A Decade Later, Much Changed. Not Everything

When the Independent published its first article on Sept. 6, 2005, the apartment building at 235 Winchester Ave. looked like this:

Ten years later it looks like …

… this.

Meanwhile, the stretch of the Dixwell neighborhood around 235 Winchester would be unrecognizable to a visitor from 2005. Developer Kenny Hill, a former Yale football standout and New York Giants safety who returned to his college town to buy and fix up properties, believed he could jumpstart a revival in the area by restoring the bombed-out 18-unit apartment building. Instead, thanks to a never-resolved dispute with the city, the building has remained abandoned, ravaged by the elements, while revival has swept other nearby properties. Building 25 of the Science Park tech center across the street has been rebuilt and is filling up. A developer has almost completed the transformation of a problem bar and abandoned building into new apartments and a G Cafe coffee shop down a block on Henry Street.

Meanwhile, the abandoned Winchester factory is being converted into luxury lofts renting for a $3,000 a month …

… next door to a state-funded construction of a Google-like headquarters for a local company called Higher One.

New Haven itself has remade itself since 2005. We became a de facto sanctuary city, welcoming Latino immigrants who have revived Fair Haven’s commercial core. Yale built a cancer hospital along with other nearby properties. The state’s largest apartment tower arose on a long-empty lot at State and Chapel Streets, as new market-rate housing construction throughout the center city. We instituted the state’s first public-financing system for local elections. A reviled downtown mini-highway is being filled in, with new buildings sprouting alongside it. The public schools have all been rebuilt or renovated. Once-notorious public-housing projects — Elm Haven, Quinnipiac Terrace, Brookside, Rockveiw — became attractive mixed-income new developments. Yale and the Community Foundation created a college scholarship for all city students who keep their grades up. Officials admitted that the school system itself was producing miserable results, and, in concert with the teachers union, embarked on an (as-yet largely unrealized) reform drive. Candidates backed by Yale’s unions won control of the Board of Alders, then the city elected its first female mayor. A reviled decades-old fence dividing West Rock’s public-housing developments from Hamden came down. Community policing finished dying, then came back to life. People grew addicted to new e‑time-suckers called Facebook and YouTube, first on computers, then on cell phones. Bikes are ridden and talked about, everywhere, including on new designated lanes. Local news and debate migrated online (as well, now, onto radio).

But at 235 Winchester, between Tilton and Henry streets, in the shadow of Science Park, time has stood still. And Kenny Hill nurtures the same hope he nurtured a decade ago: that he and the city can get a legal dispute behind them so he can restore a dangerous eyesore into new homes. Along with a second once-majestic three-story apartment house he owns a half ‑block away at the corner of Winchester and Tilton.

Neighbors like Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison have the same hope.

“Those are two black eyes” on an improving area, Morrison noted. ​“We’ve got to do something.”

Hill is doing something at the second building, at 201 Winchester (pictured). He and a partner succeeded in renovating and renting out that building’s 12 apartments. But in April 2012 the house erupted in flames after a tenant’s guest flicked a smoldering cigarette butt onto ​“an authorized barbecue grill” that had a residue of lighter fluid. Hill said he is ​“45 percent” along the way of rebuilding it.

A half-block north, 235 Winchester has continued crumbling. Its side walls are shot. It needs a gut rehab.

“This has been the bane of my existence,” Hill said this week in an interview at the site. ​“I’ve probably lost $2 million on this project.”

Hill, who went from Yale to the Super Bowl as an Oakland Raider, planned to carry out the gut rehab when he and a partner bought the rundown building in 2003 for $420,000.

He was already investing in hundred-year-old New Haven homes, renovating them himself, then renting them out. He snapped up six houses, mostly multi-families, on Court, John, Brown, Olive, and Chestnut streets in Wooster Square. Those projects succeeded as the neighborhood took off.

Hill believed Dixwell was on the verge of turning around, too.

The city wanted to help him. It gave him a $168,000 loan to remove lead from 14 of the 18 apartments inside.

Then it told him whom to hire. Hill hired the contractor. The contractor, he said, never did the promised work; what work it did carry out, it carried out wrong and in violation of safety rules. The city insisted he pay the contractor, saying it did do the work. Hill said the problem was costing him money and he didn’t want to pay for work not done. The contractor was supposed to remove piles of asbestos that were found at the building as well. It didn’t, Hill said, so he paid out of his own pocket for the removal. Meanwhile, the city paid most of the loan money to the contractors — while the building remained windowless and plagued by lead. City officials insisted the work had been done. The city sought to get the loan money back from Hill; an impasse ensued.

The two sides argued for years. (The contractor, meanwhile, died.) Read about that here. The city threatened to demolish the building. Hill threatened a lawsuit.

Standing at the site this week, Hill pointed to the side of the house. All the wood now needs to replaced with plywood, he said. The building needs a new roof, new siding, new framing, all new windows, sheathing, wrapping. The stately facade needs redoing.

He has lost $1 million in potential pre-rehab rents during the decade-long stalemate, Hill estimated. He said he has lost around another $1 million in taxes and professional fees.

Meanwhile, the renaissance Hill anticipated happened a block away.

Directly across the street, developer Carter Winstanley purchased Building 25 of Science Park, the former Olin/Winchester factory complex being slowly reborn as a tech incubator center. Winstanley fixed up the building. By 2010, he had it full of tenants. Other Science Park office buildings are at 80 percent capacity, according to Science Park Development Corporation (SPDC) CEO and board chair David Silverstone. The new bike/pedestrian trail along the old Farmington Canal was extended.

In 2012, a Yale-spawned financial-services company called Higher One cut the ribbon on a $46 million new 140,000-square-foot headquarters, two renovated Science Park former factories.

Next door, a Brooklyn developer turned another abandoned factory into Winchester Lofts, going for up to $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom, in the heart of two of the city’s low-income neighborhoods. The developer, Forest City, cut the ribbon this June on its completed $60 million first phase. The most expensive apartments were already rented; 70 percent of all the units were already taken.

And later this month developer Juan Salas-Romer plans to cut the ribbon on The W Residence at the juncture of Henry, Ashmun, and Munson Streets. He put modern apartments and an outpost of the downtown G Cafe where previously stood a long-abandoned hulk of a former church and a bar long known as Cardinals Cafe, and then Red Cafe Ultra Lounge.

Along the way, city and Science Park officials tried to work out a way with Hill to revive 235 Winchester. SPDC’s Silverstone said he met a couple of years ago with Hill, Yale, and the city to see if perhaps the university could step in or some other rescue plan could be found. It didn’t work.

“I’ve got to believe those property values are increasing there,” Silverstone said. ​“It just sort of sits out there as not a pleasant building to look at.”

“I don’t know enough to place blame,” he continued. ​“I do know the city is losing, because we have this eyesore of a building. Kenny Hill is losing money every day. I think they should come to the table and compromise.”

Erik Johnson and Kenny Hill tried to do that in 2012. Johnson headed the city government’s neighborhoods agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI). He hadn’t been around when LCI fought with Hill back in 2005. Johnson said he wanted to put the past behind and strike a deal. (Read about that here.)

They came close. Johnson offered Hill a $150,000 low-interest loan to fix the exterior and remediate some lead, which a 2011 health department inspection (click here to view it) had found to still be in the building, despite the city’s earlier claims. (Read about that pending deal here.) City regulators approved Hill’s building plan.

Two roadblocks thwarted the deal. The city sought a promise from Johnson that he’d agree not to sue about past or future disputes on the property. ​“I couldn’t sign that,” he said. He also had trouble obtaining needed insurance.

Johnson meanwhile abated most of the lead on his own, he said, in anticipation of obtaining the city loan. It turns out he shouldn’t have done that, because repairs can’t be paid for retroactively.

Johnson left LCI earlier this year. LCI has a new chief, Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.

She met with Hill last week and invited him to apply for a grant to fix the exterior of the building. She insisted he make some of the 18 apartments affordable; otherwise he wouldn’t qualify for any money. Johnson agreed to make at least four of the apartments affordable. Hill has a sheaf of documents to fill out, which he is in the process of doing. He doesn’t yet worked out the details of his proposal.

Neal-Sanjurjo said in an interview that she wants to get the deal done. She said she hadn’t raised the question of lawsuit releases. Like Johnson, she said she is looking forward, not at past disputes.

“It can change the whole block,” Neal-Sanjurjo said. ​“Why wouldn’t we help?”

For his part, Hill (pictured) said he has solved the previous insurance problem.

“I don’t like the fact that it’s being couched as they’re ​‘helping’ me. They’re correcting a wrong that was perpetuated by the city,” he remarked. But he said he took Neal-Sanjurjo’s encouragement to heart and plans to submit his proposals.

“You wouldn’t believe how many people are asking to buy the building,” he said. But after losing so much money and time and investing in the project, he wants to complete the job himself.

“The value here is long term,” he said.

He isn’t counting on this latest deal working out any more than the past deals did, he said. But he still believes he can move the ball past the goal line.