New Haven Independent

Hospital’s Impact On Hill Debated

by Melissa Bailey | August 7, 2007 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

As neighbors grapple with a developer’s plan for major construction across Sylvan Avenue, Eunice Chambers wonders about the future of her block, where Yale-New Haven Hospital has slowly acquired plot after plot, leaving several vacant homes.

Chambers is among the neighbors who live near the soon-to-be-built cancer center at the hospital and a related development planned by Intercontinental Real Estate. They’ve watched the hospital’s affiliates gradually buy up land over the years by their own homes, and are concerned about what their neighborhood will end up looking like. Will a tough neighborhood become more stable? Or will affordable homes disappear?

Chambers owns a home at the corner of Vernon Street and Sylvan Avenue, on a block bordered by Howard and Davenport Avenues, a stethoscope’s throw from the Yale-New Haven Hospital campus. From her front porch, she’s been watching a path cleared for a major development by Intercontinental Real Estate that will complement Y-NHH’s new cancer center. Neighbors, who were taken by surprise after developers bought up properties piece by piece then asked for a zoning change to facilitate as-yet-undisclosed complex. Fearing “monstrous” buildings, neighbors have been fighting the zoning change.

On her own block, Chambers has watched the area change as hospital affiliates bought more and more property on her side of the Howard Avenue line. From 1979 to 2007, through affiliated companies headed by board members and upper management at Y-NHH, the hospital acquired seven of the nine lots on the Howard Avenue side, mostly for small medical practices; in 1999, it bought four lots on Davenport, creating valet parking for the Children’s Hospital.

In the late ’90s, the hospital, through affiliated companies, acquired five lots on Vernon Street, a small, porch-rich strip of modest townhouses. One of the lots is now a surface parking area. Two (including number 47, pictured) host construction staging and field offices related to the cancer center, according to Y-NHH spokesman Vin Petrini. The remaining two homes, acquired in early 2006, remain vacant.

Chambers just saw the last home (number 55, pictured below) get purchased in March of 2006. Her cousin moved out of number 51, relocating to a different part of town. Both remain vacant, leaving Chambers in one of the last three occupied homes on her side of Vernon Street.

Her tenant of a year and a half, Pepe Huaman, has welcomed the hospital’s presence. He enjoys having Yale-New Haven Hospital buildings close by: “Two blocks down, people are selling drugs,” Huaman said in Spanish, gesturing down Sylvan Avenue. When Y-NHH owns properties, he said, the area is kept safe.

Petrini called the number of vacant buildings on the block common. “If you pick any street in the Hill, you could probably find something similar.”

Chambers, however, has not welcomed the change.

“I hear rumors that they’re trying to take over,” said Chambers of the hospital, “I’m not happy about that.” She’s already gotten interest from land-speculators: Fliers popped up in her mailbox six months ago asking if she’d like to sell her home. She declined: “I’ve been here 27 years,” she said, leaning against her doorway after work one recent afternoon. “I raised my kids here, so I’m gonna put up a big fight” if anyone tries to buy the property.

Hill Alderwoman Jackie James (pictured), who lives with her family on nearby Sylvan Avenue, echoed Chambers’ concerns.

“They’re buying property to take over the community,” James said of the hospital. James said she isn’t “against development,” but she is against “the process” by which the hospital buys and develops land.

“It’s apparent that they have a master plan” for the Hill, including the Vernon-Sylvan- Davenport-Howard block, asserted James. “People feel like their homes are going to be taken.”

Reached by phone for a response, Y-NHH spokesman Petrini sought to assuage neighborhood fears. The hospital has “no specific plans” to develop the Vernon-Davenport-Sylvan-Howard block, he said. “There is no development on the table.” Most of the properties it owns are occupied by “long-standing” medical use or parking lots, he noted — the block contains town houses with clinical offices used by physicians, a urology center, and parking for medical facilities.

One of the properties — a pediatric dentistry center (pictured) that opened in 2004 — is a great benefit to the community, added Petrini: “I think anyone would be hard pressed to take issue with a facility that has provided more than a thousand local kids, who have little or no insurance, with access to dental health in New Haven.”

For evidence the hospital is helping improve the surrounding community, Petrini pointed to the other side of the street on Vernon, where the hospital is encouraging the creation of affordable housing stock. The hospital is donating three vacant homes to the Hill Development Corp, and contributing up to 20 percent of the costs of renovation and construction of those properties, said Petrini. HDC’s David Alvarado said the affordable-housing group will take ownership of 38, 46 and 56 Vernon St. and start construction in about 90 to 120 days. The rehab project is part of the community benefits agreement worked out between the hospital and neighborhood surrounding the Yale-New Haven Cancer Center, Petrini said.

To those like James who see the hospital’s slow acquisition of properties across the Howard Avenue line as “a major encroachment” on residential territory, Petrini responded in an e-mail: “Y-NHH has done more to maintain the residential integrity of the Hill neighborhood than any other organization.”

“The hospital has made investments worth more than $1.5 million in affordable housing, emergency home repairs, funding to support community groups like the Boys and Girls Club, Casa Otonal, Hill Development Corporation and support for a wide arrange of initiatives such as affordable daycare options, youth services and community liaisons,” Petrini wrote.

The unoccupied eastern side of Vernon Street (including number 45, pictured, where the lot is used for construction staging for the cancer center) still gives neighbors pause, said Maurice Peters, a Hill neighborhood activist and member of CORD, a union-affiliated neighborhood advocacy group that wrangled with the hospital over that community benefits deal.

“Everyone’s worried ‘cause they see what happened on Congress Avenue,” where homes were cleared to make way for the sparkling new John C. Daniels School, said Peters. “People are concerned the hospital will acquire that [Vernon-Sylvan-Davenport-Howard] block, then turn it into medical zoning.”

“Who knows what big development is going to happen there?” posed Gwen Mills of Connecticut Center for a New Economy, a union-affiliated advocacy group. “Is that expansion process planned in collaboration with residents and the neighborhood?”

“The pressure for the hospital to expand is not going to stop,” said Mills. “It can be done piecemeal, or it can be done in collaboration with the residents as part of a shared and open comprehensive plan.”

Petrini called the comparison between the Intercontinental block and Chambers’ block “a stretch.” Whereas Intercontinental is moving ahead with a development, the hospital “has no plan at this point for any of those [vacant] properties” on Vernon, Petrini said. “The hospital has worked very cooperatively with the neighborhood for years.”

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Posted by: charlie | August 7, 2007 2:09 PM

It's time to let the Hospital expand because it is in the interest of the entire City. These completely insignificant neighborhood groups that don't actually represent a significant part of the City (which wants jobs and tax revenues so it can continue to actually live here) should be ignored. However, in return for waiving permit fees so the hospital area can expand as fast as possible, the City should retain some control over the design. It's possible for the hospital to expand while still continuing to be a pedestrian-friendly place. That means having smaller scale storefronts and nice architecture along the street, with windows not just exhaust grates!!!, and incorporating some housing where possible. The City should see that the residents are represented and compensated somewhat for their homes, but we should really be bending over backwards for the Hospital, not for a few people who live on the dilapidated, zero-tax-producing streets in the immediate two block radius.

Posted by: RealEconomy | August 7, 2007 3:54 PM

Its good NHI notes that CT Center for a "New Economy" and its CORD are union-affiliated organizations. It's a free country, so unions should create as many fronts as they want -- and the free press remember that CCNE/CORD are not neighborhood-generated, but union-created. As for "new economy", given its anti-development stance, they might keep acronym but better call themselves Connecticut Center for NO Economy. BTW, whatever happened to CCNE's chairman of just a few years ago, Lyndon Pitter, and vice prez David Lee??? And if unions spent as much building housing as they do subsidizing CCNE/CORD and ad campaigns, might the Hill prosper a bit more???

Posted by: dana b | August 7, 2007 4:29 PM

I think that the people who own homes in the area the hospital hopes to develop should count their economic blessings.

In the short term not only is there a huge employer in the Hill's backyard but there are more security guards, law-abiding folks walking to and fro, and businesses associated with the hospital. Crime is down and lawful activity is up. Opportunities for local employment abound.

In the longer term, home-owners on Vernon Street and nearby will probably get good prices for their homes, because the hospital will need those last few parcels to make their project work. The homeowners should get legal counsel NOW to make sure they get the best deal possible and not the worst possible under eminent domain or some such thing. So, while the homeowners will have to move to another neighborhood, they'll have money to buy similar or better homes.

Undoubtedly, it is upsetting to think your house will eventually get demolished and replaced with something else. You'll have to live someplace else. I know this pain -- my childhood home was demolished to make way for somebody's mansion. It's a disorienting feeling to walk by that place. People who lost their homes in airraids during WWII have told me they feel a permanent sense of loss when they can't ever really go home again. But life is full of change that brings both loss and gain. Let's not let our sentimental feelings get in the way of economic development that helps everyone.

Posted by: charlie | August 7, 2007 4:30 PM

Realeconomy, I agree. The very mention of CORD has been seen as a running local joke for at least the past 8-10 years.

Posted by: CORD Member | August 8, 2007 10:26 AM

We may be a local joke in your eyes, but in the eyes of the people we represent, we are their only protection against greed and explotation. AND we deliver votes. You cranks on this website likley don't work on behalf on your neighborhoods, support your aldermen during tough decisions and offer to help during election time. Thus, when we come knocking on their doors, they feel that they should listen. Why should they help you? Because you post on the Independent?

Posted by: charlie | August 8, 2007 11:30 AM

I don't need anyone's help. I just want to live in a community where well-paying jobs are available -- not a community where people blindly fight the expansion and growth of employers, which leads to underused parking lots, abandoned homes, and the only businesses that want to come here being one story retailers that pay very little in wages or taxes. Do you think that all the services that the City provides should be provided for free? Do you understand how much it costs just to run one public school? Do you realize how much higher the tax burden imposed by the City is when compared with other towns? The City should be doing away with services (especially affordable housing), giving more tax breaks to developers and institutions, and cutting regulations and permit fees, or all that is going to be left eventually is one big parking lot and a bunch of subsidized housing. Who in their right mind wants to build here when the City charges a permit fee that is 10 times higher than what everyone else does? CORD is a running joke only because they are partly responsible for blocking thousands of new jobs that would have located here if it weren't for our City's policies.

Posted by: jacob | August 8, 2007 4:16 PM

The very mention of CORD has been seen as a running local joke for at least the past 8-10 years.

I rather doubt this, since CORD didn't exist 8-10 years ago. I believe it was founded in 2002 or 2003. Why don't you peddle your anachronistic nonsense elsewhere?

Posted by: nhrr | August 8, 2007 4:36 PM

Let's not forget what CORD did for the city with the firm that wanted to relocate to the harbor area a year or so ago. After hearing all of their demands, and getting no backing from the mayor, the owner ran from New Haven and is probably doing fine in Rhode Island (or wherever he went). Thanks to the NHI for reminding readers of CORD's and the Center for No Economy's real roots. The problem is that the city administration sits back and lets these groups drive the bus.

Posted by: Gary Doyens | August 8, 2007 5:13 PM

I know the hospital well but even I didn't realize the full breath of their contributions to worthy causes across New Haven and especially in the Hill Section where they obviously have a vested interest. Just recently, it came out that YNHH has been providing funding to Gateway for its nursing program for a number of years and then hiring the nurses that are trained there. YNHH gave a sizeable contribution to the boys and girls club and the Hill Development Corp to name but a few. There are a lot more.

Development by the hospital is a good thing in that they provide jobs across the entire spectrum of skills - union labor and construction, maintenance, kitchen, security, all the way through all the skilled positions needed to provide medical care and research that will help find cures to life threatening deseases.

In a city and neighborhood where stable jobs are sorely needed, they should be thanked and not demonized.

And by the way, CORD doesn't speak for anybody but the Union -- they foment discord and have no history of doing anything worth a tinker's damn to bring about positive change in that neighborhood. Their entire history as far as I know is all of three years or less long -- it involves neighborhood meetings, fueled by nearly uncontrolled anger and unfounded angst. I attended several public hearings on the Yale Cancer Center and was appalled at their thuggish behavior. 1199 and CORD -- they give unions a bad name.

Posted by: RealEconomy | August 8, 2007 6:21 PM

Mr./Ms. Cordmember: You are right that your unions do politics. The unions who created this fight have spent hundreds of thousands on advertising, campaign staff, polling, and contributions. True that. Maybe they could spend a little on job training and affordable housing, too? If they matched what they spent on politics with investment in job training and affordable housing, THAT would be a community benefit.

Posted by: Esbe | August 8, 2007 11:42 PM

CORD is a kind of protection racket -- they use their political power to impose ex-legal taxes on firms that want to do business in the city.

Awhile back, CORD chased away a steel firm that wanted to open a new manufacturing plant (!) in New Haven. We probably will never see another steel plant in New Haven history.

The way it works is they convince city politicians to tell potential employers that they have to deal with CORD first if they want to do business in the city. This happened just recently when an Alderwoman told a potential developer that she just couldn't believe that he didn't understand that he hand to deal with CORD rather than the elected city bureaucratics.

Posted by: Taxed To Death | August 9, 2007 11:07 AM

ESBE - I'd like to know more about that. Sadly, I'm not surprised. There are plenty of sites where that steele plant could go too. Which Alder told them they had to coddle CORD?

Posted by: nhrr | August 9, 2007 2:44 PM

So NHI...what about an investigative article on how CORD, The Center for the New Economy and their parent organization, SEIU/1199 have been allowed to have so much influence on city politicians...starting at the TOP. With the election season right around the corner, this would be a very timely and provocative piece...which is why we can't count on the New Haven Register to do it!

Hospital’s Impact On Hill Debated

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