Neighbors Suggest Tweaks To Hill Plan

Narrow the zoning change. 

Guarantee a buffer of smaller buildings so as not to dwarf existing homes.

Add three and maybe four-bedroom apartments so refugee families from the Church Street South debacle can stay in the neighborhood.

And swap lingo like ​“30 percent of AMI” to language people can understand, such as: ​“about as high as St. Anthony’s Church.”

Those were some preliminary ideas that emerged Tuesday night from a meeting of Hill alders, management team representatives, city officials, and members of the public to discuss developer Randy Salvatore’s plan to build on a significant chunk of the Hill closest to downtown.

It was the second meeting of the Hill-to-Downtown Steering Committee. Salvatore and city officials are waiting on the committee’s formal recommendation to see if Salvatore’s plan — to build on an abandoned stretch of land leveled by mid-20th century urban renewal — can be salvaged.

The group was convened at the end of 2015 when the Board of Alders voted to delay approval of a development and land disposition agreement along with zoning changes needed for Salvatore’s plan pending guidance from the ​“neighborhood,” in the form of this committee.

Salvatore is looking to pay the city $1.25 million for two of ten pieces of property there (and then a to-be-determined ​“fair market value” worth millions more) in order to build 140 apartments, 7,000 square feet of stores, 120,000 square feet of research space, and 50,000 square feet of offices on 20 acres bounded by Church Street South, Amistad Street, Cedar Street, Congress Avenue, College Street, and South Frontage Road.

Salvatore has won neighborhood support for two other projects in town, a recently completed luxury apartment building at Chapel and Howe streets and a newly announced proposed renovation of the former C. Cowles factory on Water Street. He said he wants to proceed with the Hill project as well, but only with the blessing of neighbors.

A half-dozen neighbors attended a Dec. 1 aldermanic meeting to protest the development and land disposition agreement, or DLDA. It called for a first phase of the multi-year project —zoning changes and a land transfer to enable developer Salvatore to construct at least an initial 100 apartments along Gold Street above ground-floor public use/commercial space, and rehabilitate the Prince School Annex into as many as 40 apartments. City economic development officials urged that a good deal not be turned down; the alders decided the plan needed more community input before advancing.

So the ten-member Hill-to-Downtown Steering Committee of ten was convened — the four Hill alders, two representatives from the Hill management teams, two city officials, and two representatives from local institutions — to study and recommend changes if necessary in the proposal that the Board of Alders will ultimately vote on.

At the first organizational meeting they elected as their chairman former Board of Alders President Jorge Perez, who lives in the Hill and currently serves as state banking commissioner. He conducted Tuesday night’s meeting, the second session, like a seminar to help his colleagues better understand the proposal’s history, terms, and deficiencies. The goal: ultimately to make recommendations to the alders.

While he acknowledged certain time pressures, Perez said, speed will not be the enemy of thoughtfulness or clarity. He estimated the committee, meeting weekly, will be able to deliver recommendations to the board in about a month.

As Perez led the group through the DLDA, the rezoning proposals, and the community benefits agreement, he and others raised a number of objections.

“One of our concerns: we don’t want to zone the entire proposed area BD‑3,” a dense business zoning designation, he said. Then Perez asked the development officials present — Economic Development Corporation Project Manager LaToya Cowan, City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg, and the Livable City Initiative Director Serena Neal-Sanjuro — to explore zoning alternatives.

Perez also objected to the idea of having developer Salvatore fund the creation of a new community development corporation, as called for under a proposed community developments agreement.

“A terrible idea, a buffer between the community and the city. I’d like to see those dollars put into community development,” Perez said.

Hill Alder Dolores Colon shared Perez’s concern but cited the Greater Dwight Development Corporation as doing an effective job, perhaps because it grew out of the management teams, she said.

“I think we leave it to the management teams,” Perez said — arguing that neighborhood management teams, originally established under comunity policing in the 1990s, can serve an effective role of including the public in decision-making.

Next Perez called for scaling down the proposed buildings near the Hill’s existing one and two-level residential structures, and keep the envisioned taller structures closer to where the senior complex Tower One stands. He charged officials to bring up these matters with Salvatore, as he found no language in the current proposal as written that underlines this concern.

Then Perez, a banker and trained accountant, guided his colleagues to the ​“Purchase Price” section of the documents. There he noted that the proceeds from the sale of each of the parcels are to be divided into three equal portions: one third into the general fund, one third into an Economic Development Special fund to maintain streetscape improvements (which the developer is paying for); and the third portion into a new ​“downtown South-Hill North Special Fund.”

Perez argued that the special fund would become just another level of bureaucracy. ​“Let [the money] go to the Congress Avenue and Kimberly Square business districts” instead, he suggested.

What’s ​“Affordable”?

By far the most detailed and impassioned discussion focused on the DLDA’s proposal that 1- percent of the 140 or 150 proposed apartments in the first phase be ​“affordable.”

A discussion ensued on whether that’s enough and how ​“affordable” housing is priced and subsidized differently from ​“workforce” housing. And how are the alders, who will vote on these matters, to understand the lingo and what it means in real terms?

Clarity and transparency on such matters were Perez’s bywords as he moved the seminar forward.

“Tell us what 60 percent of Area Median Income [AMI] is,” one of the committee members asked Cowan. In short, make it real.

The U.S. Census-determined AMI in New Haven for a family of four is $37,428, she replied; 60 percent of that would be about $22,400 a year.

“That is very low,” said Perez. Since the rule of thumb is that people should pay at most a third of their income for rent, ​“affordable” rent for people at 60 percent of AMI would be about $675 a month, he calculated.

That means that a lot of city-initiated subsidies from the state entities like the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) or the feds must be found and applied for and in a timely fashion to make such rents viable for Salvatore, Perez noted.

Perez cautioned that in the first phase of Salvatore’s project, in part because of the tight schedule for application for such subsidies, he was not hopeful for more than 10 percent of the units being affordable.

Beyond that, however, Perez, who sits on the board of CHFA, said the project would be able to compete effectively for subsidies because of its location, the relationship of the proposed new housing to employment in the area, and proximity to a transportation hub. He urged city officials to keep pressing those themes with Salvatore.

A Church Street South Nirvana?

New Haven Legal Assistance Association Staff Attorney Amy Marx characterized the project as an especially felicitous opportunity to tackle another big problem in the Hill.

She was attending both as a citizen — the steering committee’s meetings are open to the public — and also as an advocate for more affordable units to be built in the Hill for some of the 288 families losing their homes at the decrepit Church Street South housing complex down the street. Marx represents many of those families as an attorney.

“The elephant in the room is Church Street South,” she averred.

“It’s coming down. That’s where $4 million [in HUD project-based subsidies] could come in. It’s floating around and if it’s not snatched quickly, it could go back to Washington,” she said. She said the city should urge Salvatore to make use of that pot of money to construct needed three- and four-bedroom apartments for the families leaving Church Street South.

She urged officials to raise the possibility of ​“affordable” three and four-bedroom apartments with Salvatore.

Neal-Sanjuro said such conversations have already begun.

“Let’s be honest,” Perez replied: Officials have had conversations about three-bedroom apartments, but not four-bedroom apartments, which are hard to find.

“Maybe Randy Salvatore is the right builder at the right time to talk to him about using” HUD project-based subsidies available to subsidize those larger apartments, Marx said. ​“It feels a bit like nirvana” of an opportunity.

Other issues discussed in the wide-ranging meeting included whether the commercial space conceived is sufficient enough to truly make the development mixed use; and how best to urge the developer to offer construction jobs through programs like New Haven Works.

Neal-Sanjuro said she is excited to use some of the sale proceeds to create a contractors’ bond program. Having insufficient money for bonding has long been a problem for small and minority contractors to participate in the city’s building boom.

Perez pronounced the meeting useful. He repeated he’d like to get a list of recommendations about the DLDA completed in about a month. ​“Ultimately it’s the Board of Aldermen who make the decisions,” he said.

The next meeting of the steering committee is Wednesday, Feb. 10, at City Hall.