Melissa Bailey Photo
As Shirley Banks and her family prepare to return home to Rockview next year, the city faces a challenge: How will this $33 million new version of the demolished housing projects be any less isolated than before?
The question arose Tuesday at a groundbreaking ceremony of the Rockview development at 295 Wilmot Rd. in West Rock. The ceremony celebrated the beginning of construction on $33 million first phase of Rockview, which will replace the 1950s Rockview that the city tore down in 2003. The construction is the next step of the $200 million West Rock Revitalization Project, which aims to replace Rockview and Brookside, two rundown housing complexes, with less dense, mixed-income developments.
Frames are already rising on Rockview Phase I, which encompasses 77 apartments. Families should be able to move in on Jan. 1, 2014, according to city housing authority chief Karen DuBois-Walton.
Banks (pictured above with 2‑year-old grandson Mahki) was the star speaker at Tuesday’s ceremony. She lived at Rockview from 1988 to 2002. She and her daughter were the last to leave the complex before it was torn down; they will be the first to return when it re-opens.
Banks declined the offer of first dibs on new apartments at Brookside; she’s holding out to go back to Rockview.
“This was not just a housing project. This was a family,” she said Tuesday. “I’ve been counting down the days since I moved out of here” to return.
Isolation
No other members of that “family,” however, have signed up to return. Banks is the only former Rockview tenant who plans to return to the complex, DuBois-Walton said. Others chose to move to nearby Brookside, which opened last year and is now fully occupied.
Teneshia Harrington (pictured), who lived at Rockview before it was torn down, said she does not plan to return because the site is too isolated.
Harrington swung by her “old stepping ground” on Tuesday to take a computer class at the Rockview community center. She said her time living there was “awesome.” Rockview “is a legend,” she said with reverence. After she left Rockview to make way for the wrecking ball, Harrington ended up in scattered-site housing on Quinnipiac Avenue. She said her new home is much more convenient.
“Where I live, I’m around everything,” she said. “Taco Bell, Wal-Mart.”
In Rockview, she noted, there are no stores, and “there’s only one bus.”
“It’s too far out,” she said.
The Fence
“Isolation has been a challenge,” acknowledged DuBois-Walton.
She said at least one store is on the way: When the housing authority opens 46 apartments for seniors at 122 Wilmot in June, she said, there will be a small market with fresh fruit and vegetables. The building has 9,000 square feet of commercial space, she said; the housing authority aims to move in an urgent clinic and perhaps a store with prepared food.
The long-term solution, however, lies at the border with Hamden, she said.
“For us, the real way to decrease the isolation is to have the ability to have some traffic flow through,” she said. That would mean tearing down a Berlin Wall-like fence that for decades has separated Brookside and Rockview from neighboring Hamden.
Rockview “is still going to remain a somewhat isolated community,” DuBois-Walton said, “until that fence is gone.”
After a contentious meeting last August with Hamden neighbors, New Haven officials agreed to stop pushing for the fence to come down, for now. They agreed to start having monthly meetings between Hamden neighbors and Brookside tenants to build community. The city agreed to take a year’s rest, then raise the issue again in October, DuBois-Walton said.
Meanwhile, the housing authority is proceeding with plans to tear down the Abraham Ribicoff Cottages, public housing for the elderly and disabled that directly abuts the Hamden fence. The city in March won tax credits to finance the deal, paving the way for relocation to begin, DuBois-Walton said. Relocation will take about a year, she said; demolition is slated for next spring.
Both Ribicoff and Rockview will be built with roads leading right up to the Hamden line, DuBois-Walton said.
“We’re going to build it with the hopes that we can work this out,” she said.
Rockview Phase I will look a lot like Brookside, said developer Peter Wood, vice-president of Michael’s Development. Kenneth Boronson of New Haven is the architect. Plans call for 77 rental units, available to people making up to 80 percent of area median income, or $64,000 for a family of four. The $33 million project is being paid for through: 9 percent low-income housing tax credits from the state; a $2.3 million loan from the state Department of Economic and Community Development; a $5.9 million grant from the housing authority; and $15.9 million in equity from TD Bank.
The housing authority is still seeking financing for future phases of Rockview, which include 78 apartments and 11 owner-occupied homes, DuBois-Walton said. Ribicoff and Farnam Courts will go up before the next phases of Rockview, she said.
Banks, who lives in Newhallville, said she wouldn’t rather live anywhere besides Rockview.
“I like the isolation,” she said. “It’s enough country” to be peaceful, like Guilford, where she grew up.
She plans to return to a five-bedroom apartment with her kids and grandkids.
She’ll return to a street named in her honor, “Shirley Way.”