New Haven Independent

“The IC” Vows Minority Jobs In Rebuilding West Rock

by Allan Appel | April 26, 2007 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

In one of the city’s most abandoned public-housing domains, the Brookside and Rockview housing complexes up in the shadow of West Rock by Hamden’s border, a shining new fence seems to go on forever. It encloses emptied buildings of a failed development. Community leaders, residents, contractors, and outside consultants gathered to start rebuilding not just buildings here, but also lives. The question: How?

Convened by Curtis Jennings (pictured), president of the West Rock Development Corporation, the meeting Wednesday brought together some 25 people at the West Rock Family Center on Wilmot Avenue to prepare for an upcoming meeting, on May 3, to interview and select the developer for a multi-million dollar federally sponsored redevelopment project for West Rock. The hope is to work on the successful mixed-income, village-style “Hope VI” models of Quinnipiac Terrace and Monterey Place — a model that has eluded West Rock over years of infighting and missed opportunities.

A key focus of the meeting: how to offer jobs to people of color in rebuilding West Rock.

Overseeing plans for such a development is an entity established in 1999 called the West Rock Implementation Committee (or “the IC”). Its members include Jennings, two members of the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) appointed Tuesday, Executive Director Jimmy Miller (pictured) and Chief Operations Officer Karen DuBois-Walton; Yul Watley (pictured behind Miller), president of the tenants residence council at another West Rock development, Westville Manor. At the suggestion of Carla Bragg (pictured on the right, below) of Empower New Haven, members of the IC interviewed consultants to help them fashion, in the words of Yul Watley, an entity that will change and enhance the quality of life for residents of Westville Manor, Brookside, Rockview, and the Ribicoff Cottages.

To make sure this happens by their lights, and reflective of certain tensions between residents and HANH, the IC fashioned a memorandum of agreement, signed by the mayor and by HANH. Among other things it requires that no major decision on the redevelopment be made that does not first come before the IC.

The focus of Wednesday’s meeting was to introduce Jerry Vallery, president of the Black Chamber of Commerce of Philadelphia and president of his own company, Contracts Support Systems. Vallery is a principal with the East Hartford-based firm of Ford-Knighten, which have been retained to consult with the IC, especially on issues of how to maximize African-American participation in the Brookside/Rockview redevelopment project. The firm will help the IC in the first spate of interviews with potential developers, scheduled for Thursday, May 3.

A theme running through Wednesday’s meeting was great unhappiness, to put it mildly, with the degree of African-American participation in recent construction projects in New Haven, such as the developments on Blake Street and the mayor’s school reconstruction program.

A former military officer, he is to be the nuts-and-bolts advisor on how minority-owned firms can overcome the obstacles — often the financial and credit know-how — to win bids to do large-scale work. Vallery declared, in sentiments seemingly shared by all: “I’ve told Mr. Jennings that African-Americans have reached the point in America where we must stop asking people to give us things. We need the leadership and the courage to meet the task at hand. In Philadelphia, we developed a technical assistance center for our contractors, and that center handled the insurance, the change orders, the bonding requirements, which can be daunting, and that system works.”

In a wide-ranging and often technical discussion of HUD contracting requirements, Jennings called for the Brookside/Rockview enterprise to use at least 30 percent black contractors. Jimmy Miller, the guru of HUD regulations, explained that the federal guidelines called for 10 percent of the contractors to be minority and 30 percent of the workers to be minority (which, he said, could be interpreted as Aleutian, not just African-American!). Those numbers were only minimums. “You can do more.”

Training programs that lead to good jobs and creation of wealth in the community also took center stage when the group discussed whether the new houses to be built should be “sticks,” that is built from the ground up, or modular. Alan Felder, president of ManUp, the grassroots economic self-help organization that organized protests at Blake Street, said, “If you go modular there will be less opportunity. There will be far less training that way. You can build buildings, but if you don’t also build lives, then what’s the point? In this city we have African-American contractors who can do the job. The technical support to get the insurance, to handle the credit history issues, and especially the bonding approvals will be key.”

“Not everybody agrees on everything, of course,” said Watley, “but what we want to keep front and center with the developer we choose is improving the lives of people who live here while the place is being built and after. I’m the owner of a home improvement business here, and it’s important to me that, for example, certain preferences be given to public housing resident-owned businesses.” (Such “preference points”, Miller explained, do indeed exist within federal housing regulations.)

“It’s also critical,” Watley said, “that residents of the development and then people here in New Haven receive the maximum of job training, so they can move out and join the unions, ultimately, and to improve their lives. So far that has not been a good story for us.”

The IC, Watley said in a conversation after the meeting, has ambitious plans for minority entrepreneurship. “We’ve sketched out our ideas not only for the mixed income/affordable rental/home ownership model, but we’ve also designed a kind of town green that we’d like to have here,” he said. “And one of the most exciting things is that around the green we have mapped out a whole array of businesses.”

There was more. “After the place is built, we want to help take charge of the management of the place as well. We think there is opportunity for job creation and wealth creation there in areas like landscaping, garbage pick-up and so on.”

And how did Watley think the meeting went? “I thought it was very productive as an introductory meeting. On May 3rd, when we meet the developer candidates themselves, that’s when we will put the foot on the accelerator.”

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Comments

Posted by: dana b | April 26, 2007 11:27 AM

The baby hasn't even been conceived and already people are making demands for its brilliant career. That's how this story's content struck me. Minority contractors, 30% or more minority workers -- that's all good, but is there a basic agreement in place mandating that Brookside II will not be a repetition of the hellhole that Brookside I became? Perhaps I am simply unaware of what type of development is planned, but from other project rebuilds (Elm Haven, Quinnipiac Terrace) it seems clear that you need a mix of owners and renters, the gainfully employed and welfare recipients, people with skills and energy to share and those who have, at least initially, a lot fewer aspirations for themselves.

I am sceptical, too of loading up a single institution, whether that be a school or a housing complex, with multiple, though laudable, social engineering projects. Brookside was and will be primarily a place people live, for years to come. The dream of building it with black contractors and through its construction sparking black pride and building black workers' skills -- that inspires, yes. But what's a lot more important and realistic is first to design and build a physical environment that encourages a sense of pride of place and community. Second it is to mandate that the place will not be a point of concentration for desperately poor people with few job skills or education and very little networking to offer one another. Third, from before move-in day, the residents should have a council to govern the place, make improvements themselves, advocate for good policing, and bring social programs or commercial enterprises to their neighborhood. The living at Brookside will go on for 30 to 50 or 100+ years. The building of it will be transitory, and probably not transformative for more than a handful of construction folks.

Posted by: JBZ | April 26, 2007 1:05 PM

Those houses over on Francis Hunter Drive (the Jonathan Rose/HUD project)- remember those? (see the Independent article from a few months ago). They are modular and the owners are having serious problems. Modular houses can be fine (and they are very fast to go up), but you need highly skilled and experienced modular people to do the job right. In this case stick building would produce a better product and would be easier to include local minority workers.

Posted by: KAMB | April 26, 2007 7:45 PM

Rebuld Brookside and Rock View Circle?! Yikes! The words send chills down my spine . . as well as the poor Hamden residence whose property abuts to this old war zone. I dont think this place was a failed city project. I think the people who lived here abused the hell out of the place and their stay was way to long. Hopefully the city will sell this land and build privatley owned (real) houses for people who work for a living. The city does not need anymore free loading people moving into city built houses at almost no cost. The self serving, Yul Watley, pictured above, is one of these people. Get rid of the problem people and let good folks move in.

Posted by: Ralph Rechtenberg | April 27, 2007 7:20 AM

Racial quotas for employees. The dream of black pride. These are very unfortunate ideas that only seem to ring true.

The raced-based conception of humanity is an obstacle to the building of genuine community. Race is appearance and nothing else. It is so insubstantial that it can never be the foundation for any lasting structure to be built upon it.

New Haven panders to these ideas. We should reject them entirely.

Posted by: charlie | April 27, 2007 11:06 AM

New Haven already has far, far more of its share of government-supported or government-subsidized housing. Anything that goes up here should be private market "Woodbridge" style homes on 2-acre lots. NO MORE HOUSING PROJECTS! Let the suburbs build subsidized housing. Having a better tax base here will do much more for everyone than having more affordable housing units.

If these freeloading people get what they want here, they and the Mayor are just going to be the laughingstock of New Haven for the next 40 years - just like the people who built Brookside.

Posted by: Curtis Uqdah-Jennings | April 28, 2007 1:38 PM

Charlie, if that's your real ID, you are welcome to attend the meeting with the developers and express your ideal about lots sizes.

Posted by: Yul A. Watley | April 28, 2007 8:06 PM

FROM THE DESK OF YUL A. WATLEY, TRC PRESIDENT

I just want to respond to the short-minded persons identified as KAMB, Ralph Rechtenberg, Charlie

I'm no freeloader; I have paid my way to stay in public housing. Also, while here, I have done the following to better the lives of public housing residents:

COMMUNITY SPECIAL PROJECTS:

Devoted husband - 23 years, father of 6 children, and grandfather of 11 children.

TRC President, Westville Manor 2001 to present date.

Executive Board Member - Voices, New Haven Housing Authority's City Wide TRC

Chairman of the finance committee - Voices City Wide TRC

Executive Board Member - West Rock Redevelopment Implementation Committee.

Executive Board Member - West Rock United TRC's.

Serves on the security committee at the New Haven Housing Authority.

Executive Board Member - Connecticut Housing Coalition Steering Committee. Workshop presenter in 2004 - 2005 on public housing, at annual conference.

Member - National Low Income Housing Coalition. Also a part of what I call the public housing march on Washington to save Section 8 program in April of 2004.

Executive Board Member - CT. Public Housing Residents Network. Serving public housing residents state wide in Connecticut.

Founder & Executive Director - "Off The Block/ On The Clock" Inc. positive youth program, which serves as an After School/Summer program for children at risk from the ages of 8 to 18 years, and their families. The name "Off the Block On the Clock", underscores that need to provide youth with opportunities for economic development. By finding jobs or other means of self-sufficiency "on the clock," youth will turn away from the streets "off the block."

With such innovative and ground breaking activities as,

Youth Ministry
Drugs, Violence and Gang Prevention
Reading & Comprehension
Tutorial Program
Basic Computer Literacy Skills
Employment Readiness Program
Basic Economics & Business Skills
Audio & Video Production
Photo Journalism
Junior Biotech Lab (working with microscopes)
Junior Astronomy Club (working with telescopes)
Junior Carpenters Club
Basic Math Skills
Basic Writing Skills
Basic Geography
Self-Awareness/History Program
Self-Presentation Skills (Hygiene etc.)
Barbara's Die Cast Auto Show
Boodie Watt's Talent Show & Entertainment Program
Self-defense Class
Scholarship Fund
Homeland Security Block Watch
The Junior Carpenters Club

All These things I do in my community, and I run my own business. No, I don't have a Job probably like you, but I never thought that small. What do you do in your community besides run your mouths, and speak on things you have no knowledge of. What you need to do is read the Code of Federal Regulations, as handed down by the United States Congress, and see all the rights that public housing resident have, then open your oral cavity. But when this redevelopment is over, I, and others will be able to say that we have empowered public housing residents, and people of color in this city that have been overlooked for far to long. May God Bless You All.

“The IC” Vows Minority Jobs In Rebuilding West Rock

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