69 Apartments Planned For Joe Grate’s Lot

Two affordable housing developers, one from Dixwell and one from New York City, have teamed up to build a new four-story, 69-unit apartment building atop a vacant triangular lot that was formerly home to a gas station, a parking lot, and Joe Grate’s popular barbecue stand.

Beulah Land Development Corporation and Dixwell Housing Associates LLC detailed those plans in a pair of zoning relief applications that they presented to the Board of Zoning Appeals Tuesday night during the board’s regular monthly meeting.

As City Hall remains indefinitely closed to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic and state of emergency, the meeting took place online via the Zoom teleconferencing app.

Dixwell Housing Associates LLC, a holding company owned by the New York-based affordable housing developer and homelessness services nonprofit HELP USA, has requested a variance to permit a floor area ratio (FAR) of 2.175 where 2.0 is allowed at 316 Dixwell Ave., 340 Dixwell Ave., and 783 Orchard St.

HELP has also requested a special exception to allow for 32 off-street parking spaces where 69 are required at the site.

The local faith-based affordable housing developer Beulah Land Development Corporation owns the main lot in question, 340 Dixwell, which is a 0.67-acre triangular vacant lot that sits at the southern intersection of Munson Street, Dixwell Avenue, and Orchard Street.

The City of New Haven owns 316 Dixwell, a 0.21-acre parcel with a vacant garage that is just south of the triangular corner lot. And HELP USA, through its holding company Dixwell Housing Associates LLC, owns a single-family house at 783 Orchard St. that stands just to the west of the lot in question.

Beulah Chief of Operations Darrel Brooks (pictured) said that his company plans to partner with HOPE USA and mass timber developer Jeff Spiritos to build 69 units of multi-family housing atop the 340 Dixwell Ave. lot.

“This project is a unique project in that 80 percent of the units will be set aside for low-to-moderate income families,” Brooks said. Also, the project will be built using mass timber, a wood-based construction method that will reduce energy costs for residents and reduce carbon emissions for the neighborhood.

“This is luxury living at affordable pricing,” he said.

The development corporation has previously built elderly housing on Orchard Street and elsewhere around its church at 782 Orchard. It started doing that in response to the murder of a 7‑month-old baby in a tenement next to the church, which was also surrounded by crack houses on the other side. That was two decades ago. Beulah has subsequently remade the block into a safe, attractive place to live.

Local attorney Bernie Pellegrino (pictured) explained that the developer needed the project to be denser than currently allowed by the underlying General Business/High-Middle Density zones because of the combination of the more environmentally friendly construction method, which uses rectangular panelized floors, combined with the oddly shaped triangular geometry of the parcel.

“The benefits that the project brings and the safeguards that would be established through the construction methodology certainly support your looking favorably upon this application,” he argued.

He also pointed out that the requested 2.175 FAR is in alignment with what the city has proposed the Dixwell Avenue corridor be rezoned to as part of the city’s broader commercial corridor project designed to encourage denser development along the city’s neighborhood arteries.

Pellegrino said that the special exception requesting 32 off-street parking spaces where 69 would otherwise be required was justified by an abundance of nearby on-street parking, publicly-owned off-street parking, and the fact that two major city bus lines stop right at the site.

“The Transformative Impact Of This Project Is Hard To Overstate”

During the public testimony section of the evening, Dixwell neighbors and affordable housing proponents associated with the Room for All coalition and the People’s Collaborative for Dixwell filled the virtual hearing to throw their support behind the project.

Civic Impact Lab founder Johnny Shively (pictured) said that the proposed development would create 55 apartments to be rented at or below 60 percent of the city’s area median income.

“That’s in my opinion exceptional,” he said, because of both the ratio of affordable to market-rate units and because of the deep affordability of rents for the former.

This is a ​“meaningful step towards the creation of deeply affordable units in our city,” he said.

Local community organizer Kerry Ellington praised the project as particularly timely for the present Covid-19 crisis.

“I think we’re going to see unforeseen layoffs, unforeseen losses of income, and a deep need for affordable housing in the community,” she said. This proposed project would provide that very service to neighbors in need.

Prospect Hill/Newhallville/Dixwell Alder Steve Winter (pictured) also threw his support behind the project.

“The transformative impact of this project is hard to overstate,” he said, both in terms of the affordable housing it would add to the community and the boost it would give to a uniquely environmentally sustainable form of construction that other local developers may choose to follow.

Dixwell residents Adair Franklin and Lillie Chambers similarly testified in support, praising Beulah’s long-time reputation as a good neighbor and developer of affordable housing for people who already in live in the Dixwell community.

“Beulah Heights has already shown their love and support for the community with their past and recent actions,” Chambers said. ​“This project will allow for inclusiveness, transparency.”

“I hope that it goes through and is very successful,” added Franklin.

The one person to speak out against the project during the public testimony section was Pamela Worthy (pictured), who owns the two-story commercial-residential building right next door at 324 Dixwell Ave.

“I don’t see how you can accommodate as many parking spots as well as a living dwelling within that triangular piece of land,” she said.

She said she’s concerned the development will have a serious impact on traffic at the intersection and outside of her house. She also argued that 32 off-site parking spaces likely is not enough for 69 tenants, inevitably leading to them taking up all of the existing on-street parking in the surrounding area.

Spiritos said that the parking spaces have all been designed to meet city code requirement sizes, and that the driveway will be one-way in from from Orchard Street, the less busy street, and out on Dixwell Avenue.

City Deputy Director of Zoning Jenna Montesano added that the proposed development is large enough to trigger site plan review at the City Plan Commission. That means that that commission will ultimately have to sign off on the parking plan and traffic plan for the project before the developers can start building.

The BZA passed along the special exception for parking relief to the City Plan Commission review, as is required by the city ordinance. The BZA is slated to vote on the 340 Dixwell special exception and variance applications at the board’s next monthly meeting in May.

Click here to read and download detailed plans for the project, as well as nine other written testimonies of support for the proposed development.