New Haven Independent

Wintergreen’s Like A Dorm, After All

by Thomas MacMillan | December 11, 2008 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (31)

The developers promised the neighborhood that their new apartment complex would be upscale adult housing, not a rowdy ersatz student dorm. Surprise! Neighbors already know the Wintergreen apartments as “Animal House.”

Students have been moving in by the dozen, and 17 shuttles a day are taking them to and from the University of New Haven.

Concerns about noise and rowdiness at the new 293-unit Wintergreen apartment complex have been a focus for neighbors for months now — and were a focus of discussion at the Westville Community Management Team’s Wednesday night meeting.

The owners — who got city permission to build the complex on the grave of an abandoned Blake Street factory — ended up failing to find enough adults willing to rent the upscale apartments. So they’ve filled apartments with many college students after all.

Westville Alderman Tom Lehtonen was one of several community leaders who said that they have been fielding complaints from other Wintergreen tenants about the behavior of college students living in the facility.

When the apartment buildings were built two years ago, neighbors received a promise from the builder, Metropolitan Developers, that they would not be marketed primarily to college students.

Last spring, after management failed to find enough intended adult renters, Metropolitan and University of New Haven officials returned to neighbors with a plan to use part of the complex as a UNH dorm. The neighbors shot them down. (See previous Independent story here.)

Since then, Wintergreen has begun leasing individual apartments to students. The apartment buildings are not official student housing. But so many UNH students are there that the university has instituted the 17 daily shuttle runs. Some of the other tenants say the student behavior has gotten out of control.

“Please Help”

“It’s an unsupervised dorm,” said Livable City Initiative neighborhood specialist Elaine Braffman (pictured), who has received a number of complaints about the quality of life in the complex.

Braffman told the management team that she had spoken with a schoolteacher living at Wintergreen who has had to send her 3 year-old to stay with the child’s grandmother. The child couldn’t sleep amid all the noise in the building. The tenant too has been disturbed by the behavior of the students in the development.

“One night she went out and there were students fighting in the hallway,” Braffman said.

The tenant reportedly approached the property managers and asked to be moved to a quieter floor. “They said they would do it, but that it would take five hundred dollars,” Braffman said.

After the meeting, Braffman said that she had about six calls from people complaining about Wintergreen. Braffman said the messages said things like, “Please help… It’s getting horrible here… We can’t sleep… It’s out of control.”

“Some people there are very, very unhappy,” said Lehtonen (pictured) at Thursday’s meeting.

Lehtonen said that he spoke with a Wintergreen manager after fielding complaints from his constituents.

“I told her I had received four complaints. She didn’t think that was a very large number,” Lehtonen said after the meeting. “Management is in denial.”

Mary Faulkner (at right in picture), head of the Westville management team, said that she has gotten several complaints as well. “They’re saying it’s Animal House,” she said.

“We’ve been getting increasing complaints at night,” reported Westville’s top cop, Lt. Bernie Somers. He said calls are coming in about Wintergreen parties and bottles in the parking lot.

Lehtonen said that he has contacted the administration at UNH and was told that there were fewer than 50 students living in Wintergreen. Faulkner noted the 17 daily shuttles between the apartment complex and the university.

Lehtonen said that the apartments are rented out to the students directly, not through the college.

“We’re kind of powerless,” he said. “Because the lease is cosigned by the students’ parents.”

The Westville management team plans to organize a meeting in January for all parties to talk about the issue and work toward a solution. Braffman was one of several at the meeting to point out that, given the size and location of the large apartment complex, Wintergreen’s success or failure will have a large impact on Westville.

“This could be a wonderful thing for Westville,” Braffman said. She went on to say that if the problems aren’t dealt with, Wintergreen could become a liability.

Wednesday Night At Wintergreen

Just before 9 p.m. on Wednesday, a UNH van was parked at the entrance to Wintergreen, ready to shuttle students to campus. Two UNH students were standing nearby, waiting to meet their friend.

Minutes later, the gate went up and a black sports car pulled out. The two students got in, one of them loading a case of Bud Light into the back seat. Rolling down his tinted window, the driver (who declined to give his name), said he is also a UNH student. He offered his perspective on life in Wintergreen.

“It’s nice,” he said of his two-bedroom place.

Asked about the perception that students are acting rowdy, he said, “It’s a little bit of an overreaction, to be honest.” He said that his building is occupied by a “younger crowd” but that it isn’t out of control.

The driver cut the conversation short. “I hate to rush you, but I’ve got to get to the package store before nine,” he said, before rolling up the window and driving off.

Later, Chris Woodhouse (pictured) emerged from the building. Woodhouse, a Southern Connecticut senior studying finance, has been living at Wintergreen since September. He said that Southern had helped him to find a place to live after he was dropped from on-campus housing for a late payment.

Woodhouse said that Southern set up a meeting the week before classes began. He showed up at Wintergreen to find three other Southern students looking for housing. The group of four moved into a two-bedroom apartment. Woodhouse said that they’re paying $2,700 per month, utilities included.

“It’s a nice place. I can’t complain,” said Woodhouse, who also mentioned that it was the most expensive housing option he had considered.

He said that he has gotten some notes from his neighbors about noise. “I’ve gotten those complaints on my door,” he said, explaining that notes were put on all the doors in his hallway. “They said ‘This is not a dormitory blah blah blah.’”

Woodhouse said he didn’t think the notes were targeted at his apartment specifically, since he and his roommates are rarely home and don’t make a lot of noise. He suggested that some of the neighbors were exaggerating.

“I have a friend, a girl, who had five girlfriends over one night,” Woodhouse said, “and the neighbor kept coming over and telling her he was going to call the cops.”

Woodhouse said it’s not an “Animal House.”

“It’s pretty calm, to be honest.”

Thursday Morning

Thursday morning in the leasing office at Wintergreen apartments, soft music was playing. Leasing agent Georgette Turnbull offered a visitor a hot beverage and explained that Wintergreen has a “zero tolerance policy for noise.” She explained that they send out a notice to tenants who violate the policy. Beyond that, “I can’t give any information.”

She declined to comment further. Other Wintergreen officials couldn’t be reached for comment.

Wintergreen pricing lists show that regular rents range from $1,500 per month for a one bedroom to $2,130 for a three bedroom. Student rates are for furnished apartments and range from $1954 for a one bedroom to $3336 per month for a three bedroom.

There is still another, lower, rate for University of New Haven students: $1,854 per month for a furnished one bedroom, and $3,270 per month for a furnished-three bedroom.

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Comments

Posted by: Glut | December 11, 2008 3:04 PM

A glut of high-priced housing in New Haven leads to poor choices on the part of the companies renting them out: what a surprise.

Maybe we need to be more careful about blanket approving "up-scale" living & shopping. These companies rarely succeed & tend to not create the density we need for a real community. They tend to attract only those who can scrape by while over-paying, and bust the neighborhoods they are built in. They largely depend on the credit history (and cheque books) of out of state parents.

Posted by: Neighbor | December 11, 2008 3:04 PM

Check the records. It was not just neighbors who shot down the UNH dorm plan, the owners went to the City for a zoning change.

I raised the matter last month with two Aldermen and Mary. But in response to their question, no, from my nearby house I have not observed noise, trash, drunkenness etc.

I think UNH is DEAD WRONG in this matter, providing a van, negotiating lower rates, referring students, etc. and shows they cannot be trusted to follow, within City limits, what New Haven neighborhood groups or City Hall decides. But no, from the outside, I have never observed anything that would cause me to attribute the Animal House name to this complex.

Notice the university is fully aware of how many of its students live there. With the dorm plan they offered Resident Advisors and students would be under the school residential behavior rules...the school could have kicked them out. Is UNH prepared to, without significantly expanding their population on site, get these under-age package-store shoppers under its disciplinary umbrella?

Posted by: TFC | December 11, 2008 4:15 PM

It would have been better to let UNH take over part of the Wintergreen building as an University so that as NEIGHBOR points out they would take responsibility and have the dorm monitors. They would also be segregated from the rest of the building now they are mixed in.

The local Alders, the Management team & City Hall should sit down with President Caplan of UNH & the management of Wintergreen and work out a deal. It would mean changing the PDD but the other option is to let the building go section 8. Please don't let that happen.

Posted by: jay | December 11, 2008 4:46 PM

What the heck is this???? UNH is told no, so they just go ahead an do it anyway.. as evident by the fact they have a shuttle running there - and we just take it!!! unbelievable!! this was one a the stipulations in building the apartments - it's in the initial documentation from BZA.

Posted by: Townie | December 11, 2008 5:54 PM

The prices these people are paying at Wintergreen are extortionate! No wonder they couldn't find enough grown-up working people to rent. I had a whole house by the water in Milford a couple of years ago for what a one-bedroom costs in this place. I'd rather buy my kid a house in Hamden for $200K and pay a $1200/mo mortgage than rent a little apartment in animal house for 2 grand.

Posted by: anon | December 11, 2008 6:00 PM

Give me a break. You live in a city. You can't tell other people who to rent their properties to.

Posted by: Glut | December 11, 2008 6:02 PM

Maybe the city can buy this building back and manage a succesful moderately priced apartment building? or did the owners make it so up-scale that it can't possibly be under 3k for 2 bedrooms?

Seriously, those are ludicrous prices, and it's their fault for building such a poor building. 2700 is a ridiculous price even before the current economic failure, in a city that has so many over-priced units. 140k a unit is not viable.

Look to Chelsea in NYC for an idea of where it leads: their rents have jumped to 4293/mo for the average 2 bedroom, and their vacancy rates have also increased, to the highest in the entire city.

We're pricing ourselves out of the cities all over again.

If we raise prices so high that no one of the middle class can afford to live here, we'll end up with section 8 and abandoned luxury units: and then we'll have soaring murder rates & crime all over again.

New Haven, let's not make the same mistake twice.

Posted by: In the Know | December 11, 2008 9:31 PM

These apartments were developed by Bob Matthews, long time friend of Governor Rowland and John DeStefano. He flipped them after the approvals were given.

Posted by: Chuck | December 11, 2008 11:08 PM

At the beginning of the Student situation, the community members and the BZA had the opportunity to have student housing limited to ONE building on the campus that would have been supervised. That was shot down and now there is an issue of non-supervised student housing spread through out the campus. This is another example of being careful what you ask for.

Posted by: anonn | December 12, 2008 12:04 AM

The city buy and successfully manage an apartment building?

That's really funny.

Posted by: You B | December 12, 2008 1:20 AM

I bet this is an issue of poorly built apartments, if the walls were thicker tenants wouldn't hear one another.

Posted by: robn | December 12, 2008 9:22 AM

If the BZA is granting variances for dense apartment buildings despite the concerns of adjacent propoerty owners, the least the BZA could do is protect those owners. For example, in this case the variance should require the owner to write expulsion and security deposit loss into all leases. Then some certain amount of complaints or noise ordinance violations can trigger the expulsion. Problem solved.

Posted by: James | December 12, 2008 9:46 AM

Maybe the city can buy this building back and manage a succesful moderately priced apartment building?

The city couldn't successfully manage a Burger King.

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | December 12, 2008 9:53 AM

Were it ever so, Robn. Whatever profession you're in, it's definitely not law!

Posted by: Glut | December 12, 2008 10:27 AM

anon,
I'm glad you saw the humor in that :) I was thinking it'd go unnoticed.

Robn,
Unfortunately, BZA has no say in making this. I don't believe any zoning relief was required at all, because they were building appropriate to the zoning.

People think BZA has magic powers but the reality is we have very good, frequently strict, ordinances here. BZA is charged to interpret these in a LEGAL way, not in a "We see a problem happening down the road." I would be pretty unhappy if some small-minded person on BZA could shoot down businesses they just didn't like.

Sadly, no one can predict the future when they write a zoning ordiance in the 1950s, and it's an incredible amount of work to change them once you already have thriving neighborhoods that exist in conformity to the ordinance.

The real criminals here are the developers, who made a business decision (293 units??? In Westville? that cost MORE THAN DOWNTOWN?)

This wasn't by Matthews, either, that's a bold lie.

The developer who built the building was Metropolitan Development, which is a developer based in VIRGINIA.

An out of state developer came in & legally built a building. This wasn't a city or Zoning failure, but we get to pay for it.

City Plan did have numerous issues with this building but they were restricted to signage & other issues which would not have prevented this.

Posted by: Sarah28 | December 12, 2008 11:12 AM

This is a textbook case of naïve government on the part of the Alderman and the Westville Management Team.
Pure naïveté to:

1. Turn down the UNH proposal to lease an entire building and manage it with a Resident Adviser on site. They are doing it successfully in West Haven!

2. Think that individual students will not contract individual leases, (of course with the blessing of UNH). Ours is a free market, and that maneuver is legit! So what the UNH proposal, (pending approval from the Board of Alderman).

3. Turn down an opportunity for occupancy that would have nicely coincide with the Westville main street status

As a result, student apartments are intermingled with non-students who find themselves, living in the middle of an unsupervised dorm! That is where the complaints emanate from. I know since I live across the street from the coop! There is no valid complaint whatsoever from anyone outside the complex!
Solution:

Try to salvage that aspect of the arrangement (if not too late).
Go back to the bargaining table and let an entire building be set aside for students with a Resident Adviser on site and security and the shutlle. Confine the behavior to the "animal house" building. Then crack down hard, (very hard), if the unruliness overflows outside the coop.

When the our officials try to overdo it, with a truly naïve perspective, the purpose, (no matter how noble the intention), gets defeated.

Mr. Alderman, please take notice and the next time, exercise a little objectivity and broadness of perspective. Maybe even bring it to the full board of Aldermen for approval as you are expected to do rather than unilaterally and publicly promising to stall or kill the proposal.

You are the alderman for the entire community, including the business interest therein.

Posted by: robn | December 12, 2008 1:23 PM

YTDAW and GLUT,

I'm not a lawyer, and I can't really spell, but I can read.

http://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/hm031.pdf

According to the Secretary of State, a landlord has the right to evict if a tenenats noise disturbs other tenants. Anecdotally, i've been told by a Smoothie tenant that a resident was expelled for repeatedly disturbing other residents with loud noise.

As to the question of whether the BZA has the right to make conditional demands when granting a variance, refer to New haven Zoning regulations, Article VII, Section 63(c)(2) and (3). Assuming that the NHI commenter who stated that a variance was granted is correct, the answer is yes.

touche mon frere

Posted by: Ackkk | December 12, 2008 3:33 PM

I can't think of anyone I know who would want to live next to four college kids crammed into a two bedroom apartment.

And to think that the Wintergreen management is charging their long-term tenants $500 to move away from the nuisances they are creating?

No wonder they are having vacancy problems.

Posted by: anon | December 12, 2008 5:05 PM

The city better encourage this building's use as a dorm, before it quickly spirals downhill into a massive, crime ridden Section 8 project.

Posted by: Tim | December 12, 2008 5:23 PM

What the article should have mentioned is that there is a securiry guard here, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Now do you think if college kids werent living here they would need a guard to control the noise etc? And no there isnt a "zero tolerance policy" if there were half the kids living here would have already been kicked out. When we moved into here in March this place was great, ever since the kids are living here, there are always bottles outside and who knows how many calls to the cops have taken place. You cant mix working professionals with kids spending Mom and Dads money on a nice place for college.

Posted by: Sarah28 | December 12, 2008 6:00 PM

Annon,

This is exactly what the powers in place DID NOT understand before they shut down the very well thought UNH proposal. Now they stand to loose the majority of non-students who were willing to live in there in the first place.

Every college town in America understands that concept! From Downtown New Haven, Middletown, Hamden, to Cambridge MA. Every town that is, except our very own Westville-West-hill Ward!

Naive and amateurish!

Posted by: In the Know | December 12, 2008 10:24 PM

Glut is incorrect. The old factory here was owned by Bob Matthews. There was much hype about him saving New Haven in the 1990s. Both Rowland and DeStefano had many picture opps in the Advocate and the Register telling all how he would save jobs in New Haven. The business went broke about 2000 and Bob Matthews developed the plans for todays slums in the sky. He flipped then over to Metropolitan as they were a basket case from day one. If Westville residents have problems with these apartments now they should look to Matthews, Rowland and DeStefano for there predicament. All this is public record in the Register and Advocate archives, and at city hall.

Posted by: ChuckP | December 13, 2008 7:13 AM

Sarah28, you are on the money!

Posted by: Westville Res | December 13, 2008 2:12 PM

The negotiations between UNH and Wintergreen should never have involved the management team or zoning. The management team thought they won a victory when they helped shoot down this deal, and now you see what happens when "government" gets involved with private transactions. Since UNH would be legally liable to the other tenants if a formal lease arrangement had been made, I am sure the current non-student tenants would have far less complaints than they do now. Just like ArLo and all the other failures by non-business persons trying to change our neighborhood, this is just another example of ineptitude. As far as who was behind the project, I don't think it really matters as long as JDS doesn't decide that Westville needs more Section 8 like he did on Central Avenue.

Posted by: ChuckP | December 13, 2008 6:33 PM

Westville Res, you too are right on the money! This is very encouraging.

Posted by: Central Ave Res | December 14, 2008 10:59 AM

Sarah and Westville Res,
Right on! The Management Team apparently did not know that the building has the right to sign individual leases with students just like they have the right to sign individual leases with section 8 tenants, and they have done a few of those! Not doing so will be individual discrimination and is against the law.

Elaine Braffman
"It's an unsupervised dorm" only because you (neighborhood specialist and Management Team), killed the proposal that called for a separate and supervised dorm building. You should know better and educate the NIMBO (not in my backyard) mentality neighbors!

Faulkner
The UNH shuttle shows good and responsible citizenship on the part of UNH, (just as Yale does). It prevents the students from driving and bringing in more traffic! That is a good thing and should not be a point of criticism on your part !?

Are we going to get a comment or opinion from our leader? I know they are reading this debate.

Posted by: Sarah28 | December 14, 2008 11:18 AM

Westville Res

The community will always be emotional and often ill informed about these issues. The Alderman and Management Team are there to show leadership and tell the community what the alternatives are. They are the one to educate the folks and tell them that once it is approved and built, the building owners have certain rights.

They failed in that mission.

They must have supported that proposal and express it thru the Board of Alderman. I am waiting to see if they now have the political courage to recognize that blunder and approach the management and UNH in that sense: Reopen that proposal and push it thru the Board of Alderman so that down the road a building is set aside for the Animal House ... pardon me ... eh ... I meant the "Student Dormitories".

Posted by: Glut | December 14, 2008 11:03 PM

Robn,

I, too, can read. The first thing I did was search the dun dun dun Public Record of Zoning Relief decisions.

Guess which property is not mentioned?

This one.

So, I think you are probably wrong.

Furthermore, I actually DO work with ordinances, and zoning, and variances, & I can assure you that the BZA can't just give any old condition :) Conditions have to make sense & be applicable, otherwise you risk legal liability & damages later... You can't just make any rule you like when, for instance, you grant a parking variance: refer to the case of the Laundromat on Whalley. I'm sure BZA would love to restrict that laundromat! but how can they? The only relief that the laundromat is seeking is related to parking. The only conditions BZA can (or will) apply will involve... parking.

"In The Know": I'd be surprised if you really were in the know. Considering that the original paperwork was filed by Metropolitan, it's hard to label this a Matthews case.

Maybe he did own the building, but he wasn't using it in this way, nor was he doing anything with it. Selling a vacant building to someone is perfectly legal, in no way questionable, and a basic transaction that occurs any day of the week.

Do you honestly think that a secret conspiracy exists there? Some guy (maybe) sold a building to someone else. Someone else filed paperwork, but not for a variance, so there was no real place for City Government to interpret & modify.

Posted by: robn | December 15, 2008 10:30 AM

GLUT,

It looks like it may not have reached the BZA but did go before City Planning becuase its a PDD and that triggers community review and input.

http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/uploads/1383-25.pdf

There appear to be many conditions attached to this projects approval and I fail to see how asking landlords to ask their tenants to obey the law is unreasonable.

Posted by: cedarhillresident | December 15, 2008 7:47 PM

RobN almost all landlord do have a quite and enjoyment clause in their leases and they have every legal right to implement it! I know that their are many large property owners that do not hesitate to use it. And with a student population in the building the company managing it should use it or the more serious student will find housing that will allow them to study and have quite. They are so desperate to fill the building that they are not considering the long term effect of not enforcing the clause. Sometime just a letter to the offending tenant is enough to get things under control.
The project is not in walking distance of any schools so they are not going to attract who they thought they would. Sadly the community are the people that lose out. But with that said the community should meet with the property manager and come to some kind of a middle ground. You can not expect them to leave it empty but they can have some kind of say so in the behavior of who is living their. I have a slum lord that seems to have finally got some understanding with the community and we have come to a happy middle.
But as someone stated at least they are not filling it with section 8 which may actually get them more rent for the apartments then students.

Posted by: Mary Faulkner | January 20, 2009 5:34 PM

The Westville~West Hills Community Management Team (CMT) has meetings on the second Wednesday of every month at 6:30pm at the Valley Street substation. The CMT is not a government agency but a group of residents working with city agencies and businesses to improve the quality of life in this district. (http://www.westvillect.org/westvillecmt)

For more background info on Wintergreen and the community please check out http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2008/03/westville_resid.php
When UNH held the public meeting last March there was not enough time to change the existing PDD to accommodate the UNH dorm plan even if the community was behind it. They had a tight schedule and it was, in the end, UNH that decided not to pursue the change to the PDD. The most recent concern about Wintergreen is how management is handling students on the property and complaints from non student residents.

The issues that the CMT tackle are decided by the community. Come down and see for yourself what we are about. By getting involved you can help decide what issues are important in this community. If you have concerns or comments about Wintergreen or any other issues you can email me at westvillewesthillscmt@gmail.com or come to a meeting. We would love to see you there.

Wintergreen’s Like A Dorm, After All

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