Thomas MacMillan Photo
The housing authority’s latest plans to revamp a Grand Avenue public-housing complex call for two new mid-rise apartment buildings with a corner store, 13 townhouses — and, down the line, buying and tearing down the homeless shelter next door.
Those intentions came to light in a meeting of the City Plan Commission Wednesday evening in City Hall, where the housing authority showed renderings of the first phase of the proposed new Farnam Courts housing complex.
The housing authority is nearing groundbreaking on a massive overhaul of the troubled complex, which has long been a source of 911 calls. The authority plans to tear down and rebuild the 70-year-old, 244 unit housing complex in several phases. The work will begin closest to Grand Avenue, and work north into the property, which is bounded on the east and west by Franklin and Hamilton streets, respectively.
The authority presented its Phase One plans for approval by the City Plan Commission Wednesday evening. The $40 million plans call for razing 120 units of existing housing to build new apartment buildings, townhouses, and a park. The commission voted unanimously to approve the plans.
Phase Two would see the demolition of the rest of the existing project and the construction 99 more townhouse apartments north of Phase One.
The housing authority is also considering what staffer Shenae Draughn called “Phase 2a”: buying the homeless shelter next door and building more housing there. That plan, which is contingent on the shelter finding a new location to move to, would be a way to “stabilize” the area, she said.
Also Wednesday evening, the housing authority won City Plan Commission approval for its plans for 32 new apartments where a derelict warehouse now sits on Chatham Street. The Chatham Street project, along with another development at Eastview Terrace will create a total of 57 units for a total cost of $23 million. Slots in those developments will be available first to people displaced from the current Farnam Courts. Architect and Board of Zoning Appeals member Regina Winters (pictured) presented the Chatham Street plans to the commission Wednesday evening.
$40 Million
Joseph Lenehan, a project manager with engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill, presented the Phase One plans to the commission, as well as an overview of the entire project.
Phase One includes the construction of two mid-rise buildings directly on Grand Avenue, where a plaza now exists. One building will bend around the corner of Hamilton Street and will have space for a corner store on the first floor. The two buildings together will have 90 apartments.
Thirteen townhouse apartments will be built behind the mid-rises, next to a new 33,000-square-foot park and a 3,600-square-foot community center.
More townhouses will follow in Phase Two, arranged on a grid (pictured) of new streets. The north-south streets will be public; the east-west private.
The housing authority is aiming to begin construction in November, with an expectation that Phase One will take 18 months to complete.
The phase will cost $40 million, funded by a combination of tax credits, housing authority and city money, and loans.
”A Good Mix”
“We’re talking about a major social shift,” said Ed Mattison (pictured), chair of the commission. Grand Avenue near Farnam Courts is not currently “one of New Haven’s premier streets,” he said. The architecture in the area is “haphazard” and doesn’t connect well to downtown.
Mattison asked what the authority plans to do to fix that.
Draughn said the housing authority has been meeting with local merchants and is planning “treatments” for the underpass as well as facade improvements in the area.
Mattison asked about plans for the emergency shelter next door.
“We’ve had that parcel appraised,” said Draughn (pictured). The shelter is looking for a new location, she said. If it can move somewhere else, the housing authority would buy the existing property.
“We’re trying to figure out how to integrate that parcel,” she said. “We would build on it” as part of the Farnam re-do. “That is our desire, to purchase it.”
Mattison noted that the city is in the midst of reconsidering its homelessness policies. The city is nearing the end of a major 100-day push to house the majority of the city’s chronically homeless. “It’s not at all clear the city will want to continue mass sheltering.”
Draughn later said that buying the shelter would help “to stabilize the area” and “contribute to the success of the development.”
Mattison said that Farnam Courts tenants have long complained about the loitering that occurs outside the shelter, which provides beds for 75 men.
“The neighborhood doesn’t think it’s a good mix,” he said.
The housing authority is also considering what staffer Shenae Draughn called "Phase 2a": buying the homeless shelter next door and building more housing there. That plan, which is contingent on the shelter finding a new location to move to, would be a way to "stabilize" the area, she said.
Plan or Not the shelter like the rest of the people will be gone.This housing is not for the people who live there already.People wake up.The gentrification and Charter school vampires are coming.This is happing across this country in the hoods.Keep voting them in.