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Schiavone: Neighborhoods can take control.
A developer who revived downtown New Haven sparked a ruckus with his neighbors when he suggested reviving other parts of town with the help of eminent domain.
The exchange took place Tuesday night at the Dight Community Management Team meeting at Amistad School on Edgewood Avenue.
Developer Joel Schiavone, who in the 1980s turned a largely abandoned rundown stretch of downtown into the still-thriving Shubert/College Street district, appeared at the meeting. He has moved into the neighborhood and started promoting ideas for how to improve it. He has also become a member of New Haven’s Redevelopment Authority, which in the 1960s approved the mass demolition of swaths of New Haven in part with the help of eminent domain, the process by which government takes property away from owners in the name of clearing “blight” and handed control to developers. The legacy of that era has made many New Haveners wary of eminent domain to this day.
On the other hand, people in Dwight have complained for years about slumlords who control dozens or more properties in the area, including some developers who live out of town.
Schiavone (whose own new urbanist developments undid some of the mistakes of that 1960s urban renewal era) asked his neighbors’ support for the idea of reviving the use of eminent domain by the authority, but with the aim of redevelop properties which are causing “long-term, lingering problems” for the neighborhood.
“We’re here to help you,” Schiavone said. “This has nothing to do with us. We have no operating budget, no staff and we have no support system that I know of. We don’t have anything except we are going to offer you the opportunity to use eminent domain in your neighborhood if you want it.”
Spell spoke up for the rights of individual property owners.
“As soon as you say the words ‘eminent domain,’ it raises the hackles on the back of my neck,” said West River activist Stacy Spell, who grew up in a stretch of the neighborhood that was destroyed by urban renewal bulldozers. “Help me out here.”
Schiavone explained: Even though outside developers may swoop in, only the neighborhood as a whole can enable those developers to take over a property.
They do so by participating in the process of approving redevelopment plans which guide city officials in making development decisions. All of New Haven’s existing plans have expired, Schiavone explained per a handout he provided at the meeting.
Schiavone and the agency have established that the place to start is a new, 10-year plan for the Chapel/Dwight area of town (which includes the Chapel West District and West River). “This neighborhood is the most organized and ready to proceed,” his handout argued.
While plans must be ultimately approved by the redevelopment agency, the City Plan Commission and the Board of Alders, the agency is seeking the participation of a number of community organizations, including the Dwight management team, the Chapel West Special Services District and the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, to put a new plan forward.
The steps by which a neighborhood — like Dwight — could push the city to exercise its powers of eminent domain are as follows, Schiavone said: “You decide that you have a problem that can only be solved by taking the building away from the landlord. You go out and find a developer, or a buyer, or somebody who can pay for it. You work out an arrangement, take that arrangement to the Board of Alders, take it to everybody you need, and the last thing you do is come to the agency and say, ‘We’ve got approval. We would like your authority to take building.’ It’ll take us about five minutes to do it, and we don’t have a lot to do with it.”
Residents at the meeting worried aloud: Would there be safeguards so that out-of-town developers wouldn’t take advantage of the community?
“Well, you’re the safeguard,” Schiavone said.
After much back and forth, Florita Gillespie, chair of the Dwight community management team, finally called the conversation to order — adding that it will continue at next month’s meeting, where Chapel West Special Services District business manager Brian McGrath is to follow up on addressing residents’ concerns.
“Think about it, and we will be moving out,” Gillespie said.
Click on or download the above sound file to hear Schiavone discuss ideas for redevelopiing Dwight as well as downtown, in a previous interview on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.