CROSSKEY ARCHITECTS
Rendering of the planned renovation.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Radcliffe: “One man’s trash is another man’s junk collection.”
Should the city choose artists as a special class of renters needing affordable housing?
Leslie Radcliffe posed that question as the city and an out-of-town developer prepare to transform a former clock factory into 130 apartments for artists.
Radcliffe asked the question before as she and fellow members of the City Plan Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the Board of Alders approve a $400,000 grant that would help with the environmental cleanup of the former Jerome Manufacturing Company building at 133 Hamilton St. Commissioners also recommended that alders approve a tax abatement agreement between the city and the Oregon-based developer taking on the project that would freeze taxes for the development for the next 15 years at the current rate. (Click here for a previous full story on the proposal.)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Radcliffe: “One man’s trash is another man’s junk collection.
Before the vote, at the commission’s most recently monthly meeting, Radcliffe initiated a discussion about whether reserving affordable housing for artists is doing so at the expense of all kinds of people in New Haven who also need affordable housing. That discussion will continue as alders debate whether to approve the tax help.
“I totally support the saving of a historic structure. I support providing affordable housing, and the remediation efforts,” Radcliffe said. “I’m having some issue with the tax abatement and utilization of public funds and providing housing for a segregated group.”
Radcliffe argued that while many artists don’t make very much money at their craft, that’s true for many other people in the city as well who can’t afford the high cost of rent in the city. And while she likes the live-work aspect of the Hamilton Street project, she said, she has trouble justifying excluding people from housing just because they don’t make art.
“My other part of that questions is: Who is going to determine what art is?”
City economic development staffer Helen Rosenberg, who is quarterbacking the project, said that “artist” will be defined broadly. There will be a system for verifying that a person has an income that is 80 percent or less of the area median income. With 130 apartments, Rosenberg said, there might be a chance that the developer doesn’t have an easy time filling the building with people who meet the definition of artist and then have to rent to others. (The developer also plans to include “makers” in the definition of targeted renters.)
“There will be a system set up,” Rosenberg said. “It will include working with the community. The developer will set up a system for selecting tenants for the building.”
Rosenberg didn’t have exact details but said the developers have draft criteria for such a system and would be able to answer those questions when they come to the City Plan Commission for a site plan review.
The developer, Reed Realty, operating in the city as the limited liability corporation Taom Heritage New, has done similar projects in other cities. Reed, which has been in business for about a decade, specializes in historic rehabs, including a recently completed renovation of an old hotel into the 20-story mixed-use Jefferson Memorial Tower in Birmingham, Ala.
The Artist Argument
Christopher Peak Photo
Artspace’s Helen Kauder.
Joshua Blevins, the company’s director of historic redevelopment and governmental affairs, said by phone Tuesday that the company is open to input from the community about the selection of artist-tenants. He also said that best practices for similar projects have been developed around the country and in Connecticut. He pointed to Artspace in New Haven as an example.
He said there were three key reasons artists are the focus of this development:
• The historic nature of the building means that it will have quirks that could make it more user-friendly for artists’ lofts and studio space in the way that wouldn’t work as traditional apartments.
• Artists are likely to be individual tenants who don’t need space and amenities for families, and more likely tenants in a more industrial district.
• A survey of the creative community showed a need and interest for such space in the city.
Blevins called building developments with the creative community in mind “a great way to promote economic development and promote the rebirth of certain communities in any town.”
“People want to have certain places go, a certain vibrancy maybe, that you can’t put your thumb on it but this is what makes a place feel so great and alive,” he said. “Having creative people is something that helps make great towns and great cities.”
Artspace New Haven Executive Director Helen Kauder offered practical reason New Haven might want to carve out affordable housing for artists: They’re not just artists.
“What artists do when they’re not making art in their studio or on their kitchen table, a lot of them teach in public schools,” she said. “A lot of them teach in after-school programs, a lot of them teach at community colleges.”
She said people sometimes don’t realize that artists are working as educators in schools and as art therapists in places like the veterans hospital.
“Artists also are very interested in social change and using art to move hearts and minds on important political issues,” she said. “Their work helps educate people. Artists can help improve our community make civic improvements in a variety of ways.”
Artists are good at forming communities that transcend differences, bringing people who might not otherwise associate with one another if not for art bringing them together, which is increasingly important in a politically polarized country, Kauder argued.
“Art can be very healing for a time when our body politic is fractured,” she said. “There is a long tradition of creating affordable housing across the country in places where there are lost buildings like the one on Hamilton Street. When there is a decision to be made there will not be one person deciding but a group of people, in best circumstances, a diverse group of practicing artists who have a diversity in the kind of art they do and the kind of education they’ve had, in their ethnicity and cultural background and in age and that makes a strong committee.”
Kauder said she suspects that artists who move into the rehabilitated space will show a body of work and get letters of recommendation from places they’ve taught, studied, or worked. They likely won’t be people who became “artists” just to get housing.
“I think as long as there is a diverse group of respected peers, artists themselves … they will help find and recruit next generation,” she said. “I think that is a way ensuring there is a group of people who live there focused on their work and focused giving back to the community.”
The Practical Argument
Helen Rosenberg offered another reason to support the plan: Reed Realty, which says it has obtained necessary private financing commitments, is in position to make this project happen now when nobody else has been able to for decades.
She said at the February City Plan meeting that Reed Realty will need about $6.5 million for environmental cleanup. The $400,000 city contribution would come from the Economic Development Captial Projects bonds fund, while the state is expected to provide about $4 million under its brownfields loan program.
The Harp administration is also seeking approval of a tax abatement agreement for the project, under guidelines in a state affordable housing law. It would freeze taxes at the current rate for 15 years after construction ends. The complex currently pays $46,000 a year in taxes to the city. The tax abatement is necessary in order to keep the rents low, Rosenberg said.
She said she understands Radcliffe’s concern. She also noted that the proposal from Reed Realty is the only viable plan that has come forward in the many years that the building has been vacant. She said the developer’s plans for the site are about 90 percent complete. She expects that if the Board of Alders approves the grant and the tax abatement agreement, they could be back before commissioners by late summer or early fall.
“Without redevelopment, the building probably will continue to slowly deteriorate, because the family that owns the property is struggling to maintain it,” she said. (Reed has an agreement in place to buy the complex for $1.7 million.)
City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison said given that the building’s ongoing deterioration and the fact that no other developer proposes to build housing there, affordable or otherwise, there aren’t many alternatives.
“The fact is that this building will probably just disintegrate if this plan is not approved,” he said. “It’s [a question of] the best as the enemy of the good.”
Radcliffe said she’s not against the project, but creating housing specifically for artists to the exclusion of all the people in the city who need affordable housing didn’t sit right with her.
“That one component is what I’m struggling with in my spirit, in my soul,” she said. “If you’re not an artist and who says who is an artist?”
Everyone likes this project, but what happens after 15 years and the building has to pay the going rate for property tax based on its actual value? If the abatement is "needed in order to keep rents low" what happens in the future when the abatement disappears - how will the rents remain low at that time?