nothin Chauffeur Suggests: Take It To The River | New Haven Independent

Chauffeur Suggests: Take It To The River

Colony Hardware backed out of building here in the River St. district.

Allan Appel Photos

Tear down Church Street South. Move its public-housing families to a new spread by Fair Haven’s waterfront.

That idea came from a cabbie-turned-limo driver who helps review city policy on the side.

The professional driver, Antoine Scott (pictured at left), floated that idea at this month’s regular meeting of the city’s Development Commission, of which he is a member.

Scott has spent a lot of time in the environs of Union Station and the Church Street South projects across the street. He drove a taxi for eight years and now owns two limo companies. His time behind the wheel looking at the troubled project has got him wondering: When will it come down?

Scott also volunteers to serve as an appointee on the Development Commission. As a development commissioner, he also hears about the city’s ongoing clean-up of brownfield lots and shoring up crumbling but historic structures in the River Street section of Fair Haven, and the city’s efforts to find businesses to locate there.

So he popped the question at last week’s commission meeting: Why not put some housing there instead—nice public housing, like the rebuilt Quinnipiac Terrace, also along Fair Haven’s riverfront —and move Church Street South’s current occupants there, to make room for a new development across the train station?

In the process, he raised a larger question about redeveloping Fair Haven, separate from the Church Street South question: Should the city be expanding its view of the re-emerging River Street district to include housing as well as business?

We need that Church Street South space. [When it’s redone], it’ll change New Haven’s image. The city doesn’t have a sense of urgency they should have,” Scott said.

Officers Karl Jacobson & Mark DeCarvalho check on Church Street South.

Scott’s argument drew from his many years as a professional driver. When they [arrivals in New Haven] get off the train, what is the first thing they see? The projects. If we’re seriously thinking about the way New Haven is perceived, it has to start here,” he said.

I understand Church Street is owned by private folks. But the city has to get it done! That land is prime land. That land is going to make or break New Haven.”

Can you see the same type of Q Terrace being built on River Street for Church Street folks?” Scott asked Deputy Economic Director Tony Bialecki, who was conducting the meeting.

Bialecki said he didn’t think so. At least not yet. The city has been bogged down for years in talks with Church Street South’s private owners about the future of that land. (Though privately owned, the project houses families receiving federal Section 8 rent subsidies.) The city does plan to transform that land eventually. But it has proved a headache to deal with the Boston-based owners, Northland Investment Corporation, even just to get repairs made there to keep tenants safe.

Meanwhile, it is roaring ahead with a plan to raze a different public-housing project, Farnam Courts on Grand Avenue.

Bialecki noted that, unlike with Church Street South, the city’s housing authority, not an outside private business, owns Farnam Courts. So New Haven can move forward faster with its plans there.

It has begun planning to move families out of the project in order to raze the old buildings and construct a new mixed-income, partially homeowner-occupied community like the ones that have transformed Q Terrace and Monterey Place. As part of the plan, the city plans to make Farnam Courts smaller and scatter new public-housing elsewhere on the city’s east side.

Why not River Street? Scott wondered.

Bialecki.

The members of the New Haven Development Commission, by state statue, are charged with being the stewards” of development within the city’s far flung municipal development districts.

Those include areas the city has designated for intensive development, including sections around the Mill River, Science Park, Quinnipiac River, a quadrant of Orange Street near the old Register building, the Route 34/Downtown Crossing area, and the River Street Municipal Development District.

Once the city sets up those area, it can pursue new development in a coherent, broad way and sometimes have faster and sometimes unique access to state and federal grants. Along River Street, it has been hoping to find new light manufacturers to move back onto long abandoned factory properties.

The city is also about to shop 112 Chapel, a corner lot at Poplar Street. The adjacent parcel is owned by the Von Roll company, with whom the city is beginning talks.

As Bialecki described the city’s energetic efforts to clean up River Street and make its parcels more saleable to businesses, Scott raised his hand. Is it too far fetched to consider a site there to move [the] Church Street South people?” he asked.

Bialecki replied that the River Street area is seen primarily as a place to locate business, the kind that laborers from Fair Haven can walk to. The city doesn’t have many such properties left, he noted.

Thirty of the 45 [G.L.] Capasso [employees] walk to work. That’s why it’s mostly industrial, not residential development,” Bialecki said. But people who’ve asked about [developing] housing [there] are not turned down.”

Development commissioners Kevin Ewing and Antoine Scott.

Before the session ended, Commissioner Kevin Ewing (at left in photo with Scott) spoke to support Scott but to emphasize neither he nor Scott opposes business development. Why not proceed on parallel tracks? Ewing asked.

Bialecki replied that they city would have to do a far more extensive clean-up of the old industrial properties to allow for housing. If there are no takers for commercial at [for example] the Colony site [that fell through], then maybe consider residential. Yes.”

Bialecki said his boss, city development chief Kelly Murphy, will further discuss the issue with commissioners at their February meeting.

Scott raised legitimate” questions that the city has been debating for years about where to build housing, Mayor John DeStefano said when told about the commission meeting.

He noted that about a decade ago, developer Joel Schiavone had looked at the idea of building housing at that very River Street area.

Officials have concluded that in general it’s better not to isolate public housing in industrial areas like River Street, DeStefano said. On the other hand, people like to live near the water.

Paul Bass contributed reporting.

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