Markeshia Ricks Photo
Engineer Tim Onderko explains plan for future U-Haul site.
Plans to turn the former C. Cowles & Co. factory on Water Street in to a U‑Haul storage facility moved closer to reality, while a developer pulled the plug for now on her own plans to provide boat storage along the Qunnipiac River.
That was the upshot of two hearings Wednesday night at the City Plan Commission.
The commission unanimously approved with conditions a site plan and coastal impact review that calls for the reuse of the 176,350 square-foot vacant main building of the former C. Cowles factory as a U‑Haul store with indoor, self-storage units, truck rentals and a retail showroom.
The advancement of the U‑Haul plan was a blow to the city’s efforts to find a developer who wanted to put housing instead into the factory, which is located at the periphery the Wooster Square neighborhood. City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson, who wasn’t in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting, used words like “disappointed,” “unbelievable,” and “misled” to describe learning that the U‑Haul plan was moving forward.
“It’s all very shocking, and quite frankly hard to fathom,” Nemerson said in a phone interview. “With its 170-year history, C. Cowles’ relationship to the neighborhood is the oldest ongoing relationship between a business and a community in New Haven. For it to end this way seems unbelievable.”
Nemerson has worked to try to prevent U‑Haul from turning two facilities — C. Cowles and the former Robby Lens factory at 1175 St. — into storage, because he believes housing would produce more value to the city. The effort to stop U‑Haul from purchasing 1175 State failed, too.
Paul Bass Photo
Inside the C. Cowles shop floor prior to the closing.
Nemerson said Wednesday night’s vote was a disappointing end to a two-year process in which the administration had worked with C. Cowles owner Larry Moon to support the factory’s move to North Haven while making it clear that residential development was a priority for the city. The administration offered to look for alternative locations for U‑Haul to locate.
At one point, developer Randy Salvatore was pitching Wooster Square neighbors on 200 new apartments at the site. It was a well received plan. But it fell through when he and Moon couldn’t come to terms on how to handle any potential environmental clean up.
Nemerson said that in the last three or four months the city had not only found another developer who would pay Moon a half million more than the $6 million that U‑Haul had offered for the Water Street site, but city officials thought that they had 18 months to hash out a deal. If they couldn’t do a deal that would get the site developed in that time frame, the city would back off and support U‑Haul.
The city’s not giving up on developing something more than storage on the former factory site, he said.
“We just have to pick ourselves up and sit down, with even less leverage, with U‑Haul,” Nemerson said. “That’s what we have to do because it is worth so much to the community and the city. All we can do is keep fighting.”
Larry Moon, who owns the C. Cowles property, told the New Haven Register’s Mary O’Leary that the city “couldn’t get [the housing deal] done.”
Boat Storage Shelved
Lambert: You can’t force my client to fix the wall.
Meanwhile, developer Fereshteh Bekhrad of Riverfront Development LLC. told commissioners Wednesday night that she is done fighting over her own storage plan.
After seven months of back and forth with City Plan staff and even winning over some neighbors opposed to her plan to 24 boats on a vacant parcel of land she owns at 213 Front St., she withdrew her applications for a special permit and a coastal site plan review. She withdrew her plans even though City Plan staff recommended both for approval with conditions.
It was those conditions — namely that she repair the crumbling seawall at the corner of her property — to which she strongly objected.
Her attorney, John Lambert, argued that the city didn’t have the jurisdiction to force Bekhrad to repair the seawall.
“We’re asking for a rather modest use that we would say has no impact on the river, different from what’s happening there right now,” he said. “The storage of boats is not going to impact the Qunnipiac River one bit. And there is not one bit of evidence that what we wish to do will impact the river.
“What’s being seized upon is this notion that we are required to maintain structures below the coastal jurisdiction line which is not in your jurisdiction at all,” Lambert added. “The most important thing of it is what the city is asking us to do is spend, and I’m going to be rough about this, a million dollars to make next to no income at all. About $25,000 a year or something like that. I do not encourage my clients to make bad decisions.”
Bekhrad accused City Plan staff of moving the needle on the requirements for her applications thus dragging out the process seven months. She also had reached a loose agreement with Fair Haven neighbors and Oyster Cove condo owners, though they too wanted her to fix the seawall.
City Plan Senior Project Manager Anne Hartjen pushed back against that characterization, saying that it took seven months for Bekhrad to turn in a complete application that could be evaluated.
“At this moment I’m going to withdraw my application,” Bekhard said. “There is no way to get a reasonable, acceptable agreement.”