Allan Appel Photo
The 4.5-acre site of the future development, at Tyler Street and Legion Avenue, where the coffee shop would be.
Builders want to add a small, six-seat coffee shop and bakery so residents of a ten-townhouse, 56-apartment community planned for long-vacant land at the far western end of the Route 34 Connector can grab a java before or after work.
That hoped-for change in plans for 16 Miller St. came before the Board of Zoning Appeals Tuesday night. This amenity would add a new use to the plan approved last year for the project. All new uses require BZA appearance and then a transfer for hearing before the City Plan Commission.
The original plan, okayed by the alders back in November, is controversial in part because it involved a generous 17-year tax abatement.
The plan calls for building 56 affordable rental apartments in 11 buildings and an office meeting center on a site at 16 Miller St., which is bound by Ella T. Grasso Boulevard to the west, North Frontage Road to the north, Tyler Street to the east, and Legion Avenue to the south.The project will fill in long-vacant land cleared during Urban Renewal for a highway that never got built.
For the next 17 years, the 16 Miller St. development’s tax assessment for the project would be $700 per unit, or a total of about $40,000 a year.
Architect Ken Boroson iproject engineer Michael Errickson at the hearing.
None of that came up directly Tuesday night when local architect Ken Boroson, developer Jamie Smarr from the New York City-based affordable housing developer National Housing Partnership (NHP) Foundation, and Anthony Dawson of West River Self Help Investment Plan (SHIP) appeared before the zoners to make the case for a special exception for the coffee shop.
The staff report backed up the contention that the to-be-developed 4.5‑acre townhouse community is relatively isolated on four and a half acres fronting parking lots, a section of Evergreen Cemetery, and Legion Avenue and Ella Grasso Boulevard.
Boroson called the coffee shop an amenity not available nearby and quite diminutive.
He described a 500 square-foot space, with six seats, a counter, two bathrooms, and only “one exit because it’s so small.”
SHIP President Dawson said the coffee shop/bakery will be staffed by residents of the development themselves.
The project’s site plan was approved last year. The addition of the coffee shop, Boroson argued, would have no traffic impact.
The only speaker from the public to follow the presenters saw the traffic differently. The dissenter called the traffic “terrible already,” with speeding cars on three sides of the parcel.
The presenters did not rebut.
NHP Senior Vice President Jamie Smarr said not only a future coffee shop but the entire townhouse development is still very much up in the air as the project is awaiting Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) funding.
Aid from that source in the form of bonding, along with the approved 17-year tax abatement, are critical to the financing.
“Otherwise, it remains a municipal empty lot,” said Smarr.
So the coffee is not quite percolating yet.
The matter was discharged to the City Plan Commission for review.
“We’ll see you next month,” said Nathaniel Hougrand, one of the city staffers monitoring Tuesday’s zoning meeting.
At Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting, the commissioners voted unanimously in support of the coffee shop.