nothin Route 34 Vision Shifts To Rentals | New Haven Independent

Route 34 Vision Shifts To Rentals

Markeshia Ricks Photo

Stacy Spell and Anthony Dawson: 2 takes on Route 34 plan.

Courtesy of Kenneth Boroson Architects

A rendering of the proposed 16 Miller St. complex.

A plan to develop housing on 4.3 vacant acres along Route 34 moved forward Thursday night, but not before a longtime neighborhood leader criticized a turn away from promoting homeownership.

The plan calls for building 56 affordable rental apartments in 11 buildings and an office meeting center on a site at 16 Miller St., which is bound by Ella T. Grasso Boulevard to the west, North Frontage Road to the north, Tyler Street to the east, and Legion Avenue to the south.

The City Plan Commission voted Thursday night to approve a site plan and a coastal for the project, whose developers are rushing to meet a deadline to qualify for state funding. With the exception of a prominent dissent from neighborhood organizer Stacy Spell, the plan drew a crowd of supporters to the hearing.

West River residents have been trying for decades to breathe new life along the vacant media strip there since bulldozers destroyed the neighborhood during Urban Renewal to make way for a highway that was never built.

But until recently those efforts have focused on homeownership, not rentals, which prompted Spell to urge the commissioners not to approve the site plan.

West River Housing LLC is developing the project. It consists of a partnership put together with the help of New Haven’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) that is spearheading the development. It consists of two groups: The New Haven-based West River Self Help Investment Plan (SHIP) and New-York based National Housing Partnership Foundation, a not-for-profit developer of low and moderate income housing in 15 states and Washington D.C. The NHP Foundation has a portfolio of approximately 7,000 units of multifamily rental housing, according to documents provided to the city.

LCI chief Serena Neal-Sanjurjo said it makes sense to go with this plan, even though it does not include homeownership, in part because it has the best chance of obtaining state money and actually happen. LCI and the partnership have been shopping the plan to the neighborhood for two years.

Spell, a retired cop who continues organizing neighborhood campaigns, was unable to attend the meeting in person Thursday evening because he is home recovering from a recent back surgery. He sent in a letter stating that he supports West River SHIP’s visionary goals” but not the proposed project.

In the letter, he called for building a mixed-use development in the corridor that includes opportunities for homeownership and entrepreneurship — the original vision for the redevelopment of Route 34.

This group of long-term residents who I have co-labored with, in past decades where our goal then was to create on that site mixed-use housing encompassing market rate homeownership, workforce affordable units, and retail spaces,” Spell wrote. This current project has strayed from the visionary path and in my opinion, sets the foundation for a future problem.”

A breakdown of the 56 units and their anticipated rents.

Spell noted in the letter that he was troubled by the decision to use an out of town company to manage the property once it’s built, which he said has met with less than positive results in other notable projects in the city. He went on to applaud the proposed project’s plans to use green infrastructure but blasted what he saw as a deficiency in dealing with traffic around the site and the overall disconnectedness of West River and Hill North.

We have one chance to get this more than 50-year-old mistake right and come to an agreeable solution that speaks to all concerns,” Spell wrote. I’m not looking for it to be my way or the highway but to move forward prudently, logically and respectfully. This is within a stone’s throw away from my home and will affect the only wealth I will be able to pass on to my children. I speak for elderly neighbors who still reside on Miller, Porter, and Parmalee who’ve not been involved in the process. Please be prudently cautious in giving approval to a process that hasn’t been well thought out.”

The project’s 56 units will be contained in 10 townhouse-style buildings with four or six apartments per building. Four apartments will be contained in the office meeting center. Vehicle access is proposed from North Frontage and Legion Avenue with a 60 car parking lot. The project also has to have room for the International Peace Garden, which must remain on site in perpetuity.

Dawson: Needs Have Changed

Supporters of the plan packed out the City Plan Commission Thursday.

Another longtime neighborhood leader, Anthony Dawson, is the president of the West River SHIP, which is the smaller of the development partnership’s two members.

Dawson said the vision for the project has changed as the needs of the community have changed. He said there is a more urgent need for safe and affordable rental housing than people in a position to buy homes. He said NHP Foundation operates a residential and social services division that will help residents of the new housing to position themselves to eventually buy homes.

The partnership’s two organizations were brought together, with the blessing of LCI, through a request for qualifications process in which West River SHIP also considered the Housing Authority of New Haven as a potential partner. Dawson said West River SHIP ultimately went with NHP Foundation because they thought they could learn more about development from the organization in the long run.

The estimated cost of constructing the project is about $14 million. But construction is contingent upon receiving federal low-income housing tax credits and other funding by the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA).

Dawson, along with Neal-Sanjurjo and NHP Foundation representative Jamie Smarr, defended the proposed project to the commissioners Thursday night. They pointed out that this plan has been before the community for two years. With the commissioners’ approval, an application could be in CHFA’s hands by a Oct. 1 deadline, they said. To put the project before CHFA, it essentially had to have community buy-in, support from the city, and be shovel-ready.

That meant the project couldn’t need zoning changes, which might delay the application. The parcel falls under RM‑1 and RM‑2 zoning designation, which don’t allow for commercial uses. Should CHFA approve the project, the city would begin the process of entering into a land disposition agreement with West River Housing, that would set the conditions of transferring the land so that construction could begin, according to City Plan Director Mike Piscitelli.

Project Architect Ken Boroson estimated that it would take CHFA about five months to decide whether to give the application the green light, the developers and the city would close on the property after that and construction could begin in Fall 2019 with a potential occupancy by 2020.

SHIP Sailed

Neal-Sanjurjo.

This project in November will be about two years old, so we’ve put a lot of thoughtful consideration in working with West River SHIP as well as the community to come up with something that could really start the process for redevelopment of Route 34 corridor and the surrounding neighborhoods,” Neal-Sanjurjo said.

She said other phases of the corridor redevelopment, which are part of the ongoing work of the Hill to Downtown development plan, will include homeownership but on a different parcel in the corridor.

This is all based on the work we did, the continuation of the Hill to Downtown plan and transforming that community and trying to really bring back a neighborhood that was lost 50 years ago,” she said. It is a necessity for us as a city right now to look at additional units. And that’s what we’re trying to do — mix it up, make it better and try to fill in the parcels that we can.”

NHP Foundation’s Jamie Smarr pushed back against Spell’s assertion that the controlling organization is an out of town operator.” He said the foundation already operates 900 units of low and moderate-income housing in the state, specifically in Waterbury, Wolcott, Stamford, and Southington. He also noted that the properties are all managed onsite by a management company called Beacon Communities (which manages New Haven developments like Monterey Place).

We’re not a fly-by-night organization,” he said.

Commissioners were receptive to the need for the change to the original vision, but they shared Spell’s concerns about the ongoing problem of traffic and asked the developers to commit to working closely with the city to shore up safety for those residents, presumably some of which will be children.

Dawson, who doubles as the chair of the city’s Traffic Authority, promised that that authority will work with the developers to address the concerns.

City Plan Commissioner and Westville Alder Adam Marchand also noted that Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker, who represents the West River, supports West River SHIP’s plan for development.

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