Paul Bass Photo
Crews were at work Tuesday on Dwight Gardens.
Ladders were up and the saws out to prepare a Dwight housing complex for along-awaited rebirth, thanks in part to a $3.75 million loan from the state.
The work has begun at the complex, Dwight Gardens, at 99 Edgewood Ave., where an 80-unit former cooperative fell apart and only 25 families remain.
A developer the city brought in to rescue the complex, Navarino Capital, is “sealing the building envelope” — closing off doors and windows from outside cold and water — so that interior work can begin in earnest this winter on Phase 1 of the complex’s renovation, principal Justin Goldberg told the Independent Tuesday.
That interior work will be funded in part by the $3.75 million loan from the state Department of Housing. The full overall two-phase project will cost around $13 million, Goldberg said. He predicted the entire job will be done in a year.
“We’re very grateful to the Department of Housing and the City of New Haven for all the support and confidence [as we] substantially renovate and upgrade this neglected property,” Goldberg said. “We look forward to providing a [high-quality] energy-efficient living environment for the tenants.”
General contractor Paragon Construction is doing the framing and W. B. Construction the interior gut-rehab.
Upon completion of Phase 1, 25 tenants living in the other half of the complex (plus another two living off-site) are to move into the renovated units, so that Phase 2 can begin on those other units, all of which are to remain affordable for the families that have been living there in some cases since the late 1960s.
The Dwight Gardens project was delayed in part due to a since-resolved bureaucratic mix-up with the city over how to hand an inch of rainwater. Click here and here to read about that. Tenants at Dwight Gardens, who came within a month of owning the complex outright before defaulting on a 30-year mortgage, have waited years for work to begin, after an initial developer brought in by the city failed to do the job. (See links at the bottom of this story to previous coverage of that debacle.)
The state loan to Dwight Gardens is one of two capital infusions announced by the governor’s office this week for New Haven affordable-housing projects. The second is a $4 million DOH loan to help the housing authority undertake a rebuilding for the rundown Farnam Court spublic-housing development hard by I‑91 on Grand Avenue into a mixed-income 94-unit complex with some retail blended in. Click here and here to read more about that project.
Previous coverage of the Dwight Co-Ops/Dwight Gardens Saga (in chronological order):
• Delayed Dwight Gardens Rescue Set To Resume
• 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
• Inch Of Water Changes Builder’s Plans
Why is the state still concentrating low-income units for families into areas with high noise, pollution, crime, and very poorly-performing schools? Instead of requiring all poor families to live in the most distressed parts of New Haven, each town should have its fair share of housing units like this so that families have a choice of where to live (a few might want to stay, but not everyone would). It would be easy to accomplish if we just changed some incentives and rebuilt complexes like this and Church Street South across multiple towns instead of all in the same neighborhood.