Raze? Preserve? Or Renew?

When a Boston not-for-profit this week suggested buying and perhaps preserving the troubled Church Street South apartment complex, critics from many corners called tearing it all down instead. It turns out that a third, hybrid option may make the most sense.

The future of the crumbling subsidized 301-unit complex across from the train station — aka ​“The Jungle” — has become a matter of urgent debate in recent months as officials scramble to find new homes for all the families there so they can flee hazardous living conditions. A consensus has emerged among the developer, many tenants, and city officials that the complex has deteriorated so badly that it must all come down, with a new development built in its place.

Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), a Boston-based not-for-profit affordable housing development organization, contacted the current owner, Northland Investment Corporation, this week seeking to purchase Church Street South. POAH told the Independent it would look at whether it might make sense to rebuild the whole complex rather than tear it down, though it would be open to either option. (Northland, meanwhile, said it’s not selling.)

Church Street South is a privately owned and managed project-based low-income housing development located on a superblock bounded by Union Avenue, Church Street South, South Orange Street, and South Frontage Road across from Union Station. Constructed in 1969, the housing project was designed between 1966 and 1968 by the world-renowned architecture firm MLTW/Moore-Turnbull, which was headed by the then-dean of Yale’s Architecture School, Charles Moore. Church Street South was plagued by problems throughout its planning and construction – indicative of the severe problems that emerged soon after the development’s completion, then worsened in the 1980s, and have finally come to a head recently.

The origin of Church Street South can be traced to New Haven’s urban redevelopment program of the 1950s and 1960s. In the wake of World War Two, America’s cities were in a state of decay – congested with traffic, losing population and jobs to suburbs, and filled with obsolete infrastructure of a declining industrial era. In response, Congress passed a National Housing Act in 1949, which provided federal funding to municipalities for slum clearance and redevelopment projects. In 1954, a Highway Act provided additional funds to State Departments of Transportation to use in constructing the Interstate Highway System through cities, towns, and countrysides.

In New Haven, Mayor Richard C. Lee’s Redevelopment Agency, headed by Edward Logue, coordinated with the Connecticut Department of Transportation to plan highway construction and urban redevelopment in the center of the city. With 1955’s Church Street Project, the Redevelopment Agency sought to demolish a large swath of the city center between the Green and Union Station. At the time, the area was populated with mixed-use commercial buildings, warehouses, whole sale markets, small homes, and a dense network of irregular streets. To replace this viable though declining area, city planners envisioned an indoor shopping mall on the Green, downtown parking garages, highway ramps, office buildings, a civic center, a police headquarters, and a new high school, medical buildings, and commercial park lining a new boulevard extending Church Street to Union Avenue.

All was eventually realized except for the commercial park, which hadn’t attracted the necessary investors to develop the site located amid the train station, Church Street South, the Oak Street Connector, and South Orange Street.

As a result of lacking interest in commercial development for the area and the need to include housing development as part of federal legislation, New Haven’s Church Street Project was amended in 1965 to replace the commercial park with housing and a school. Initially, German-born Modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was hired to design luxury housing, a school, and a new train station in a series of high-rise towers and low-rise buildings set in wide open green spaces and parking lots. By 1967, however, the school and train station program had been cut from the project and the arrangement with Mies fell apart. To revive the project, Charles Moore was brought in to design a more contextual mixed-income housing development.

The Concrete Jungle

Between 1966 and 1969 Moore’s firm produced 32 different site plans during the design process for the housing development, which included a 20-story 217-unit tower of rent-subsidized elderly housing to be managed privately, an 8‑story 93-unit tower of elderly public housing to be operated by the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH), and 400 units of low- and moderate-income family housing in 3- and 4‑story buildings to be funded through Section 122 and privately owned.

The final site plan called for a central pedestrian spine connecting Union Station to Tower One and Church Street South and lined by community and retail buildings around plazas with low-rise residential buildings enclosing green spaces.

Charles Moore originally wanted commercial space throughout the development to activate public spaces and provide access to goods and services for residents, but a miniscule budget and federal agency red tape at the time prevented adequate retail space from being included in the project. Moore also wanted to design a narrow roadway leading from the train station across the Oak Street Connector through the complex, but the city’s then-head traffic engineer required all city streets to be a minimum of 36 feet, which precluded the architect’s favored design – resulting in the narrow street becoming a pedestrian-only path instead.

Moore also anticipated the construction of a city-planned Ring Road around downtown that would bring traffic through the complex along a widened Columbus Avenue – prompting Moore to propose a pedestrian bridge crossing over a roadway that never ended up being built.

The nearby Tower One and the Robert T. Wolfe high-rises were completed as planned by 1971, while the low-rise Church Street South complex had encountered a number of problems during construction.

First, the developer made a last-minute materials change that required buildings that had been designed for pre-cast concrete construction with brick masonry end walls and wooden railings to be constructed with concrete masonry units and metal railings instead.

Second, the last 99 units that were planned for moderate-income families were never constructed on the north end of the site around Tower Lane.

Lastly, when the contractor ran out of the money, the Federal Housing Administration refused to provide additional funding to build the communal green spaces of the complex, which required funding to be sought from programs intended for public parks.

In the end, Church Street South was built with a deficient amount of commercial space, no moderate-income units, flat roofs, exposed surface parking lots across from Union Station, no through streets, and monotonous construction materials

Fueled by its isolation, several design flaws, and a homogenous low-income population, Church Street South became home to one of New Haven’s most violent drug gangs of the 1980s and 1990s, the Jungle Boys. Though the gang was largely dismantled by a joint federal, state, and local law enforcement criminal investigation in 1992, the housing development has remained crime=plagued despite being located within a block of the New Haven Police Department headquarters. Publicly-accessible green spaces and plazas devoid of commercial storefronts offer prime real estate for drug dealing, while hidden corners, alley ways, and dead-end streets make the complex difficult to navigate and patrol.

Not only is Church Street South difficult to traverse. But as a result of its being surrounded by dangerous arterial roadways and highways, destinations outside of the complex are even more difficult to access.

To make matters worse, the housing development is located in one the most polluted areas of the region.

Exacerbating these intrinsic design flaws and entrenched socio-economic problems has been a lack of routine maintenance performed on the complex throughout its history. Since 1969, Church Street South has been operated by a series of private managers, from its first owners, the Greater New Haven Jaycees, to the most recent, Massachusetts-based Northland Investment Corporation, which acquired the complex in 2008. These private organizations have proven themselves to be no better at managing low-income housing projects than HANH was in the 1990s, an organization that until recently was rife with corruption allegations, audited by the federal government for siphoning off maintenance funds, and allowed its housing developments to decline rapidly.

In New Haven’s climate, which is characterized by intense freezing and thawing cycles and high humidity, Church Street South’s flat roofs have decayed quickly due to a lack of maintenance — leading to leaks, water damage, drainage issues, and mold growth. The complex’s mechanical system is also outdated, as evidenced by frequent problems with faulty furnaces, which have been known to leak carbon monoxide into apartments.

Problems in the housing project have been well-documented throughout its history from the 1970s until today. Architect Larry Speck photographed the complex soon after its construction, revealing deserted plazas and graffiti. The 1984 book Architect: The Life and Work of Charles W. Moore by arts critic David Littlejohn noted the empty communal spaces, broken lamps, and unbuilt northern end. Journalist William Finnegan wrote the 1998 book Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, which explores the violent, illegal drug trade throughout New Haven in the late 1980s, including in The Jungle. In his 2003 book City: Urbanism and Its End, Yale professor Douglas Rae described the complex as ​“concentrating the very poor in large numbers [to] serve a similar function in the local housing market” as segregated public housing managed by HANH. In recent years, local news media outlets have documented ongoing problems facing tenants at the complex. (See links to the New Haven Independent’s ongoing coverage at the bottom of this article.)

The Case For Renovation

Considering Church Street South’s numerous problems, one might initially scoff at the offer by Boston-based POAH to work towards renovating the existing housing complex. But further analysis of the housing development’s superb – though flawed — design reveals that this proposal is not that far-fetched.

Church Street South wasn’t designed by some inexperienced architecture firm. Nor was it planned in a repetitious, barracks-style like the low-income public housing projects of Elm Haven, Farnam Courts, and Quinnipiac Terrace of a generation earlier. At the time of its completion, Charles Moore’s design received a wide array of praise from numerous sources, including the professional architectural journal, ​“Progressive Architecture,” which gave the development a cover story in its May 1972 issue; Don Metz, architect and author, whose 1973 book on New Haven’s Modern architecture described the complex as ​“a cohesive urban environment”; and venerable New Haven architectural historian Elizabeth Mills Brown, who described Church Street South in her 1976 book New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design as ​“a civilized urban environment [with] much to study and enjoy.”

A closer look at the site and unit plans reveals why the complex received such high design praise.

Aside from the lot across from Union Station, all of the parking for the complex is hidden from the street in rear lots or tucked underneath buildings – making parking no more than a few steps from tenants’ doors. Large public green spaces and playgrounds are overlooked by housing units with private balconies, individual entryways, and private front or rear yards – a stark contrast to the ambiguous open spaces and communal hallways of the city’s soviet-style 1940s-era public housing projects.

Exciting and dynamic spaces are formed by controlled views towards the Knights of Columbus Tower, Tower One, Union Station, the Robert T. Wolfe Tower, and various green spaces. Pedestrian paths and courtyards lead to a small grocery, laundry facilities, management office, and community room in the center for the complex. The buildings have been designed in a Modern style but include traditional elements such as quoining, cornices, and two-over-two double-hung windows that recall the details of Cass Gilbert’s Union Station and Public Library. The units themselves are efficient and large — ranging from 1- to 5‑bedrooms in either an apartment flat or duplex-style. The complex is also close to both Downtown and Union Station.

While there is much to admire about the design and location of Church Street South Housing, these positive qualities are nevertheless overshadowed by the development’s sizable problems. As a result, even if we assume excellent management practices, any attempt by POAH to renovate the existing complex as is would likely result in the inevitable return of familiar problems due to Church Street South’s intrinsic design flaws.

One way to address these flaws would be to redevelop the entire 11.82-acre site with new mixed-income, mixed-use construction, which is precisely what the current owner of the complex, Northland, proposed to do in 2012 and what the city, HANH, and Northland are again proposing now.

A New Church Street South Redevelopment Project

Redeveloping Church Street South offers the opportunity to imagine an entirely different architectural and community character in a vital area of the city right by one of the busiest train stations in the U.S., which is serviced by the busiest passenger railroad service in the country, a burgeoning medical district around Amistad Park, and a revitalizing downtown.

A new public square or park near Union Station would greet travelers. A logical street pattern could orient visitors and help them to better navigate to their destinations. A comprehensive parking and transportation plan might alleviate parking problems at the train station. And new construction offers the opportunity for better mechanical systems, integration of incomes, and an inspiring architectural statement for our time.

Important aspects of any new design would include drawing inspiration from Cass Gilbert’s Beaux Arts Renaissance Revival-style Union Station of 1918 and careful study of the City’s Union Square master plan from the Hill-to-Downtown Community Plan, which called for new streets, the creation of a new Trowbridge Square-like public park on axis with the trail station, and 6‑story mid-rise mixed-use commercial office, retail, and residential buildings with hidden, structured parking. The public park could be created by exchanging existing city-owned land on the site for land that Northland owns.

Relocating most of the existing Church Street South tenants with portable Section 8 vouchers while providing some subsidized units as part of new mostly market rate housing would undoubtedly address much of social homogeneity that currently exists on the site. It would also give families the opportunity to move away from a highly polluted area. Furthermore, people would more easily be able to traverse the site and be more likely to spend time in nearby shops if a populated public space existed near the train station. Lastly, redevelopment might spur further growth in and around the medical district.

However, while redevelopment of the entire site seems like the best available option because of its numerous benefits, there are several potential problems that would arise from razing the existing complex and rebuilding entirely anew.

For starters, relocating all 288 current residents in a short amount of time is guaranteed to result in some existing tenants getting housed in many of the region’s numerous substandard slumlord-owned rental units that accept Section 8 vouchers. Not to mention the enormous amount of resources and time that goes into such a relocation endeavor – for reference, it took HANH over 15 years to find 183 scattered site housing units in non-impacted neighborhoods in the wake a 1995 court-ordered settlement resulting from the mismanagement of the Elm Haven high-rises.

Moreover, new development in the city has tended to be cheap podium-style buildings consisting of a concrete base for retail and parking with 4 or 5 stories of double-loaded residential corridors oriented around courtyards and constructed in wood light frame. These new apartments have also tended to be very small studio, 1- and 2‑bedroom units with limited private outdoor space aimed at single, young professionals and empty-nesters – not exactly the demographic of the existing low-income resident nor a typical household in the region.

Lastly, if Northland’s 2012 proposal is any indication of what to expect for a redeveloped Church Street South Housing, we will see 600 – 800 residential units, 20 to 30 percent of which would be set aside as affordable housing for households with less than 60 percent of the area median income of $ 57,700, and 200,000 to 400,000 square feet of office and retail space. Northland’s 2012 proposal includes minimal green space, large exposed parking facilities, bland plaza spaces, and an uninspired architectural language. Needless to say, redeveloping Church Street South poses a number of potential problems that may in fact be avoidable were a third option for the site available.

Renewing Church Street South

Without a doubt, there appears to be unanimous consensus from city officials, tenants, neighbors, and designers that Church Street South should not continue in its current state for much longer. The buildings are in disrepair, children are suffering from health issues related to mold, crime is rampant in the complex, the site is vastly underused, and the development is largely seen as an eyesore in the center of the city.

I do not believe, however, that the entire existing Church Street South complex needs to be demolished and rebuilt in order to address these problems.

Urban Redevelopment projects in the 1950s and 1960s showed the shaky moral ground on which large-scale demolition and rebuilding programs operate. Are we really prepared to demolish another large swath of the city, throwing away a piece of our shared heritage and built legacy, in the name of so-called progress? The buildings are less than 50 years old; how can we justify destroying all the embodied energy that went into constructing this complex? Both Tower One and the Robert T. Wolfe high-rises were built at the same time and have been successfully renovated in recent years.

As a significant architectural statement of early Post-Modernism built during urban renewal, Church Street South would most definitely be eligible for placement on the National and State Register of Historic Places in 2019, which would qualify the complex for significant state and federal tax credits for rehabilitation work.

Furthermore, I imagine that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would have an interest in preserving affordable housing units for low-income families in large apartments with private and communal outdoor space with convenient access to transit, parks, jobs, services, and cultural venues, and thus be willing to provide financial assistance for a renovation effort.

Both the housing project’s numerous intrinsic design flaws and the site’s need for more high-intensity land use can be addressed through a series of relatively easy and straight-forward initiatives.

Firstly, to provide a means for navigating through the site and constructing new, high-density development, several existing buildings on the site will need to be surgically demolished to make room for reconnected through streets, new development lots, and to remove hidden corners and alley ways.

Where an existing Tower One parking lot, and Church Street South playground, basketball court, and 3‑story apartment building are located along South Orange Street, either a 200-unit 6‑story mixed-use podium-style courtyard apartment building could be constructed or a 500-unit 360 State-style high-rise could be built provided that appropriate land swaps and parking accommodations are made with Tower One.

Next, Tower Lane can be extended as a 42-to-36-foot wide street from Church Street South to Union Avenue if the existing commercial and community spaces along the central plaza are demolished.

Additionally, Columbus Avenue can be reopened to traffic between the new Tower Lane and South Orange Street. West Water Street could also be extended to Tower Lane and South Orange Street, which will be reconnected across the former Oak Street Connector thanks to state funding.

Also vital to these new connections is the redesign of Church Street South, South Orange Street, and Union Avenue ase multimodal avenues for pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and drivers by adding dedicated left-hand turn lanes, planted medians, curb bump outs, bus-only lanes, narrow travel lanes, and protected bike lanes.

New multi-story commercial office buildings above retail and parking can be constructed along Union Avenue across from the train station on top of existing surface parking lots. Building new 5- and 6‑story mixed use residential buildings above retail along Tower Lane could include a cut-through to Jose Marti Court. A small plaza lined by retail frontage can be created across from the train station at Union Avenue and Tower Lane. Constructing new townhouses along Columbus Avenue similar to what has been built at Eastview Terrace can face the street and back up to the rear yards of existing apartment buildings. Additional townhouses can be built along Church Street South and the Little Green. Enclosing the existing courtyards with tasteful fencing and gates accessible only to residents would reduce the sale of drugs and other illegal activities within the complex perpetrated by outsiders.

The existing apartments could be renovated for a mix of market rate rentals and subsidized units that include new roof decks or pitched roofs in order to reduce drainage issues and compliment Church Street South’s Georgian architectural design features similar to Quinnipiac Terrace, Farnam Courts, and McConaughey Terrace.

A similar renovation effort was achieved with the nearly identical 4‑story low-income housing cooperative, Trade Union Plaza, which was constructed of concrete block in 1968, has parking located below apartments with private balconies around an interior green, and was recently turned into market rate rental housing by a private developer. The main different between Trade Union Plaza and Church Street South Housing being that the former isn’t designed nearly as well as the latter.

In summary, renewing the existing Church Street South complex with some renovation, surgical demolition, and new construction has the benefits of preserving an important work of architecture, reusing 50 years’ worth of embodied energy, capturing the demand for new growth in the area, maintaining large units for families near Downtown, enclosing interior green spaces, integrating different income groups, adding commercial space to the site, addressing the design flaws of the complex, and vastly improving the street network around and through the development. Additionally, many of the existing units can be maintained for low-income families, which could aid in the relocation process should the renovation work be done in phases.

This renewal proposal calls for the surgical demolition of around 30 existing housing units, which can be replaced with 30 new townhouse units. Additionally, 300 mid-rise or 100 mid-rise and 500 high-rise new market rate apartment units can be built on the existing site. Under this proposal, there is room for 600 – 900 new or renovated studio, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5‑bedroom apartments, including 120 – 270 subsidized units, 150,000 square feet of commercial retail and office space, and ample private and communal outdoor space.

There are a few downsides to this approach, which include only having a small public plaza near the train station, rather than the Trowbridge Square-sized park proposed by the city – though that park and Amistad Park are a short two-block walk from Church Street South and the existing apartment buildings include front and rear yards, communal green spaces, courtyards, private balconies, and could potentially have roof decks as well.

In this scheme, Tower Lane is narrow at only 36 feet, which doesn’t allow room for dedication cycling infrastructure, but Church Street South, South Orange Street, and Union Avenue could be retrofitted for such infrastructure. Some existing parking would be removed, but there would be opportunities for new parking to be constructed next to Union Station, or in a new residential building to offset that loss.

This proposal also won’t address the issue of pollution in the area, which may actually worsen in the immediate future as a diesel-powered high-speed train is proposed from New Haven to Hartford. But adequate plantings, green space, in-home air filters, and the benefits of being able to walk, use transit, and bike in the area would likely offset the negative impacts of pollution for children and adults.

Emerging from The Jungle

Absent from recent discussions about the future of Church Street South has been a call for renewing the existing complex through a combination of renovation, surgical demolition, and new construction. Both the suggestion by POAH to renovate the existing complex as is and Northland’s proposal to redevelop the entire site fail to grasp the unique design issues and successes of Charles Moore’s brilliant yet flawed housing complex.

I hope that this article will inspire a feasibility study into whether or not much of the existing complex is capable of being renovated. I suspect it is ​‚considering that Trade Union Plaza, a similar complex built in 1968 on Dwight Street, was recently converted from a low-income housing cooperative into market rate rental units by a private company.

Utilities and other services would also need to be studied in order to determine if new construction is possible on the site without demolishing much of the existing housing. Ultimately, I believe that I have presented a compelling argument to induce further study of the existing Church Street South Housing development.

In closing, I hope to hear from the Housing Authority of New Haven, Preservation of Affordable Housing, and Northland Investment Corporation about their thoughts on the renovation, renewal, or redevelopment of Church Street South. I also hope that this will spark the interest of the New Haven Preservation Trust and other groups that were vocal during the demolition of the New Haven Coliseum, the intentional neglect of the Phoenix Building at Chapel and Orange, and the 100-year old houses on Putnam Street that were eventually saved from demolition and rehabilitated thanks to efforts of local preservationists as they relate to Church Street South.

Jonathan Hopkins was born and raised in New Haven, where he also currently lives and works. He graduated from Roger Williams University in 2013, earning a Master’s Degree in architecture.

Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Church Street South Has A Suitor
• Northland Faces Class-Action Lawsuit On Church Street South
• First Attempt To Help Tenants Shuts Down
• Few Details For Left-Behind Tenants
• HUD: Help’s Here. Details To Follow
• Mixed Signals For Church Street South Families
• Church St. South Families Displaced A 2nd Time — For Yale Family Weekend
• Church Street South Getting Cleared Out
• 200 Apartments Identified For Church Street South Families
• Northland Asks Housing Authority For Help
• Welcome Home
• Shoddy Repairs Raise Alarm — & Northland Offer
• Northland Gets Default Order — & A New Offer
• HUD, Pike Step In
• Northland Ordered To Fix Another 17 Roofs
• Church Street South Evacuees Crammed In Hotel
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• Harp Blasts Northland, HUD
• Flooding Plagues Once-Condemned Apartment
• Church Street South Hit With 30 New Orders
• Complaints Mount Against Church Street South
• City Cracks Down On Church Street South, Again
• Complex Flunks Fed Inspection, Rakes In Fed $$
• Welcome Home — To Frozen Pipes
• City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK
• No One Called 911 | ​“Hero” Didn’t Hesitate
• ​“New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize