Bright lights beam through the neighborhood before dawn. Hundreds of cars beep at once in a parking lot. Power bar wrappers scatter on the streets.
That was one of the visions presented to the zoning board on the risks of allowing a proposed high-end fitness center and health club to open in a warehouse storage unit in East Rock.
The Board of Zoning Appeals heard two sides of the argument at a meeting Monday night. The owners agreed to return to the board next month with more definite arrangements for parking.
Owner Pablo Perez asked for a variance to allow an 18,000 square-foot fitness center in a light industrial district. He also requested a special exception to allow 15 instead of 43 parking spaces.
A Bristol-based company called Narang New Haven Co, LLC, owns the five-building, 190,000 square-foot warehouse and factory at 285 Nicoll St. Currently the property is used to store industrial machinery and stage the Alexion Pharmaceutical construction project downtown.
The lot across the street from the proposed gym has 50 total parking spaces, according to the application. Though the gym would be allotted just 15, the landlord has indicated it can use the other 35 spaces when necessary. Three nearby public lots on Mitchell Drive would receive any parking overflow.
Gym-goers will likely use public transportation, ride bicycles or walk to the gym, said the landlord’s lawyer, James Segaloff. He noted that East Rock has a lot of cyclists.
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Michael Bradford (pictured), who owns a house directly adjacent to the property’s parking lot on Canner Street, spoke out against the project Monday night. He read a list of the potential negative impacts of the fitness center on its East Rock neighbors.
He said people would drive to the gym more often during the winter, on “cold, snowy days,” and then park on Canner, Nicoll and Foster streets. Increased traffic into East Rock would lead to more noise and litter in the neighborhood, he said.
Perez has agreed to put a wall along the side of the lot on Canner Street to prevent lights from shining into people’s houses. Bradford said the wall would not protect neighbors from the lights of cars entering and exiting the lot on Canner Street.
“The lights in the parking lot could shine onto my house. I like it dark. It’s night. People want to sleep,” he said.
The center would be open from 4:30 a.m. until 10 p.m., said Perez (at center in photo, before the zoning board), who has been a gym owner for nine years. He said his East Rock gym would be high-end, not high-volume, at $60 monthly for a membership, meaning he expects about 1,000 members and 5,000 workouts per month.
Bradford said he believes those numbers will lead to a lot of traffic and a lot of noise.
“When people lock their car doors … it causes a beep. That’s 190 cars beeping at 4:30 in the morning on their way to the gym,” he said.
The gym’s maximum capacity is around 190 people. Perez said he expects people to come in for closer to 167 workouts spread out throughout each day.
Bradford said he worries that the center would not last, leaving the neighborhood to deal with the aftermath.
“It sounds like a wonderful facility, but what if goes under?” he said. Hundreds more machines will be left forgotten in the space, he said.
Segaloff said the area is primarily industrial, not residential. “We will do what we can to accommodate the neighbors,” he said, but if the center doesn’t open, another business could sign an agreement to “park 20 trucks” in the lot. That would be a worse option for the neighborhood, he argued.
Burch Valldejuli, another partner in the project, has been at the Yale School of Public Health for seven years. She said the center would provide at least one activity free for people in New Haven, to encourage healthy habits in the city.
East Rock Alder Anna Festa submitted a letter saying that she had spoken to many neighbors who are excited that the building will finally be occupied, according to zoning board secretary Gaylord Bourne.
Kevin McCarthy, vice president of the East Rock management team, also spoke out in favor of the project Monday night.
Perez and Valldejuli decided to put off the Board of Zoning Appeals’ vote until next month, taking more time to solidify agreements to use three public lots along Mitchell Drive.
It's amazing: every time someone tries to do something in this City, there's always some cranky neighbor willing to show up with complaints about parking and a desire to keep everything the way it is. I really wonder if we need all this community input into zoning applications; does it ever do any good?