nothin Yale Limits Downtown Housing Plans, For Now | New Haven Independent

Yale Limits Downtown Housing Plans, For Now

Aliyya Swaby Photo

Zucker addresses neighbors.

Yale has no current plans to build more graduate dorms beyond a planned six-story building on Elm Street, officials told community members.

Lauren Zucker (pictured above), Yale’s director of New Haven affairs, addressed the Downtown and Wooster Square community management team at City Hall Tuesday night to explain the details of the proposed retail and graduate apartment project in a current parking lot at 272 Elm St., two weeks after giving a similar presentation to Dwight neighbors.

The six-story building would contain four floors with tax-exempt graduate student apartments and two floors of taxable retail space, with 13,000 square feet planned for anywhere between one and three different merchants.

Click here for a story with more details about Yale’s housing needs.

Anstress Farwell, head of the Urban Design League, asked at Tuesday night’s meeting whether or not Yale plans to put more housing in the properties it owns on Dixwell Avenue and Goffe Street, several of which are tax-exempt. (A sign in the window of 9 – 11 Dixwell Ave. Wednesday announced that a Tropical Cafe Smoothie” shop is on the way.)

We have no current plans to do any further housing at this time,” Zucker replied.

She said the proposed 41 apartments will each contain two bedrooms and a kitchen. Community members raised questions about whether the apartments counted as dorms,” and whether they would then be exempt from property taxes.

Farwell (at right in photo) asked about a city zoning ordinance which describes a dorm as student housing minus a kitchen.

Zucker said the apartments count as university use,” which include dorms but also other types of student housing, provided below market value.

When asked which retailers Yale hopes to bring to the space, Zucker said it would be challenging” to plan ahead of time. It would be nice to get a home goods store or something along those lines,” she said.

Zucker said Yale plans to get on the Board of Zoning Appeals’ February agenda in order to ask for several variances, including one to provide zero parking spaces instead of the 140 required for two floors of retail.

Paul Bass Photo

The lot at 272 Elm.

The shops would draw shoppers that are already coming to downtown,” therefore extra parking would not be necessary, she said. And Yale grad students rarely have cars.

Current graduate housing at the Hall of Graduate Studies is being repurposed for office space, said Steve Brown (pictured by a sketch of the plans Tuesday night), assistant director of Yale planning. Of those 170 students, about 80 would be able to live in the Elm Street apartments, and the balance would go elsewhere,” he said. We’re not adding to the student populations. We’re taking from existing stock.”

Zucker told the Independent afterward that she does not know exactly where the rest of the student would go.

Ideally, construction on the project would be complete in July 2017.

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

Avatar for TheMadcap

Avatar for anonymous

Avatar for Anderson Scooper

Avatar for ILivehere

Avatar for Anderson Scooper

Avatar for Anderson Scooper

Avatar for Mister Jones

Avatar for HewNaven

Avatar for TheMadcap

Avatar for Bill Saunders

Avatar for dwightst

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for RhyminTyman

Avatar for RhyminTyman

Avatar for ILivehere

Avatar for ILivehere

Avatar for RhyminTyman

Avatar for ILivehere

Avatar for Olivia C Martson