Markeshia Ricks Photo
Excavator dislodges corner of one of the apartment buildings.
With all the tenants gone and its 30 buildings stripped of metal and electrical components, demolition began in earnest Monday at Church Street South.
The city gave the green light to the complex’s owners, Northland Investment Corp., which had already begun pre-demolition work in January, to start tearing down the crumbling cinderblock 301-unit federally subsidized complex across from Union Station. And 50 years of New Haven housing history began to disappear, opening up new possibilities for development at a prime location.
The remaining shells of the buildings, stripped of metal and electrical parts.
The final portion of that history was marked by lawsuits and controversy. Years of federal inspections claimed the complex was safe. But after legal-aid lawsuits and city inspections revealed leaky roofs, deteriorating porches, and rampant mold that made it hard for families to breathe. The city condemned the property. Then two government agencies — the city government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) and the housing authority’s management and development arm, the Glendower Group — worked for years to find new apartments for the 266 remaining families. The last tenant moved out three weeks ago.
Michael Piscitelli speaks at the presser.
Now that everyone is finally out, demolition can begin. Meanwhile, the city and Northland are working on a plan to build a new 900 to 1,000-unit mixed-income, mixed-use complex on the site; they’re trying for a third time to obtain a federal grant to help cover the cost and maintain the same number of subsidized apartments there as before.
The demolition is expected to take up to two years to complete. It can take between two and three weeks, depending on the weather, to demolish a building, and there are 30 buildings onsite according to Dan Masto, director of operations for Abcon, the firm hired for about $5 million to oversee the job. Then all of the rubble has to be properly disposed.
Frank D’Amore and Rafael Ramos of LCI.
Mayor Toni Harp and top administration officials marked the moment Monday with a press conference in the shadow of the building before an excavator began the process of carefully dislodging pieces of one building at the back of the complex.
Harp said that the story of Church Street South underscores the extent to which her administration has worked to address the needs of the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, and the voiceless. The city is working to ensure that 30 percent of the apartments in the rebuilt Church Street remaining affordable to low-income families, the same overall number of apartments that were lost.
Dan Masto of Abcon.
“In this nation at this time, and right here in this state for that matter, there are those who seem utterly content living with an approach as if to say: ‘I’ve got mine – the rest of you fend for yourself,’” she said. “In New Haven, we share a city we love, we watch out for one another, we take care of one another, and we’re working to provide suitable housing for one another.”
Michael Piscitelli, who is serving as both Harp’s acting economic development administrator and interim City Plan director, called the start of the demolition a milepost in a process that will eventually transform the site as part of the “Hill to Downtown” plan for the broader region from the train station through the Yale medical district.
Piscitielli noted that the Livable City Initiative (LCI) that ultimately got the ball rolling in the condemnation and eventually the relocation of residents.LCI is a small but busy city agency that responded to 10,000 blight complaints last year and conducted more than 5,100 residential inspections, Piscitelli noted. (LCI worked on the relocations with the housing authority’s Glendower division, which took the day-to-day lead.)
“These are inspections that are not required by state law necessarily but we do that as a matter of practice to make sure that people live in safe and secure housing,” he said. “Obviously, those inspections are what led to the process of condemnation and relocation.”
He said going forward the city is working with the complex’s owner to come up with options for redeveloping the site as part of the city’s ongoing Hill-to-Downtown plan to knit that part of the city back together again.
Northland released the following statement Monday:
“Today is an important milestone. Finding quality housing for 260+ families was a complex challenge and Northland is grateful for the Church Street South families’ patience, understanding, and flexibility throughout the process. Northland, HUD, Elm City Communities, and LCI established a true partnership and never lost sight of the common goal: relocating the families in a respectful and sensitive manner. Northland would like to thank Mayor Harp, Alderwoman Colon, Executive Director Neal-Sanjurjo, and Executive Director DuBois-Walton for their unwavering support and their professionalism.”
Larry Gottesdiener, chairman and CEO of Northland, provided the following statement Monday:
“Northland looks forward to working with city leaders, Mayor Harp, Alder Colon, the Board of Alders, Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, Executive Director of New Haven’s Livable City Initiative, Karen DuBois-Walton, Executive Director of Elm City Communities, (formerly the Housing Authority of the City of New Haven/HANH) and residents of the Hill, to create Union Square, a mixed-use, transit oriented, green, 21st century village that will weave Union Station, the Hill, and the Medical District into Downtown, provide an architecturally stunning ‘front door’ to New Haven and increase the affordable housing supply in the City by 300 units.”
An Idea From China
New Haven’s next challenge, meanwhile, is finding a way to make the finances work to include 300 low-income apartments as part of a new Church Street South complex that otherwise features market-rate rentals and commercial space.
The Harp administration has twice asked the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to make $30 million available for that purpose through a CHOICE program grant. Twice, the city’s application was turned down. The Harp administraiton is now trying a third time.
In a radio appearance following the demolition-start event, on her weekly “Mayor Monday” program on WNHH FM, Harp spoke of her efforts to influence HUD — which paid over $3 million a year in rental subsidies to Church Street South’s owners as the complex deteriorated, all the while certifying conditions as safe even as they became unlivable — to take more responsibility for finding a solution.
When she first became mayor, she recalled, she travelled to DC to show HUD officials photos of the mold and deteriorating structures that HUD kept certifying as up to code.
The reaction? “I call it ‘the stare,’” she recalled. “They absolutely shut themselves off from it.”
Then, after a legal aid lawsuit and embarrassing press coverage finally led HUD to declare the complex unlivable and participate in efforts to relocate 288 families, Harp appealed to officials in person for the CHOICE grant. Again, she said, she got “the stare.”
She said she plans to make another trip this summer to appeal for this third application. “Our fear is these grants will go away under the Trump administration,” she said.
She was asked if, in that case, she might support having Northland build a fully market-rate complex with no subsidies and no affordable units, while finding ways to create 300 subsidized in the surrounding area, an idea once pursued by the DeStefano administration. Harp responded that that idea would never fly with the public.
“I don’t think people will believe we will get the affordable housing if it’s not there,” she said.
Rather, she continued, she might pursue an idea inspired by her recent trip to China, where often the government owns the land where private developments rise. The Chinese government offers 30-year leases to owners of the buildings that get constructed, she said.
Perhaps the city could take ownership of a portion of the cleared 13 areas at Church Street South and lease it, for longer than 30 years (to preserve affordability), to an affordable-housing developer to create that 300 units while Northland builds the rest of the complex alongside it, Harp suggested. She said having the city own the land would remove the cost of buying the land for a developer seeking to build affordable apartments, thus making the finances work.
Some cities are experimenting with a third approach of weaving affordable housing into new market-rate projects: Requiring developers to raise rents further than planned on market-rate units to subsidize affordable units in the same project. Click here to read a story about how Washington, D.C., is pursuing that idea.
Paul Bass contributed reporting.
Previous coverage of Church Street South:
• Finally Empty, Church Street South Ready To Disappear
• Northland’s Insurer Sues To Stop Paying
•Who Broke Church Street South?
•Amid Destruction, Last Tenant Holds On
• Survey: 48% Of Complex’s Kids Had Asthma
• Families Relocated After Ceiling Collapses
• Housing Disaster Spawns 4 Lawsuits
• 20 Last Families Urged To Move Out
• Church St. South Refugees Fight Back
• Church St. South Transfers 82 Section 8 Units
• Tenants Seek A Ticket Back Home
• City Teams With Northland To Rebuild
• Church Street South Tenants’ Tickets Have Arrived
• Church Street South Demolition Begins
• This Time, Harp Gets HUD Face Time
• Nightmare In 74B
• Surprise! Now HUD Flunks Church St. South
• Church St. South Tenants Get A Choice
• Home-For-Xmas? Not Happening
• Now It’s Christmas, Not Thanksgiving
• Pols Enlist In Church Street South Fight
• Raze? Preserve? Or Renew?
• Church Street South Has A Suitor
• Northland Faces Class-Action Lawsuit On Church Street South
• First Attempt To Help Tenants Shuts Down
• Few Details For Left-Behind Tenants
• HUD: Help’s Here. Details To Follow
• Mixed Signals For Church Street South Families
• Church St. South Families Displaced A 2nd Time — For Yale Family Weekend
• Church Street South Getting Cleared Out
• 200 Apartments Identified For Church Street South Families
• Northland Asks Housing Authority For Help
• Welcome Home
• Shoddy Repairs Raise Alarm — & Northland Offer
• Northland Gets Default Order — & A New Offer
• HUD, Pike Step In
• Northland Ordered To Fix Another 17 Roofs
• Church Street South Evacuees Crammed In Hotel
• Church Street South Endgame: Raze, Rebuild
• Harp Blasts Northland, HUD
• Flooding Plagues Once-Condemned Apartment
• Church Street South Hit With 30 New Orders
• Complaints Mount Against Church Street South
• City Cracks Down On Church Street South, Again
• Complex Flunks Fed Inspection, Rakes In Fed $$
• Welcome Home — To Frozen Pipes
• City Spotted Deadly Dangers; Feds Gave OK
• No One Called 911 | “Hero” Didn’t Hesitate
• “New” Church Street South Goes Nowhere Fast
• Church Street South Tenants Organize
Click on the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below for the full episode of WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program.
This episode of “Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.