Building-Boom Debate Hits Fair Street

Wooster Square neighbors took to the streets Wednesday to fight a planned new 186-unit market-rate apartment complex — opening the latest front in a building-boom debate over what new housing should get built, where, and for whose benefit.

Those questions emerged Wednesday morning during a press conference held at the corner of Fair Street and Union Street on the downtown edge of Wooster Square.

Backed by a noisy flurry of construction vehicles and hard-hatted workers putting the finishing touches on 299 new market-rate apartments at the ​“Olive & Wooster” complex, Wooster Square Community Management Team Chair Ian Dunn, New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell and a handful of other speakers criticized plans for another 186 apartments and 61 on-site parking spaces slated for across the street at 20 – 34 Fair St. 

That’s where New York City-based developer Darren Seid — whose company is also behind the ​“Olive & Wooster” apartment building — plans to build a new seven-story, mixed-use residential complex where service garages owned by landlord Stephen Ahern currently stand.

Seid also plans to work with the city to reopen a long-closed-off section of Fair Street to the public in the form of a new ​“greenway” that connects Union Street and Olive Street.

The most immediate call to action issued at Wednesday’s presser was for the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) to reopen a public hearing on a suite of zoning relief, called a planned development unit (PDU), that Seid’s company has requested in a bid to loosen the city’s density restrictions to allow for the Fair Street project to be built as planned.

The PDU would increase the Fair Street parcels’ allowable floor-area ratio (FAR) from 2.0 to 3.0, reduce the required gross floor area per dwelling unit from 1,000 square feet to 850 square feet, and reduce the required number of off-street parking spaces from 186 to 61.

The BZA held a public hearing on the Fair Street PDU in early July. The City Plan Commission held a separate set of deliberations on the matter later in the month. The item now returns to the BZA for debate and a final vote at its next regularly scheduled meeting on Aug. 10.

Farwell and Dunn and others who spoke up on Wednesday said that the city needs to slow down the approval process for these 186 planned new apartments so that the community can have more time to weigh in on the building’s height and density, its potential traffic impact, and how exactly this ​“greenway” will work, especially if the reopened street is open to cars as well as to cyclists and pedestrians.

“There’s no real greenspace. There’s no affordable housing. There’s no relationship between this plan and the rest of the community,” Farwell said about Seid’s Fair Street as it currently stands.

She said the project was ​“sprung” on the community after a year and a half of closed-door negotiations between the city and the developer that left Wooster Square neighbors out of the loop, negotiations that largely ignored the recommendations of a more detailed neighborhood planning process from a half-decade ago.

“We have an opportunity with this space to create another civic space, not a glorified driveway,” said local environmental activist Chris Ozyck. ​“We are giving away some of the public domain. What is the community getting in response for that?”

In an email statement provided to the Independent Wednesday morning, Seid noted the project has already been the subject of an online community meeting in late June (which fewer than 10 people attended) and the BZA’s public hearing in July. He stressed that the PDU applies just to underlying land-use regulations governing the project. Detailed designs and traffic considerations still need to go to the City Plan Commission for site plan review.

“It is my understanding that if we are fortunate to make it to the next phase of the planning & zoning process that the ordinance provides for the possibility of more public involvement,” Seid wrote. ​“We plan to continue to maneuver completely in accordance with the text of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance. It is my understanding that many, if not all, of the concerns expressed are flushed out in the Site Plan Approval process.”

Beyond NIMBYs & YIMBYs

Wednesday morning’s press conference and Seid’s response touch on questions of development that rise far above the public approval process for this particular proposed apartment complex at at 20 – 34 Fair St. They also embody much more than just an irreconcilable dispute between NIMBYs and YIMBYs.

They mark the latest chapter in an ongoing citywide debate about how New Haven should navigate the current building boom of mostly market-rate apartments in and around downtown. Cities across the country have faced these very same questions as they balance a deep demand for new housing and community critiques about developer profits, rising rents, and the changing character of neighborhoods.

Should the city do everything it can to encourage investors from around the world to keep pouring cash into building new housing atop parking lots and industrial sites?

Should it require developers to set aside a certain number of affordable apartments in otherwise market-rate complexes, and risk driving those builders elsewhere?

Are international ​“capital markets” the new overlords of New Haven’s built environment? If so, is that a problem when so much new housing is needed?

Do market-rate apartments make the overall rental market more affordable for everyone?

And when should the city slow down a process to hear from a relatively small group of passionate and engaged community members? When should it override neighbors and allow developers to build, build, build?

“Dangerous Precedent”

Some of the concerns raised by neighbors at Wednesday’s press conference mirror critiques that have been leveled at City Plan Commission meetings and community confabs between neighbors and developers throughout the current building boom.

One such complaint zeroed in on the financialization of housing.

Dunn noted that, at a recent public hearing on a proposed new ​“inclusionary zoning” ordinance, Seid testified that one of the city’s most important considerations when crafting housing policy should center on what will attract and what will deter ​“capital markets.”

“I think that’s a very dangerous precedent to set where the public interest bends to private capital,” Dunn said.

Farwell raised a similar concern. She said that many developers are now real estate investment trusts (REITs) that don’t even need to fill apartments with actual people in order to make money. These are investment properties that are built and flipped as speculators cash in on rising property values and a hot real estate market.

“Is it just developing facilities or transferrable real estate assets? Or are you doing community building?” she asked about such projects. ​“None of this is community building. What does the city get? Building permits and taxes and some temporary jobs. But in the long term, these are not things that build up social capital or economic capital.”

Another set of concerns zeroed in on the price point of the apartments that ultimately get built.

With almost all of the new market-rate apartment complexes going up around downtown, Affordable Housing Commissioner Claudette Kidd said, ​“There’s zero affordable housing. There seems to be a rush to put up these wonderful apartments, and I wish the same energy would be put into affordable housing.”

What about the argument that more housing of any type — including more market-rate units — ultimately decreases rents citywide by increasing supply and slaking demand?

“I think that there’s never been any real proof that simply adding units of housing makes the city more affordable,” Farwell replied. ​“Think of all we’ve added, and our affordability issue only gets worse. We know that as a fact that rents are just going up everywhere.”

If building tall and big and dense and expensive buildings were the answer to create a more affordable housing market, Farwell said, ​“Manhattan would be the most affordable place on earth. … Simply building more pseudo-luxury units will not address the affordability issue.”

Wooster Square’s Character

Some of the concerns also focused on density and the character of the neighborhood.

Lyon Street resident Mona Berman criticized developers and landlords for winning permission from the city to ​“take premium ground-level space and turn it into apartments.”

Dunn, referring to the 186 apartments slated for the roughly 1.21 acres that make up 20 – 34 Fair St., said the proposal project is ​“an unprecedented number of units per acre. It will be incredibly dense for a neighborhood that I don’t think is quite yet ready to support that.”

He praised the city for encouraging development near transit hubs like the State Street and Union Avenue train stations.

“I want to be clear,” he continued. ​“I welcome more housing into our city. I think we need more housing. But we need more housing for the people who currently live in our city, for the people who want to build a family in our city.” Instead, New Haven just seems to keep getting more and more market-rate units directed towards a transient population with cash to spare, he argued.

Devil’s Gear bike shop co-owner Johnny Brehon expressed skepticism at more housing in the area altogether.

“When I look around, if there’s an available parcel of land, the city decide to put an apartment building there,” he said. ​“It seems like no one has any input on that. I know we need money coming into the city, but I think community engagement is more important, and finding out what the community needs. … I don’t think throwing up apartment buildings just on any strip of land works.”

Developer, City: 186 Apts. Better Use Than Garage & Parking Lot

A recent letter by Seid’s lawyer to the City Plan Commission and a separate advisory report drafted by the City Plan Department’s staff, meanwhile, paint the proposed Fair Street development in a more positive light — for the Wooster Square neighborhood in particular, and for the city’s housing market more broadly.

On July 26, local attorney Gregory Muccilli wrote to the City Plan Commission to urge that body not to host another public hearing on Seid’s company’s PDU application.

In that letter, he detailed how the proposed Fair Street development and accompanying PDU fit in with the city’s Comprehensive Plan — and therefore with its goals for the built environment of New Haven.

The project would provide a new connection from downtown to Wooster Square through the extension of Fair Street, he wrote.

It would enhance ​“the quality of existing housing stock” and encourage ​“mixed-use environments along State Street.”

The project would connect ​“housing and transportation given the proximity of the subject property to mass transit and the State Street Station.”

And it would ​“provide high-density, mixed-use environments with pedestrian-level uses, and predominantly multi-floor residential space.”

Finally, it would increase ​“the economic and tax base” of the city.

The City Plan staff advisory report is similarly laudatory.

“Applicant’s proposal for a new, transit-oriented, mixed-use development relative to other large-scale residential developments currently under construction on Olive Street is most appropriate and necessary for the integrated functioning of the planned development and for the City,” the advisory report reads.

“The space allocation, orientation, texture, materials, landscaping and other features are designed to produce an environment of stable and desirable character by improving a currently underutilized site consisting mostly of surface parking, complementing the design and values of the surrounding neighborhood — particularly the residential developments on Olive Street already underway as discussed above and the residential uses across Olive Street in the RM‑2 Zone — and, once complete, will show unusual merit as to reflect credit upon Applicant, the design team and upon the City by creating a new residential development completing Fair Street and re-introducing the Union Street and Olive Street intersection that had long been privately held.”

The report emphasizes that the Fair Street lots are ​“currently underutilized and primarily used for surface parking.” A new seven-story, mixed-use building with 186 dwelling units, 61 parking spaces, 6,621 square feet of amenity space, and 1,000 square feet of commercial space will represent quite the improvement.

And it will fit in with the ongoing ​“infill development of Olive Street” taking place at Olive & Wooster and at the nearby former Comcast property, where the Houston-based developer Hines is currently building 230 new apartments and 5,600 square feet on two parcels across the street from one another.

“Additionally, given the irregular shape of the combined lots,” the staff report continues, ​“the primarily residential nature of Olive Street in light of the above-referenced developments and the pedestrian-friendly completion of Fair Street re-introducing a connection between Union Street and Olive Street, the subject property is better suited to residential development than its current use of surface parking or other commercial development.”