Newman Architects
Lazarus plan design: Not likely to rise from the dead.
Despite a determined effort to sell off the vacant former Strong School in Fair Haven, the city is back where it started six years ago, unsure what to do with a deteriorating, century-old building.
The city’s most recent plan — to negotiate a sale to a Meriden developer who’d invest $16.7 million converting the vacant school into 32 micro-apartments — looks ready to be scrapped after a committee voted at City Hall Wednesday night to recommend rejecting it.
A selection committee, made up of three alders, three residents and two architects, criticized the proposed units as too small and too expensive for Fair Haven families and questioned whether developer could have pulled off the eight-figure project anyway. The downsides committee members repeated on Wednesday have been the same concerns dogging the proposal since Ted Lazarus, a Litchfield-based psychoanalyst, first pitched the idea and immediately ran into opposition a year ago.
Christopher Peak Photo
Nemerson at Wednesday night’s City Hall meeting.
The veto came under the so-called “Gan” decision process, which grew out of the 1982 sale of the old Roger Sherman School (to Rabbi Daniel Greer’s yeshiva). The process is supposed to guarantee open bidding and sale of city-owned surplus property to a qualified party, not a political insider.
For the vacant school, built in 1915, the selection committee reviewing proposals consisted of Alders Jose Crespo, Kenneth Reveiz and Rose Santana, as well as Community Management Team chair and business-owner David Steinhardt, activist Jane Coppock, and homeowner Anthony Pellegrino. There were also two architects, Craig Newick and Ken Boroson, but they didn’t show on Wednesday.
The thumbs-down vote sent a message to Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson that the Fair Haven community doesn’t think the proposed market-rate apartments would match the city’s stated goals for the surrounding area, like building affordable housing, adding jobs with ground-floor retail and offices on Grand Avenue, and opening venues for arts and culture.
Nemerson can choose to ignore the committee’s recommendation, but he signaled Wednesday night that he is willing to move on from Lazarus’s project and find an alternative that fits with the community’s vision for the site.
The one unknown: Nemerson said he still needs to discuss the idea with Mayor Toni Harp and convince her that it’s worth forgoing the project’s big windfall. If rejected, the city will miss out on $950,000 up front purchase price and building permit fees, plus an estimated $300,000 annually in property taxes, while staying on the hook for an estimated $80,000 annually to maintain the building.
Hours Of Downsides
Christopher Peak Photo
David Steinhardt: This isn’t for Fair Haven families.
That cash influx was one of the few upsides that the selection committee members could point to, as they went around the room twice Wednesday night, stating first the positives and then the negatives of going ahead with Lazarus’s proposal.
Steve Fontana, the city deputy economic development director who found Lazarus, noted the pros and cons on two big white poster sheets. As the downsides dragged on for two hours, he eventually stopped writing.
On the plus side, committee members said, the city would see big projected revenues, nearby stores and restaurants would seen an uptick in business from well-off tenants, and an historic brick building whose vacancy is blighting the neighborhood would be resurrected.
Weighing against the project was the high asking price for cramped apartments, Steinhardt said. “I don’t believe that the needs of the families in Fair Haven are being met,” he said. “For a mother with two children, the apartment is too small. I don’t even believe that a child could study for their homework in an apartment that small.”
“They’re not for families,” Nemerson agreed.
“But families need them,” Steinhardt responded.
The committee also expressed concers about whether Lazarus could actually get the finances together. Nemerson sought to assure the committee members that it didn’t matter much at this stage: Conditions could be worked out later, while the land disposition agreement is being negotiated, to require all the money to be in place before work could begin. And because investors would scrutinize every detail before they handed over millions, the project had a good chance of success if the money came together, he argued; otherwise, the property would revert back to the city.
As his team scopes out new projects, Nemerson said, he worries about how much time the city had left to find a buyer. “One breakthrough of the roof in a bad winter, and the building will have to be demolished,” he said.
Nemerson said he isn’t sure what else could fit in the space, given how expensive any renovation will be. Office space in the city generally goes for $12 a square foot, while market-rate micro-apartments could pull in as much as $40 a square foot downtown. “That’s why there’s so many office-to-residential conversions,” Nemerson said, like the Union Building on Elm and Church Streets. “Housing is overwhelmingly easier to finance.” He added that the city hasn’t seen an office building proposed for four years.
A collaborative spearheaded by neighbor Lee Cruz had earlier sought to turn Strong School into a community arts center with a 100-seat theater; six townhouse apartments renting for $2,350 a month; six smaller residential units; and office space for arts organizations and other not-for-profits. But, as with Lazarus, that proposal was unanimously shot down by the committee. That led to tensions between Chatham Square neighbors and the economic development team. But after the meeting on Wednesday, Cruz’s wife Sarah Miller and Nemerson reached a kind of detente. After duking it out for nearly an hour, they shook hands and agreed that they’ll try to work collaboratively in the next round.