Brian Slattery Photo
Demolition at Church Street South.
The city is making a second effort to secure $30 million in federal money to rebuild the crumbling Church Street South project — this time to redevelop two other nearby locations as well.
The Board of Alders Community Development Committee Tuesday night voted to approve a city application for the $30 million grant, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grant. The committee also added the request to the Board of Alders next meeting agenda as an item for unanimous consent, which fast-tracks it out of committee so that it can be voted on in time to make a Nov. 17 deadline.
The city competed for the grant last year and came up short. It’s looking to use the money in part to tear down the federally subsidized 301-unit Church Street South apartment complex across from Union Station — which will be torn down once the last 10 families are relocated — and rebuild it as a $405 million 1,000-unit mixed-use complex, with 300 of the apartments remaining “affordable.” The city is undertaking the project in conjunction with the complex’s Massachusetts-based owner, Northland Investment Corporation. (Read here about that first application.)
This time around the city has broadened the $30 million request. It is asking to use some of the money not just for Church Street South but to redevelop the Robert T. Wolfe public-housing high-rise next door at 49 Union St. and the shuttered Trowbridge Square Barbell club (aka the Hill Cooperative Youth Services), Livable City Initiative Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo told the committee of alders Wednesday night
“We are working really hard tighten up our application,” Neal Sanjurjo said.
Like the previous application, this one also calls for using the money to improve infrastructure, enhance existing homeownership programs, and provide job training and startup business opportunities for those who previously lived at Church Street South. The new version of Church Street South will include retail space, Neal-Sanjurjo said. In general, she said, the city’s training to help Hill residents prepare to compete for some 10,000 jobs coming to the region in the next decade. That means customized training for the construction of the new complex, the retail, offices and more.
“There are thousands of jobs out there,” she said. “We’d like people to get into more than entry-level or retail but [jobs] that they can actually have for a long time.”
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Neal-Sanjurjo.
Neal-Sanjurjo said that the housing authority is still working closely with the last 10 families in the mold-infested, crumbling Church Street South to find them new homes.
Hill Alder Dolores Colon, who represents much of the area that will be impacted by the grant, said she supported the big goals that the city has for the grant. She pressed Neal-Sanjurjo to make sure that minority contractors have a shot at helping with any environmental cleanup and other jobs involved with the rebuild.
Colon, who works at Yale University, said she often sees trucks from out of town on campus construction jobs that could be performed by local contractors.
“There’s 18 percent unemployment in our neighborhood as compared to the 4 to 5 percent in the rest of the country,” Colon said. “Our people are hurting because they don’t have jobs. If we could get them to learn and get some skills where they can have careers— lifetime earning jobs — that would be what we want to do for our people.”