Thomas Breen photo
Potential future lot at 1471 Chapel.
A local landlord plans to convert the former site of a four-family house into a surface parking lot, in the inverse of the lot-to-housing development trend that has swept the city in recent years.
Local attorney Ben Trachten revealed that parking plan Tuesday night during the regular monthly Board of Zoning Appeals meeting on the ground floor of 200 Orange St.
Local attorney Ben Trachten: Parking is the best permitted use for this lot.
Trachten appeared before the commissioners as part of Beaver Hills-based landlord Menahem Edelkopf’s application for a special exception to allow for off-street parking spaces located in the front yard of 1471 – 1475 Chapel St.
Edelkopf owns both the 1471 Chapel St. lot at the corner of Sherman Avenue as well as the adjacent 12-unit apartment building at 1475 Chapel through his holding company, 1471 – 1475 Chapel Street LLC.
Those two property stand catty corner to the Yale New Haven Hospital St. Raphael campus, and just a few blocks away from where the hospital plans to build a new $838 million neuroscience center.
“Unlike the typical application requesting parking relief,” Trachten said, “in this case we’re asking for a surface parking lot. We’re going to be relieving 15 cars from the street and putting them on this lot.” In recent years, the city has seen surface lot after surface lot scooped up by developers eager to build primarily market-rate housing.
Attendees at Tuesday night’s BZA meeting.
The application proposes to put seven off-street parking spaces on the front yard of the lot, making for a total of 15 spaces.
Trachten explained that the corner lot used to hold a four-family house. That building suffered from a fire in 2016, and sat vacant for years. Edelkopf’s company bought the 1471 Chapel St. lot in May 2019 for $150,000 from Y&H Investments LLC, a holding company owned by Pike International’s Shmully Hecht.
Edelkopf then knocked down the building in late 2019, leaving the corner cleared.
Trachten said the corner lot has two 25-foot front yards. “If you factor in the two front yards, about half of the lot is unusable.”
He added that, under the city’s current zoning regulations, a single-family house could not be built on the current lot because of the front yard buffer requirements.
Converting this lot to a dedicated parking place will actually bring the adjacent 12-unit apartment building at 1475 Chapel into zoning conformity because it will provide at least one parking space for every unit.
Local architect Caplan: Not in line with neighborhood’s needs.
During the public testimony portion of the hearing, local architect and historian Colin Caplan voiced his concerns with allowing the lot to be turned into a parking lot.
“This was an intrinsic corner that represented the scale of the residential neighborhood,” Caplan said. “The house that once occupied this spot really represented something the neighborhood is trying to keep while the hospital expands.”
Allowing for this formerly residential lot to become a permanent parking lot would be a move in the opposite direction of where the neighborhood should be moving, he said.
“Unfortunately this lot cannot be rebuilt under zoning rules,” Trachten replied. “A house will never sit on this again.” There are minimal other uses allowable by zoning law, he said. Parking is one such permitted use.
The zoning commissioners referred the special exception application to the City Plan Commission, and should take a final vote at next month’s meeting. Trachten noted that this parking lot project also must receive site plan approval from the City Plan Commission after the BZA weighs in.
Pretty disingenuous for Trachten to argue that because the zoning makes it hard to build a house on that lot, there will never again be a house on that lot. Dude literally makes a living seeking permission for his clients to build things that the zoning doesn't permit.