Hill Affordable Housing Deal Advances

City plans to sell two publicly-owned vacant lots on Columbus Avenue to a developer who has promised to build five market-rate and five affordable apartments won a key regulatory approval, and glowing praise from the commissioners who granted it.

The approval came at Tuesday night’s special meeting of the Livable City Initiative (LCI) Board of Directors on the second floor of City Hall, where commissioners voted unanimously in support of the city’s plan to sell the vacant parcels at 232 and 238 Columbus Ave. for $100,000 to the local developer Concrete Creations LLC. The deal’s proposed Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) now advances to the Board of Alders for a potential committee public hearing and final vote.

Just as he did at LCI’s Property Acquisition and Disposition (PAD) Committee last week, LCI Acquisition and Disposition Coordinator Evan Trachten
explained that the Fair Haven-based development company, run by Ralph Mauro, Vincent Mauro, and Philip Mauro, has agreed to build 10 new apartments on the currently vacant Hill land.

All of the units will be two-bedrooms, he said. Five will be rented at market rates, and the remaining five will be deed-restricted for 20 years for tenants earning 50 percent or less of the area median income (AMI). That means that a family of four earning $50,450 per year won’t have to pay more than 30 percent of their annual income on rent.

“They’re going to be row houses,” Trachten said. The only zoning relief that the city expects the Mauros will need for the project pertains not to density, but to the infringement that each exterior stairwell will likely have on frontyard setback.

“We’re going to get taxes out of this,” he said. ​“We’re going to get building permits. And we’re going to get affordable housing, that we desperately need.”

Trachten said that the city last sold this 14,000 square-foot combined lot to Sacred Heart Church years ago. When St. Martin De Porres purchased the church’s campus in 2017, he said, he took it upon himself to call the Archdiocese in Hartford and explain how they had failed the community by never shoveling snow, by never developing the lot, and by not following through on the terms of their LDA. The church then agreed to give the lot back to the city.

“You don’t get a 14,000 square-foot lot back in the Hill-to-Downtown zone every day,” he said. ​“That was a very big success.”

Within a year, the city released a Request for Proposal (RFP) for prospective buyers. In that RFP, he said, affordable housing and homeownership were listed as use priorities.

The city got at least three responses, he said, including from Concrete Creations, Columbus House, and NeighborWorks New Horizons. The city closed the RFP in February, he said, and, ​“after much deliberations, the city has chosen to go with Concrete Creations.” For two reasons: the developer’s relatively high offer price of $100,000, and the proposal’s inclusion of deed-restricted, public subsidy-free affordable housing.

“Ten families means possibly more cars,” said Hill Alder and board commissioner Dolores Colon. And the narrow streets in the Trowbridge Square neighborhood are difficult enough to navigate as it is. Will this project include off-street parking? she asked.

“It will have parking on site,” Trachten confirmed. The exact parking details will ultimately have to go through site plan approval at the City Plan Commission, he said. But the preliminary site plan submitted by the developers shows parking on site.

That’s what she had heard from the developers when they presented at meetings of both the Hill South and the Hill North Community Management Teams, Colon said. She just wanted to make sure that what the developer had said jibed with what city staff knew about the project.

“I think that this is a fantastic idea,” said commissioner Neil Currie. What about handicap-accessible units? Does the proposed LDA require any?

It does, LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo said. One ground-floor unit among the 10 must be handicap accessible, per the LDA.

“We’re very proud of this proposal,” Trachten said before the commissioners voted. ​“We think it’s a good thing for the city.”

“I’d be very proud to move this item,” Colon then said.