LCI Chief Seeks Hill Support For Church St. South Rebuild

Northland Investment Corp. destroyed Church Street South. Why get them $21 million to rebuild it?

Hill neighbors popped that question this week during a briefing on that plan.

That briefing came from Serena Neal-Sanjuro at a joint Hill North and Hill South management team meeting Wednesday night at Betsy Ross Magnet School.

Neal-Sanjurjo, executive director of city government’s neighborhoods agency, the Livable City Initiative, is spearheading an application for a $30 million
​“Choice Neighborhoods Grant” from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most of the money, $21 million, would go to Northland, the Massachusetts company that owns the soon-to-be vacated and demolished 301-unit subsidized apartment complex across from Union Station, in order to rebuild it as a 1,000-unit mixed-income complex. The rest of the money would go toward helping the 288 families forced to flee the complex because of health dangers posed by rundown conditions like moldy walls and crumbling ceilings and porches and stairways.

During the briefing to neighbors, Neal-Sanjurjo stressed that the plan, which also include job trainings and loans to start business at a proposed new retail space, aims to benefit residents from Church St. South. New Haveners from the area will be given first priority for new apartments at a rebuilt complex.

“We have a targeted area, with targeted people. That’s where our money will go.” Neal-Sanjurjo said in response to concerns that the plan might leave out locals and benefit people from nearby regions instead.

She urged neighbors to support the city’s efforts to move ahead with the plan to rebuild Church Street South.

“I feel very, very apprehensive,” Hill North neighbor Lynda Faye Wilson told Neal-Sanjurjo, citing unfulfilled promised made to the neighborhood about past development projects.

“If you spend money on somebody and get nothing for it, why do you want to work with him again?” asked Hill North’s Dawn Bliesener said. Bliesener serves on the ​“Hill-to-Downtown steering committee” offering citizen input in planning for redevelopment of the area.

Neal-Sanjurjo said since Northland owns the site, it needs to be involved in the plan to rebuild there. She said the city faces a June 28 deadline to get the application in to HUD for the highly competitive Choice grant. (This article details the city’s decision to collaborate with Northland on the CHoice grant application.)

HUD will choose only four grantees among the 60 – 70 applications expected from across the country. New Haven will learn in October if it has won the grant.

“If this one doesn’t work, we will get to the next one,” Neal-Sanjurjo told the crowd.

State Banking Commissioner Jorge Perez, who lives in the Hill and chairs the steering committee, said he welcomes the proposal as ​“something needs to happen” at Church Street South. However, Perez said the plan is only preliminary and he wanted to see more details, such as the design for facade of buildings.

“If this one doesn’t work, we will get to the next one,” Neal-Sanjurjo told the crowd.