New Haven Independent

The action took place at Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting, at which the owner of Anthony’s Ocean View got an extension in his efforts to obtain needed permits.

The properties shown in Campion’s photos, owned by Anthony’s Ocean View, have been slated for demolition for a year. The demolition would pave the way for new parking lots. These plans were the subject of a landmark case in which Anthony’s won the right, using a city-approved PDD, to circumvent local zoning in order to insert mega parking expansion into a largely residential neighborhood around the venerable restaurant.

Campion and his colleagues, (including Daniel Maffeo, in the white shirt to his right in the photo), represented, he said, at least 50 Morris Cove residents. They lost that battle to stop Anthony’s over the PDD question (whether the city had the right to invoke it for this one property owner) in State Supreme Court.

But they have in effect won the PDD war, at least up to now, in that the state legislature has disallowed municipal use of PDDs in the future, although Anthony’s PDD use and others that pre-date that decision have been grandfathered in.

Campion’s beef Wednesday night was that neither the city government nor the Board of Alderman is enforcing the very conditions imposed by Anthony’s PDD approval, he said.

“I live three houses down,” said Daniel Maffeo, “I got to tell you these properties have not even been boarded up in a year. The drug addicts use them to shoot up. The kids hang around in them. It’s a continual fire hazard. How the insurance or the city allows this to go on, I don’t know.”

Stan Novak (pictured), an engineer representing Anthony Delmonico, the owner, rose at the meeting to itemize commission-instructed changes to the plan which had been fulfilled, such as the inclusion of different varieties of trees around the proposed new lots. Then he requested the commission give his client a six-month extension on the demolition permit to finalize plans.

Campion went briefly ballistic.

Comission Chairwoman Patricia King (pictured with commission member Alderman Roland Lemar) took exception to Campion’s photo-brandishing tactic and disallowed his testimony. At other commission meetings, public and citizen participation on these site plan review items has been accepted.

King shut Campion down with unusual definitiveness. She motioned for approval of Novak/Delmonico’s extension request. It passed without remarks from the other members.

Outside, in the hallway, Maffeo said that he is a landlord himself, in fact, West Haven’s third largest. “I’ve turned slum properties into very very good ones,” he said, “and if I operated the way Anthony is with these, I’d be in violation of everything. I’d be arrested. I don’t know how he gets away with it.”

Preservation activist Anstress Farwell said in her opinion if Anthony’s had performed poorly and in a dilatory manner thus far, the commission should not have granted the extension without requesting proofs or commitments. “Actually,” she added, “it is an LCI [Livable City Initiative] issue. If the city is as concerned as they have been about blight and are trying to clear that up elsewhere, including addressing abandoned buildings, why haven’t they moved on these properties? What’s exceptional here? Because clearly, the delayed demolition is creating blight and really problematic and unsafe conditions. It’s a mystery!”

“In fact,” Campion added in the hallway, “since the permit was granted we have been emailing [City Plan Director] Karyn Gilvarg at least once a month asking for an update on when the demolition will take place and the plan move ahead, or, failing that, when these conditions will be addressed. All we get is a perfunctory response saying that ‘in general Anthony’s is in compliance with the PDD,’ and she’s not letting him proceed with the demolition until these other matters, trees and changing some of the sidewalk configurations are dealt with.”

Farwell said she wasn’t, in principle, against PDDs. If they are used, for example to enhance the architectural quality of a neighborhood, or to build something of what’s officially termed “unusual merit,” they have merit, she said. “I just don’t understand how a sea of parking adds up to a change of unusual merit in a residential neighborhood.”

In any event, the evening’s proceedings would not reverse the Anthony’s PDD

What would be the next step? Campion wasn’t sure, yet Farwell suggested that the Morris Cove group might still have recourse with City Plan via a Coastal Site Review “It’s not over.”

Karyn Gilvarg, who stepped briefly out of the hearing chamber, made this comment: “I’ve told these people repeatedly that if they have a complaint about the buildings, they should go to LCI.”