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Artists illegally living in Daggett Street Square packed up their belongings Wednesday after a crackdown by authorities on the former factory building that has been a warren of studios for artists and musicians, and a linchpin of the New Haven underground arts scene, for decades.
Inspectors from the fire department and the Livable City Initiative (LCI), initially alerted by a small fire, discovered that dozens of people have not just been working at Daggett Square, but living there. The property is not zoned for residential use.
And they discovered slews of building-code violations that put people’s lives in potential danger, Fire Marshall Bobby Doyle, Livable City Initiative (LCI) Deputy Director Frank D’Amore, and city Building Official Jim Turcio reported after completing a meeting about the emergency Wednesday afternoon.
Among the problems: Inspectors found an egress door padlocked from the outside. That meant in the event of a fire, people wouldn’t be able to get out.
“That really got to us,” Turcio said.
The officials said they’ve been working with the building’s owner to get tenants out and address the code violations. The owner is listed in state records as a limited-liability corporation called 69 – 75 Daggett Street LLC. Its principal member, according to state records, is Honey Damaghi of Kings Point, N.Y. Its local attorney is Ben Trachten, who was unavailable for comment as this story was published.
“I have no comment about this at all,” remarked the property manager, Don Novak.
“We’re cooperating with the owners right now. There’s no need to condemn it. They’re moving everybody out of the building,” Turcio said. He said that Damaghi’s husband Herschel has been the point person dealing with the city.
The owner will make immediate fire-safety repairs, then work on longer-term fixes that need to be made before the building can be reoccupied, officials said.
“We know realistically the logistics of moving people out overnight may be impossible. We have extended them a short period of time to get everybody out,” D’Amore said. That means some people have extra time to move stuff out of the building during the day. The city is not permitting anyone to sleep in the building.
D’Amore estimated that people might have been living in three-quarters of the complex’s 50 or so units.
A “Moron”‘s Hot Plate
The longtime artists’ outpost’s troubles began mid-day a week ago Tuesday when the fire department received a call from an occupant who saw smoke in the building.
Firefighters had a hard time “locating where the smoke was coming from,” said Fire Marshal Doyle. “They eventually found it.”
“A moron had a hot plate,” as one of Daggett Street’s tenants put it.
While at the scene, they inspected part of the building. According to multiple copies of a letter from Doyle dated Mar. 12 and posted throughout the building, inspectors found a host of code violations, including “illegal living conditions” in the property.
Among the cited violations: A lack of proper smoke detectors, exits blocked by ice and snow, and an inadequate sprinkler system. In addition, “walls that had been put up after the sprinklers were installed were not properly permitted by the building department of New Haven.”
The fire department returned Tuesday to inspect the rest of the building. It found numerous other violations, as well as evidence that people have been living there illegally, Doyle said.
Musician Erin Talbot, who used to live in the building, was present during the fire inspection, visiting her boyfriend. She said Novak left tenants phone messages about the need to leave, but many still have no place else to go.
“These are the people who would have slipped through the cracks,” she said. “but there was Daggett. There was a real sense of community. People looked out for each other. There was this code that everyone followed, that everyone respected each other. It ran for so long and it was working.”
“I’ve been coming to music events here for 20 years,” said a tenant who was still on the premises. “Another person has a studio that’s been here for 20 years. Now we’re all fucked. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Allie Tracz lived at Daggett Street for two and a half years and moved out a year ago. “A ton of my friends are literally scrambling for new places to live ASAP, and a benefit show is in the works for the people that were key parts of keeping underground music and art alive at Daggett Street,” she said.
Lt. Brendan Hosey, the neighborhood’s top cop, noted that studios have been there for over 30 years. The property has not presented a crime problem, he said. “It’s on the quiet side. I don’t get a lot of complaints.”
Daggett “was its own self-sustaining community,” Talbot said. “Even the stores on Congress heard the news and were like, ‘there go half our customers.’ I worry about what that means for the Hill community in general.”
“The city is changing so rapidly,” she said. “We kind of forgot how real the possibility that the place could get shut down was.”
Click here for a recent story about a music show at the complex.
Ohmigod, people living in illegal apartments at Daggett Square? Who could have known!
Look, Daggett Street is an institution and one worth preserving. But it has also been a fire-trap for too many years.
Why this, and only now? Who knows? This city is so haphazard in going after illegal units it boggles the mind. Sure LCI does their inspections, but that only applies to 4+ unit apartment buildings, with most of the illegal apartments being in converted single family houses, or owner-occupied multi-family's in which basements or attics are illegally converted into dwelling units.
If we really care about preventing people from dying in fires, (including firefighters, btw) I'd recommend a tip-line with a $500 reward for every firetrap that gets reported.
Of course this current case feels like selective enforcement. But only because the powers that be pursue illegal units in such a laughable manner.