End Of An Era: Q House Comes Down

Bill MacMullen hadn’t been involved the demolition of a large New Haven institution since the implosion of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum back in 2007. 

“I gotta tell you,” he said, ​“for a long time nobody thought this would happen.”

“This” was the long awaited demolition of the Dixwell Community ​“Q” House in preparation for the construction of a new Q House. The takedown of the old building, which was built in 1967 and closed in 2003, got underway at the end of last week and is expected to wrap up by next few weeks, weather permitting.

The main event — the actual tear-down of the gutted building’s exterior — took place over the past three days.

There are no explosives involved in taking down the old Q House. MacMullen, the capital projects architect for the city’s engineering department, still had a little gleam in his eye Thursday morning as he watched a man methodically use heavy equipment to take down one of the two wings of the old building and carefully extract the mangled steel, separating it from the rubble of cinderblocks.

“They’re separating out the steel so that it can be recycled,” MacMullen pointed out. ​“The rest can be ground up and taken to the landfill.”

For Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison the demolition is the manifestation of five years of the neighborhood’s efforts to get a new Q House built.

“I went and took pictures this morning myself, I was so happy,” Morrison said. Seeing the demolition finally get underway ​“is confirmation. For a long time people didn’t believe it. People were losing hope.”

The seeds of hope grew little by little as Mayor Toni Harp made a new Q House a priority for her administration, and as Gov. Dannel P. Malloy made good on a promise to deliver more than $15 million in state funds that included $1 million for a new home for the Stetson Library branch.

Morrison said demolition makes it even more real.

“People were starting to say, ​‘Well we got this money, but we don’t see anything,’” she said. ​“But now people are seeing that that behind the scene action has finally paid off. This building we’re getting ready to build — that’s going to be awesome.”

The new Q House, which MacMullen said will be about 47,000 square feet; the original plan called for about 54,000 square feet, but was scaled back to keep the cost from going up. The complex will feature not only the new library branch, but a health center, a senior center and a full gymnasium.

While it will be a different Q House from the one where Morrison learned gymnastics and former Board of Alders President Jorge Perez learned to play guitar, many are expecting it to have the same impact providing a place of pride and community for Dixwell and all of New Haven. Morrison credited the Committee of Concerned Citizens that has ​“been holding this Q House torch since it closed in 2003.”

“The Q House has really impacted lives,” Morrison added. ​“It has always been one entity in the city that everybody could go to. Though it’s on Dixwell Avenue, it’s for everyone. And it’s going to function 15 to 17 hours a day, when you think about it. It’s a one-stop shop.”

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said the prep work including the abatement of asbestos began a couple of months ago, and actually demolishing the building is the part of the project that will go fastest. After the building is down the site will be cleaned of the debris and everything hauled away.

MacMullen said the orientation of the new Q House will put the building at the corner of Foote Street and Dixwell Avenue. The site of the old building will be the new parking lot.

Zinn said the city hopes construction will begin this year. The project hit a slight snag when Regina Winters-Toussaint, architect for the new Q House, died last year. The rest of Winters-Toussaint’s team at Zared Enterprises, which was hired to design the center, together with Kenneth Boroson Architects, will continue on the project.

“We’re very excited to see building coming down,” Zinn said. ​“It makes it real when the building is coming down, and shows that a lot of the planning that went into this project and the work really is starting to progress.”

Zinn said New Haveners interested in working on the new Q House should be on the look out for opportunities for subcontracting on the project.

“Stay tuned,” he said. ​“In the coming months there will be a lot of opportunities for trades people from the community to get involved in the construction of the Q House. We plan to go above and beyond to target our outreach efforts so that the people of New Haven know about every construction opportunity, every training opportunity on this project.”

Mayor Harp, who got to see some of the demolition progress on Wednesday, said in a statement that the new Q House will reflect ​“a broad-based commitment to a vibrant, supportive community center.”

“Ever since the 2003 closure of the Q House, New Haven residents have been eager to welcome its next incarnation,” she said. ​“This week’s large-scale site demolition is irrefutable progress toward that new construction.”