nothin Inch Of Water Changes Builder’s Plans | New Haven Independent

Inch Of Water Changes Builder’s Plans

Paul Bass Photo

Justin Goldberg figured he’d be obtaining a building permit about now for the next phase of reconstructing the Dwight Gardens apartments. Instead, thanks to two different messages from two different bureaucracies, his team had to rework designs – for handling an inch of rainwater.

The city brought in the South African-born Fairfield developer (pictured) a year ago to rescue the former Dwight Co-ops at 99 Edgewood Ave. (across from Amistad Academy) between Dwight and Garden Streets. The tenants lost their 80 townhouse coop due to mismanagement. Then a city-hired developer squandered a fix-up job. The city enlisted Goldberg, the scion of a family business called Navarino Capital Management, to spend two years and between $10 million and $10.5 million gutting and rebuilding them, preserving them as affordable housing.

A year later, Goldberg has completed the first demolition phase of the project (despite an unanticipated delay due to a discrepancy between local and federal asbestos-removal rules) for the first five of the nine townhouse clusters. He has temporarily housed 25 of the complex’s 26 remaining households in the other buildings, the 26th off site. He plans to finish phase one of the project first, move the families into the new apartments, then get to phase two.

You would see roofs and sidings on already,” he said at the complex. He’d have had a construction permit in place to begin hiring subcontractors – if he hadn’t run into the rainwater glitch.

The glitch is minor; it set him back maybe two weeks and added a fraction to the overall project’s cost. It also will make the project greener,” a.k.a. better for the environment. Goldberg said he’s confident he will meet the deadline to finish the project.

He also plans to continue buying up and fixing New Haven residential properties. Since buying Dwight Gardens, he has purchased the 60-unit Brendan Towers at Whalley Avenue and the Boulevard as well as the 29-unit Spring Glen apartments on Springside Avenue. He has his eye on more properties. New Haven is extremely attractive,” he said. People want to be here.”

The rainwater episode, however, demonstrated to his team a difference between how government deals with builders in New Haven and how it works elsewhere. And it pointed to a challenge posed by an antiquated sewage system that is becoming greener, block by block, pipe by pipe.

Two-Stop Shopping

Dwight Gardens awaiting reconstruction, with demo complete.

To obtain permits to begin construction, Goldberg’s team first needed approval of a site plan. That comes from the City Plan Department. The team met with a host of officials from the City Plan, fire, traffic, building, and engineering departments to get a sense from the beginning of what the city would expect.

A key issue in such discussions is stormwater runoff. Dwight Gardens has extensive asphalt lots that send water directly into storm drains. The officials said the city expects the rebuilt Dwight Gardens, like other projects, to be able to absorb an inch of rain over 24 hours so that it won’t run into the storm system out to the harbor. Goldberg’s team agreed to replace the existing catch basins with dry wells, which have openings that allow water to seep into the nearby ground below the asphalt, rather than running into city sewer pipes.

The wells would handle the one inch of water. The officials gave their blessing.

Sometimes that’s good enough on the stormwater question. It depends where in New Haven a building project is.

If it’s in, say, Westville or Fair Haven or Morris Cove, the water would drain into a storm sewer, separated from sanitary sewer pipes. That’s because New Haven was building separated sewage pipes when those parts of town developed.

Older parts of New Haven, in the center of town, were developed back when the city had one set of pipes carrying both stormwater and sewage. The city is in the midst of a decades-long effort to build separate pipes and keep rainwater out of pipes; the overall goal is to prevent combined sewer overflows” (CSOs) that periodically, during flooding storms, cause sludge water and stormwater to mix in unseparated lines and send sewage into the rivers. The project also includes finding ways to keep rainwater absorbed onsite through, for instance, bioswales. That limits pollution; chemicals and other pollutants get filtered through the ground.

It is better to have it go into the ground” than into rivers, noted City Engineer Giovanni Zinn (pictured). At the end of the day it’s a water-quality benefit.”

It turns out, though, that Dwight Gardens sits right on a border: Some of the rainwater there runs into separated pipes. Some doesn’t.

That meant that the developer had to bring its plans to a separate agency for approval: The Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA).

That didn’t use to be a separate agency; the city used to run it. But in an effort to plug a one-year budget hole, the former DeStefano administration sold” the WPCA in 2005 to a new independent regional authority.

In the past, WPCA officials would take part in city officials’ meetings with developers. Now, having finished up with City Hall, Goldberg’s team headed to the WPCA – where it learned about a separate set of rules.

The WPCA’s director of engineering, Tom Sgroi, informed the developer that the plan needed to keep a little more than two inches of stormwater over six hours – not one inch over 24 hours – out of the sewers.

Greener Pastures

Goldberg by one of the Dwight Gardens catch basins

WPCA is required to meet that standard under the terms of a 2009 consent order from the state, Sgroi told the Independent. The figure is based on calculating a two-year storm” – the heaviest rainfall that occurred over a six-hour period during the past 24 months.

[City Plan] said, We would like you to retain the first inch of rain…. We go back to our engineers and say, Hey guys, you have to give us enough recharge, enough dry well, to absorb the first one inch of rain in a rainstorm,’” said Bill Jacabacci, Goldberg’s owner’s representative” for the Dwight Gardens project. We designed for the one inch as required. Then we were approved through City Plan.”

Then WPCA said, Well this doesn’t meet our requirements.’ We had to redesign it. Which took time. Had we known in the initial review, we would have designed for it in the beginning,” Jacabacci said.

The new design called for installing half-round, porous plastic structures atop stone beds underground next to the catch basins. Pipes will carry the water from the basin to the plastic structures, which will gradually release water into the soil. The system is designed to handle the two-inch, six-hour rainstorms.

Jacabacci estimated that the redesign cost the developer between $50,000 and $75,000 more than the original design, which would have cost around $200,000. He said the team lost a good couple of weeks” in the approval process due to the need for the redesign.

Somehow the communication between the city and us wasn’t as good as it should have been. They came to us a little late. That’s why it was last-minute,” WPCA’s Sgroi said.

He said in the past communication worked better. We don’t want to hold up projects,” he said. We’re working with the engineers.”

WPCA gave Goldberg’s team conditional approval of the new plan. That has enabled the developer to proceed to the fire department, which signed off, and to the engineering department, where it submitted its permit application on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Goldberg said, he has received bids for the roofing and siding work, and is ready to go with those. His team is evaluating bids for the boiler and HVAC work.

In the grand scheme, the inch-of-water delay and extra cost won’t impede Dwight Gardens’ rebirth, Goldberg said. Chalk it up as a lesson learned in how to build in New Haven, a lesson he’ll have a chance to apply in projects to come.

Click here to see a status map of the city’s sewer separation project. Click here and here to read about a recent phase of the project on Trumbull Street; and here about anti-flooding measures slated for the Union Avenue/Water Street area.

Previous coverage of the Dwight Co-Ops/Dwight Gardens Saga (in chronological order):

On Verge Of A Dream, Co-op Faces Foreclosure
City Finds Potential Buyer For Dwight Co-Op Homes
City’s Co-op Savior Has Troubled Track Record
Dwight Coop Rescue Advances
Dwight Co-op Deal Squeaks Through
Housing Authority Quits Dwight Co-Op Deal
Dwight Co-Op Makeover In Limbo
Day Laborers Move The Mountain”
City Turns Up Heat On Dwight Co-Op Landlord
City Seeks New Buyer For Dwight Co-Ops
6 Vie To Buy Failed Housing Co-op
Dwight Gardens Rescue Effort Takes New Turn
Not So Fast! Auction’s Off
Dwight Gardens Rescue Plan Advances
Fed Shutdown Stalls Dwight Gardens Rescue
Erik Johnson Races The Clock
Dwight Gardens Shivers
Dwight Gardens Rescue Deal Reached

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