New Haven Independent

In a move described by a critic as “deeply rotten,” the Pequonnock Yacht Club met with the Historic District Commission on Monday, Aug. 3, without published public notice. Upset neighbors and allies are now leveling accusations of backroom deals and conflicts of interest on the part of commissioners.

The Pequonnock Yacht Club, located for more than a century in Bridgeport, is looking to move its headquarters to City Point, New Haven’s historic waterfront district.

Two months ago, the club’s plan to renovate two historic buildings met with the approval of the City Plan Commission.

Then last month, at a meeting attended by concerned neighbors, the Historic District Commission voted to deny the yacht club’s application without prejudice. The yacht club indicated that it would try again, and it has resubmitted an application.

The commission will hold its regularly scheduled monthly public meeting on Wednesday evening, when the yacht club’s new proposal will be up for approval.

Neighbors are worried that the club’s plans for the historic buildings will change the character of the neighborhood and threaten the historical integrity of City Point. One of the buildings in question is the last remaining oyster house in the city, a remnant of a once thriving New Haven industry. Neighbors also have concerns about parking and traffic difficulties that a new club might bring to their neighborhood.

“This Is So Unfair”

Last month, Anstress Farwell, head of the New Haven Urban Design League, came to the aid of worried neighbors. Using a state law, she made her organization a party to the negotiations between the yacht club and the Historic District Commission. She also worked with local residents to make a plan for working with the yacht club.

Farwell said she had been in “very cordial” communication with the yacht club and was engaged in what she thought was a public process of working out the differences between the club and the neighborhood.

So it was with some dismay that Farwell learned recently that the yacht club had met with the Historic District Commission Aug. 3 in an unpublicized “special meeting” in City Hall.

“Hideous! Hideous! It’s just so wrong in terms of public process,” Farwell said.

The meeting was technically public. Notice was given 24 hours in advance via a memo available in the clerk’s office. However, notice of the meeting was not published anywhere else. Very few concerned City Point residents knew of the meeting.

“Am I supposed to run every day to City Hall to see if a meeting is being held?” Farwell said. City Plan staffer David Barone, who manages the Historic District Commission, should have called her, said Farwell. “He had plenty of opportunity to tell me,” she said. He could have sent out an email to people who have been involved in the discussions, she added.

“It’s completely wrong to do things like this,” Farwell said. “It purposely excluded members of the public that were engaged in the issue.”

Farwell described the actions as “very bold, very disrespectful,” “very manipulative,” and “deeply rotten.”

“It was not an open meeting. It was an ex parte meeting,” said Kris Sainsbury, a City Point resident who has been an outspoken critic of the yacht club’s plans. Like Farwell, Sainsbury was outraged to hear of the meeting post fact.

“I’m ticked.” Sainsbury said. “This is so unfair. So unfair.”

Sainsbury said that she is concerned that the yacht club’s design will be bad for the neighborhood. “They want to build a McMansion down there.”

In Sainsbury’s best-case scenario, the yacht club will present a plan on Wednesday evening that’s acceptable to all City Point neighbors. She’s not optimistic that will happen. “In reality I expect a tussle.”

In addition to objections about the lack of publicity for the Aug. 3 meeting, Anstress Farwell also raised objections to what allegedly occurred in the meeting. Farwell said that she was told that one of the commissioners “took out his pencil and drew” on the architectural designs. If this is true, Farwell said, it amounts to an overstepping of boundaries by the commissioner.

Farwell, who was a member of the Historic District Commission for 12 years, said that she knows firsthand the conflicts of interest that can accompany the deliberations of the commission.

“When I was a commissioner we were strongly directed not to redesign plans,” she said. It can get very “complicated” if the “person voting on an application is in engaging in the creation of design.”

“There’s no kind of proper authority being exerted here,” Farwell said. “It creates a very mushy situation.”

“It Wasn’t A Secret Or Anything”

City Plan staffer David Barone — manager of the Historic District Commission — responded that the special Aug. 3 meeting between the yacht club and commission was intended to help the club determine how to redesign its application. After the commission denied the first application without prejudice, the club was sent back to the drawing board. But it wasn’t clear to the club what improvements the commission was looking for, Barone said.

“The applicant felt like he really needed some direction of where to go,” Barone said. The Aug. 3 meeting was called so that the club and commission could “have a discussion of where there were weak points.”

“I think it was a good discussion,” Barone said. In the meeting, the commissioners and yacht club representatives deliberated over a variety of aspects of the design, Barone said, including what materials to use, and the “massing” of the proposed addition. “It ranged far and wide,” he said.

As for complaints that the meeting wasn’t publicized, Barone said, “The meeting was called appropriately.” There was a notice of the meeting at the city clerk’s office, he said. Since the topic was a “Discussion Item” rather than a “Public Hearing Item,” there was no obligation to notify abutting property owners, Barone said.

“It certainly wasn’t the intention to block anybody out,” Barone said. “It wasn’t a secret or anything.” There were “three or four” City Point residents at the meeting, he said.

Barone acknowledged that the meeting had come together quickly. “The rush was that we had the regular meeting coming up,” he said. “We wanted to see if there was any way to give [the yacht club] enough feedback” so that the applicants could be ready to resubmit their application for the regular meeting.

Responding to charges that commissioners may have stepped out of their boundaries by helping the yacht club too much with the design, Barone said that he understood the challenge of conflicting interests that commissioners face when meeting with applicants. “That’s always a fine line,” he said, referring to the border between advice and “designing it for the applicant.”

However the commissioners did not cross the line in their discussion with the yacht club, Barone said. “I don’t think you could characterize it as ‘designing.’”

Asked if a commissioner had drawn on the yacht club’s designs, Barone said, “I don’t remember that happening.”

“If someone made a pencil mark on a plan, I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about that,” he added.

Reached by phone, Pequonnock Yacht Club Commodore Dave Battistoni declined to comment.