Neighbors like Norma Parks (pictured) say: The welcome mat’s out.
Parks was sitting, as she often does, on the sidewalk outside her Caribbean Corner Jamaican restaurant Thursday afternoon, eating red snapper. She was told that a New York developer is looking to buy the vacant lot right up the block at Winthrop and Whalley and build homes and stores there. She immediately had suggestions for what he should put on the lot.
“A mall. Different varieties of stores. You don’t have good clothes on Whalley,” Parks said. “And Taco Bell. I like that.”
Others along Whalley have more upscale visions for the lot, like a Starbuck’s. Like Norma Parks, the district’s active neighborhood groups have plenty of advice — and are at this point pleased — now that a Elmsford, N.Y.-based firm Westhab is seriously considering a development at a corner that has dragged down the avenue for years.
Robert Sanborn, Westhab’s vice-president for real estate development, has been meeting with Whalley organizers to discuss his plans.
He said in a phone conversation that he’d like to build “perhaps 20 to 30” units of housing on the block above “upscale” first-floor stores. At this point, his company is drawing up plans. It hasn’t purchased the property yet. It’s considering buying adjoining properties if the plans go forward.
Westhab has a local partner on the prospective Whalley project: ALSO/Cornerstone. That New Haven not-for-profit works with people with mental health and substance-abuse problems.
ALSO-Cornerstone’s executive director, Jerald Ross, said Friday that the plan under consideration would mix market-rate and “supportive housing.” The latter describes complexes — like this project for seniors nearby on Whalley — that offer round-the-clock on-site help for people to remain independent.
“There are lots of hoops to go through,” Ross said. “We’re seriously in discussions. We’re very far from being at any point where anything is firm.”
Westhab, too, is a not-for-profit company. It specializes in “workforce housing.” That’s for people starting out in jobs at salaries in the $35,000 range, Sanborn said: “dental hygienists, or a teacher, or a municipal employee, fire, police, etc. Individuals who would like to live near or not far from the workplace but been priced out.” Those are the people Sanborn said he envisions renting apartments on a rebuilt Whalley-Winthrop corner.
Some of Westhab’s projects in New York suburbs like Yonkers, Mt. Vernon and New Rochelle, have included subsidized, supportive housing for disabled veterans, the homeless, people recovering from addiction. The company has operated two homeless shelters. Sanborn said his Whalley Avenue project would not be a complex for the homeless.
“We’re currently doing an intensive evaluation of what we can build on the site. The ground floor must be retail,” Sanborn said. “We hope to attract businesses there that will continue the trend towards a more upscale retail environment.”
So don’t expect a Wendy’s, he said. ““We are not planning nor would we consider any drive-through or anything of that nature. We’re trying to pay attention to the efforts that have been undertaken by the Whalley Avenue Special Services District and the plan that they developed.”
Thinking Bigger
Sanborn was playing the tune he heard in his initial meetings with Special Services District head Sheila Masterson and Eliezer Greer, organizer of the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol.
Masterson’s group has been a driver of the “overlay,” a plan the neighborhood developed with the city for improving Whalley Avenue. That vision put some neighbors at odds with a gas-station owner looking to expand and to build a 2,500 square-foot convenience store.
The troubled corner of Winthrop and Whalley has been one of the obstacles to turning around the neighborhood.
“I was very excited that somebody was looking at that site to develp it,” Masterson said. “It’s been empty and vacant” for more than five years and was “derelict” before its abandoned buildings were demolished.
“I was thrilled that someone was coming to the table with something concrete… Mixed-use is the right way to go there. The neighborhood and business community will be looking very closely at the supports in place at the suppirtive housing if it ends up going that way.”
Eli Greer also gave Sanborn’s pitch a cautious initial thumbs-up.
He said he’s pleased the prospective buyer has a solid track record, so this project wouldn’t be a “trial run. He called Sanborn’s initial plans “well-thought out and extremely intelligent.”
Greer said he’d like to see any project take into consideration the other three troubled corners at the same intersection, and be part of a plan to improve more than just the one lot.
“This needs to be something that attracts people that changes the entire dimension of that Whalley-Winthrop area,” Greer said.