Hill Puts Brakes On Building Plan

New Haven’s hurtling development train paused, at least momentarily, as neighbors forced a delay in a vote on key elements of a plan to build new apartments, stores, offices, and labs in a stretch of the Hill neighborhood.

The vote had been scheduled to take place Monday night at a meeting of the Board of Alders Community Development and Legislation committees.

The committees were considering zoning changes and a land transfer to enable developer Randy Salvatore to construct at least 100 apartments along Gold Street above ground-floor public use/commercial space, and rehabilitate the Prince School Annex into as many as 40 apartments, while tearing down the Welch Annex, which are a block away, as part of an extended plan for about 80,000 square feet of commercial offices and bioscience facilities, and some structured parking. Salvatore is among a group of developers buying up land in New Haven as part of a building boom.

Neighbors, especially members of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, packed the board’s chambers at City Hall for what turned out to be a three-hour hearing. Speakers voiced concerns that a zoning change in an area of their neighborhood would give one of the city’s busiest developers carte blanche without enough public input.

Alders adjourned the meeting without voting, instead opting to continue the public hearing during the next regular meeting of the Legislation Committee Dec. 10.

Salvatore worked out a tentative deal with city government and quasi-public Economic Development Corporation (EDC) officials to build on the 20.6 acres of surface parking land and other undeveloped land in between downtown and the train station, in concert with another developer who has had the rights to build there but hasn’t pulled off a project, for more than two decades.

The deal would allow a Salvatore-led company to take ownership of Hill-to-downtown property from the land’s current owner, AMA/Connecticut Funding Corp. But unlike under the previous land disposition agreement, in which parcels were to be sold for $1 per square foot, Salvatore is paying fair market value for all the land, with the exception of two school parcels, for which he’d pay close to $1.3 million. The deal also involves changing zoning to allow Salvatore to build higher and a wider variety of uses on the property. (The City Plan Commission voted last month to recommend approval of the transfer and the changes.)

The 20.6 acres are part of a larger swath of the neighborhood known as ​“Hill-to-Downtown.” City officials and hundreds of Hill neighbors worked together to produce in 2013an award-wining plan for restoring neighborhood connections, creating jobs and expanding the city’s tax base in that broader area. Monday night some neighbors said they feel boxed out of the specific plans for carrying out that vision with the proposed Salvatore project.

LaToya Cowan, an EDC project manager who helped put together the Hill-to-Downtown plan, argued that the Salvatore project offers benefits in line with what the community said it wanted from a neighborhood plan including:

• The developer handles all environmental clean-up. Under the current unamended land disposition agreement for the property, the city is on the hook for some of those costs.

• Salvatore or his successors would be required to pay taxes for the next 30 years even if not-for-profits take over properties.

• Salvatore would help create a community development corporation.

• Salvatore would work with New Haven Works to create permanent job opportunities.

Cowan said amending and transfering the existing land disposition agreement allows the city to do something that it hasn’t been able to do with 11 parcels of land that have remained undeveloped since 1989 : move a project forward.

The proposed zoning change calls for extending the Business D‑3 District-Central Business District Mixed-Use, or BD‑3 District, which was created by the Board of Alders in 2012 as part of the Downtown Crossing Corridor, and extending it south. A text amendment is needed to change the zoning language to complementing the changes to the zoning map.

Neighbors who are already fighting for more parking in the neighborhood raised concerns with alders Monday night that introducing more apartments without a clear plan for parking will only exacerbate the problems.

Helen Martin-Dawson (pictured), a member of the Hill-to-Downtown steering committee that grew out of the 2013 plan, criticized what she saw as a lack of communication between the city and residents.

“Not everybody has received this packet,” she said of a printed Power Point presentation that outlined the basics of the proposed amendment and a phased, proposed project timeline that stretches to at least 2023.

The Rev. Francis Snell, pastor of St. Anthony’s, argued that just because parcels of land in the plan might be ​“undeveloped” — like the triangular parcel at the corner of Congress and Washington avenues that church members use for parking — ​“that doesn’t mean they’re unused.”

Snell has met with Cowan, Salvatore and Livable City Initiative Director Serena Neal-Sanjuro about the plan. He said he and the rest of his growing church are concerned that the zoning change would give a developer the opportunity to ​“steamroll right over us.”

Salvatore (pictured with attorney Carolyn Kone), who said he is Catholic and recently rebuilt a Catholic soup kitchen in Stamford at no cost to the diocese, promised that won’t happen.

“I’m a friend of the Catholic Church,” said. ​“Never do I want to go into a community and become an enemy of that community. Life is way too short. There are so many other places that I could develop, where I can accomplish that.”

Salvatore promised to work with the community to develop details of his plan, the way he worked well with Dwight/Chapel West neighbors in building the Novella apartment building.

He also predicted any future development would in fact provide the church more parking than it currently has now to accommodate mass, funerals and festivals.

“A proper well designed community on those sites enhances the parish and it enhances the community,” Salvatore said. ​“I gave them my commitment that I would do that and I give that to you. You have my word that in the end it’s going to be a win-win for everyone or I won’t build it.

“I really mean that. I don’t have to do any more developments in my life. And if it’s not the right thing and it doesn’t satisfy the constituents I’m not going to do it.”

Cowan (pictured) said the agreement can’t just be broken apart. She said without a change to the land disposition agreement and the zoning change, the city can’t achieve the vision for the neighborhood as it is outlined in the Hill-to-Downtown plan. Without the amended agreement, Salvatore does not get the land, and without the zoning change the neighborhood can’t support the larger (up to 70 feet high in the portion closer to downtown) medical and bioscience offices that might be attracted to the community.

“I think it might be fear,” Cowan said of neighbors concerns. ​“I think everyone’s voice wants to be heard. It’s just a matter of gaining people’s trust just like we had to do in Dwight.”