New Haven that is definitely below the going market rate.

“The once grand lobby is a shadow of the greatness it use to be. Deep dark wood walls, black and white tile floors, worn leather couches. Yet there is charm in ​‘going back in time.’ Old pictures of the building and the city decorate the walls. Most notable is the hotel elevator and front desk key box. The elevator is the last surviving manual operated elevator in New England. It dates back well over 100 years. This means a staff person gets in the elevator with you and manually selects the floor and by holding a lever powers the elevator up to the appropriate floor. One has to admire this bit of history still being used today. Behind the front desk is an old style room key box board where room numbers are displayed over small boxes and keys for that room are located inside. Every hotel once had this system but this is the only one I even recall seeing in the past 20 years with modern key cards and security concerns.

“Overall I would say if you are a nostalgic buff and realize you’re not checking into a modern day hotel then you will enjoy stepping back in time to a once great hotel.

“Room Tip: The elevator stops working about 10 PM. So if you’re going to be out late realize you will have to walk …”