Markeshia Ricks Photo
Boyarksy (at right below) failed to win approval — yet — for his mulching operation (above).
Allan Appel Photo
One frail 77-year-old neighbor said he hasn’t been able to open his windows in three years. Another, with asthma, said she loves her home on Blake Street but may be forced to leave.
Others pointed to the dust and noise amid high piles of mulch and logs on the sprawling and disorganized land of the Paradise Landscaping Company at 86 Fitch Street backing into Blake in a light industrial zone of Westville/Beaver Hills.
A landlord of an abutting 13-unit apartment building reported losing long-time tenants and finding it hard to attract new ones.
And local officials have called it a likely potential source of pollution to the nearby Wintergreen and Beaver Brook tributaries that endanger the resurgent health of the West River; a property-value lowering eyesore of the first order; an example of local government’s inability to respond with alacrity and sufficient enforcement muscle to persistent serious complaints, including cease and desist orders, over a period of two years.
In other words, as a passionately frustrated Westville Alder Richarad Furlow put it, Fitch Street has a “nightmare.”
These urgent complaints emerged at Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting, where Paradise’s owner Rus Boyarsky, and his lawyer and engineer were in attendance to seek a special permit to allow outdoor storage of his landscaping materials to grow his operation from an allowable 500 square feet to over 12,000. He also sought inland wetland and coastal site plan approvals, because the property is near to the rivers and in a 100-year flood zone.
City Plan’s staff recommended denying his requests. The commissioners didn’t say yes Wednesday night. But after hearing horror stories, as well as a plea for mercy from Boyarsky, the commissioners gave him a chance to return with a revised plan before making a final decision.
Allan Appel Photo
Amid Boyarksy (at right below) failed to win approval — yet — for his mulching operation.
The piles of materials at Boyarsky’s operation have long exceeded the allowable limits and the noise, and other health problems have garnered the company three cease-and-desist orders over the last two years, said Alder Furlow.
“One lady has to sleep with a mask on, and she’s talking to an attorney to sue the city because this is taking too long. It’s a nightmare. There’s no compliance. Three cease-and-desist orders and you [Boyarsky] file an appeal [to continue doing what you are doing].
“What do I say to people who call me and we can’t get a business to care about the neighbors? It’s too much. I urge you not to approve.”
In his defense Boyarsky, whose family came to New Haven from Russia in the 1970s, said: “I’m not there to make anyone’s life miserable.”
He said that before he bought his business, it also housed a landscaping operation.
“I used to drive by when I was in junior high. This was my dream. I’ve never disrupted the ground.
“I started with a pick-up truck and a lawnmower. I’ve never seen wood chips flying into the river. DEEP [the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection] was there and said as long as the wood chips weren’t there too long and moving, it was OK. … I will put up an eight-foot fence and greenery.”
Boyarsky’s apologia, which included explaining that his dream business was financed by a mortgage on his house and that his margins are very thin, did not carry the day.
Referencing a fistful of pictures of disorganized Dumpsters, non-working vehicles, and other materials in the City Plan staff report, Commissioner Maricel Ramos-Vacarel elicited the range of operations Boyarksy condusts on the propertyd— landscaping, cutting logs for firewood, processing mulch, dumpster rental, and snow plowing among others.
Commissioners Radcliffe (left) and Audrey Tyson.
Commissioner Leslie Radcliffe complimented Boyarsky on being a “mom and pop” business of the kind we like in New Haven, but suggested that Boyarsky had bitten off “more than you can chew.”
CPC Chair Ed Mattison went further: “I think you have a credibility problem whether you can make this [required changes] happen. While we work this out you can’t continue to do what you’re doing.”
Radcliffe: “My thought: Scale down, come into compliance, cover the piles, cut back on the activities not related to your business.”
City Plan Commissioner [and Westville Alder] Adam Marchand: “I’m incredibly concerned with this business being near the brooks. It disturbs me people living near are getting sick. I don’t see a rationale now to approve what you’re applying for. I’d vote no, no, no. You wanted to hear the flavor of the committee.”
Boyarsky asked the commissioners to advise him as to what “scale” of his business would be acceptable.
Mattison said he wasn’t comfortable giving such advice. He called it the applicant’s responsibility to respond based on the staff report and what had just transpired. “And your plans should have a time line.”
Until the very end of the more than one-hour passionate discussion, it appeared the commissioners were poised to accept the staff report to deny Boyarsky the special permit and approval of the coastal and inland wetland site plans, in no small part because City Plan staffers were at pains to point out how arduous working with the applicant has been and how incomplete the application remained.
In the end, however, the commissioners offered a lifeline of two more weeks, during which a re-thought scale and plans are to be submitted that must include a long list of possible conditions for approval itemized in the report.
These include but are not limited to: no open pit burning; keeping the site tidy; no mulch grinding; a written daily dust control maintenance plan; registering all vehicles on site and repairing none of them there because it’s in a flood plain; and no industrial operation allowed in the portion of the site that is zoned residential.
Technically, the commissioners voted unanimously to keep the hearing open and tabled all three approval requests until the next regular CPC meeting in April.