“Rugby House” Headed For Howe Street

With a green light from city zoners, the Yale women’s rugby team will occupy a new seven-bedroom apartment on Howe Street, the second Yale athletic team to move into specially converted downtown quarters on the same block.

Fernando Pastor, who works for the company behind the two team houses, said there are more where those came from.

Pastor showed up Tuesday night at the New Haven Hall of Records on Orange Street, where he sought and won permission from the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) to create a rooming house at 45 Howe St. across the street from the YWCA.

The property, the site of the former Blessings Chinese restaurant at the corner of Howe and Crown, will essentially become one big apartment with seven bedrooms. Technically, that makes it a rooming house, since it will house more than four people who are not related to each other.

The seven tenants will be members of the Yale women’s rugby team, said Pastor.

Pastor (pictured) works for Pike International, the property development and management company that has been transforming one property after another in town, channeling out-of-town and foreign investments into new apartments in neighborhoods from the west to the east sides of town.

Last year, Pike converted a house at 380 Crown St. into customized upscale digs for eight members of the Yale varsity hockey team.

Now Pike is poised to do the same for the women’s rugby team just a few doors down at the corner of Howe. Pastor said Pike has discovered that a number of Yale teams and groups of students are interested in similar housing.

City Deputy Director of Zoning Tom Talbot told BZA members called rooming house permission ​“almost more of a technical thing.”

“It’s basically an oversized apartment,” he said. The house will not be set up like a traditional rooming house, he said. It will have a shared kitchen and common spaces like an apartment.

Two people spoke in favor of Pastor’s application, including a representative of Crown Auto Center, next door to the ​“Hockey House.” ​“The kids are really good,” he said.

Later, during the voting session, board chair Pat King voiced reservations about the plan. She said the plan includes no guarantee that the house remain in use only by the rugby team. It could turn into just a regular rooming house, she said.

Pastor later said that even if the rugby team backs out, there’s so much demand among Yale students for group housing that Pike would always be able to rent the place out en masse to a different team.

King also said approving rugby team housing could be a ​“slippery slope” to more similar housing. She said her concern was that ​“it may turn into a frat-house-style situation.”

Talbot pointed out that even if the building were three separate apartments, Pike could still rent all three out to members of the same team. ​“If there’s bad behavior, there’s bad behavior either way.”

In the end, BZA members voted unanimously to approve the application. King spoke last: ​“I also — with some trepidation — vote to approve.”

After the meeting, Pastor unrolled the proposed floor plan for the new rugby house, which will feature a roof deck and a wet bar on the first floor. He said the renovations should be complete in about three months.