Paul Bass Photo
Fred Tucker: Who gets the jobs?
Over 100 apartments, storefronts, and offices would sprout atop surface parking lots and inside an abandoned old school under a plan revealed to the public Wednesday night.
The $100 – 150 million plan would revive a portion of a newly dubbed stretch of New Haven called “Hill-to-Downtown” linking the train station and Church Street South through an Urban Renewal-devastated stretch of the Hill through to the growing medical district around Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Stamford developer Randy Salvatore (pictured), who’s completing a 136-apartment complex called the Novella at the corner of Chapel and Howe streets, is looking to take on the project.
He and a partner, New Haven developer Cliff Winkel (pictured), are negotiating with the city to build on five pieces of property stretching across four blocks that have been slated for development for 26 years. They would construct at least 100 apartments along Gold Street above ground-floor stores (the standard new-urbanist “mixed-use” formula) …
… rehabilitate the Prince School Annex (pictured) into up to 40 apartments while tearing down the the Welch Annex a lock away as part of an extended plan for 80,000 square feet of commercial offices and bioscience facilities; and construct commercial offices, biomedical facilities, plus some “structured parking,” on a surface lot in the shadow of the Tower One/Tower East elderly housing complex.
Salvatore and officials from city government and the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) described those plans to dozens of neighbors gathered Wednesday evening at the Wilson Branch Library on Washington Avenue. The attendees have participated in ongoing efforts to refine a plan for that larger “Hill-to-Downtown” area. (Click here, here and here for some previous stories about that plan.)
They emphasized that they haven’t filled in the details of the project. Rather, they came up with a general idea — including zoning and LDA changes they’d need to make it work — so they could get feedback from neighbors.
“I want to find out what the community wants,” Salvatore said before the meeting. “That’s what tonight’s about.”
Why build in the Hill?
“The more time I’ve spent in New Haven — it’s a great city,” Salvatore said. “[This site] is walkable to the train station. It’s just an exciting time in the city.”
26 Years Later
Affected properties, with suggested uses, highlighted.
The city has tried to spur building on these properties since 1989, when it “negotiated” a massive election-year tax giveaway to a developer named John Schnip and a series of politically-connected insiders to create a $360 million project called “Downtown South/Hill North/Washington Center.“The city entered into a Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) to give Schnip the land so he could build on it. Downtown South never materialized.
A partnership called AMA CT Funding assumed the rights to develop the land from Schnip. But for years efforts to build languished.
Then one of AMA’s principals, Winkel, went looking for a developer to revive the project. He settled on Salvatore. They negotiated a new version of the LDA with the city. The developers agreed to pay fair market value for the property, rather than the $1 in the original agreement. City Economic Development Administrator estimated that total value at $2 million; he said that might not be the final purchase price, because the city might lower the price in return for the developers meeting public requests. He estimated that the developers would invest $30-$40 million in each of four stages of the project.
In negotiations, the developers agreed not to seek government tax breaks or other assistance. They also agreed that the land would remain taxable for 30 years, even if it were sold to a not-for-profit organization. The city agreed to abandon a DeStefano administration plan to reconfigure Lafayette Street, which Nemerson said would have cost $85 million and delayed development for years at a time when the market’s hot.
The next steps: Seek Board of Alders approval for modifying the original LDA (which doesn’t expire until 2025) to allow for this mix of uses; and for changing the area from a BA to a BD3 zone, which would allow for more of a retail-housing-office-medical mix and for denser building. The height of buildings would be limited to 70 feet on the parcels closer to the heart of the Hill, while the developer could build higher on the portions closer to downtown, “parcels directly abutting Lafayette Street, South Frontage Road or directly abutting Church Street South between Columbus Avenue and South Frontage Road.”
“We Don’t Need Any More Yale”
Neighbors peppered officials with questions about the project.
Fred Tucker (pictured above) of Liberty Street questioned whether New Haveners and blacks and Latinos would get many of the promised new jobs. He cited promises made about local hiring for the construction of Gateway Community College’s new downtown campus.
“The minorities get four-month jobs. Then they’re out of work,” Tucker said. They “lug trash” rather than receive “skilled jobs.”
Nemerson responded that he agrees that blacks and Latinos tend to be concentrated in lower-paying laborer positions and not, say, electricians or plumbers on construction projects. He said government needs to ensure the developers not only meet overall hiring benchmarks for projects but spread those jobs through all skill categories. He said the city’s working to get more people into apprencticeship programs for those better jobs.
He also noted that the state ran the Gateway project. By contrast the city oversaw local-hiring compliance for the construction of the new 13-story Alexion Pharmaceuticals tower at 100 College St., where “we’ve been hitting those numbers.” He said New Havenevers have accounted for 135,000 out of 540,000 work hours on that project.
“Keep the pressure on us,” Nemerson implored Tucker.
Helen Dawson argued that the lot next to Tower One/Tower East should include residential, not just medical, facilities. “We need housing more than we need bio labs,” she said.
“We also need jobs,” responded Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
“We don’t need any more Yale int he neighborhoods,” Dawson continued. “We need housing.”
“This isn’t Yale,” Neal-Sanjurjo said.
“I have no problem adding residential to that list [for the lot], especially if housing moves fast,” Salvatore told Dawson. “If we find there’s a huge demand for residential like you’re saying, we have no problem” building it.
Anstress Farwell of the Urban Design League said she’s concerned that the proposed parking structure will cater to drivers from outside the neighborhood at the expense of true “transit-oriented development” that would emphasize walkability and mass transit for neighbors; that the zone change would have unintendend consequences by spreading beyond the borders of the project area; that the developers would not include enough affordable housing.
EDC’s LaToya Cowan, who made the main presentation at the meeting, emphasized that the plans are speculative, that officials and the developers plan to modify them based on neighborhood input.
Cowan made a PowerPoint presentation detailing the proposal. Patty Newton-Foster (pictured) complained that neighbors like her didn’t receive written copies of that presentation. “When you come into the community and you want to present something, put it in writing” so people can review it later, she said. “How can you ask questions when you don’t have anything but slides? We deserve to have something to go back home [and review]. These words really mean nothing.”
Cowan promised to email a link to the presentation Thursday morning to neighbors who put their web addresses on the sign-up sheet. She also later emailed the presentation to the Independent; click here to read it.
While organizers did not bring printed copies of the presentation to the meeting, they did provide enough Abate’s pies to feed everyone. And then some.