A rendering of the new apartment building at 873-897 Grand.
Prospective builders of 112 new apartments have gotten the go-ahead to help fill a blighted stretch of western Grand Avenue — despite opposition from neighbors convinced that a six-story complex would wreck the corridor’s character rather than revitalize it.
The City Plan Commission voted unanimously during a special meeting held over Zoom Wednesday night to approve a site plan for the project, which would replace two long-vacant buildings and a surface parking lot at 873, 887 and 897 Grand Ave. with a combination of 66 studio apartments, 38 one-bedrooms, and eight two-bedrooms. The apartments would be part of a broader complex featuring ground level parking, 1,000 square feet of retail, and a rooftop terrace.
Eleven of those total 112 apartments will be set aside for tenants making no more than 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), which currently translates to around $57,350 for a family of four.
An additional six will be reserved for residents with housing vouchers. That’s because it’s the first development proposed for the “Inclusionary Zoning Core Market Area,” an area of the city that was mapped out in the Elicker administration’s inclusionary zoning ordinance mandating that buildings with 10 or more apartments within that location rent out 10 percent of apartments at rates corresponding to 50 percent AMI and five percent to tenants with federal Section 8 rental subsidies.
Wednesday night was the last regulatory vote the developer needed to proceed with the project and seek building permits.
Read about the project in more detail here.
873-887 Grand Ave.
Bird's-eye view of proposed building.
“We need housing,” land use attorney Ben Trachten argued in favor of the project.
He, along with architect Sam Gardner, attended Wednesday night’s meeting to represent New York-based landlord Joel Strulovich, who purchased those three properties, including an abandoned commercial building and the former home of Unger’s Flooring, last November for $3.1 million.
“This is one block away from State Street on a largely blighted, deserted, abandoned block that only houses churches and social service agencies,” Trachten said.
Roughly a dozen neighbors showed up to the public hearing in protest of the proposed construction, asserting that the apartment complex will serve as a “street destroyer,” as New Haven Urban Design League founder Anstress Farwell put it.
“It’s so grossly disproportionate to everything in the area,” said Wooster Square resident Johanna Bresnick. “It is going to radically transform [the neighborhood], but not in the way that people who love New Haven imagine. Especially in a city that has so much incredible architecture, this particular piece feels very, very out of place.”
Farwell called the development’s design out of line with the city’s stated goals for the corridor to improve walkability, economic development, and even affordability.
For example, she said, though no parking was required under the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, the developers still plan to pave 44 spaces.
“They could’ve eliminated all the parking,” she argued, and thereby cut costs to up the apartments’ overall affordability.
A depiction of the anticipated neighborhood shading across the course of a day at the development.
Land use attorney Marjorie Shansky said that the traffic control study performed for the development was done over the summer while most Yale- and school-related traffic was irrelevant. In a route “burdened by a preponderance of double parking and congestion,” 112 more apartments would be inevitably disruptive, she said. Plus, she said, adjacent neighbors impacted by the shading of a six-story building will be “thrust into darkness,” she said.
“It’s a maxed-out development,” she stated, operating only “tangentially in service of the city.”
Another resident, Christopher Anderson, said that the fact that such a development is in line with local regulations must be indicative of a “basic error in the zoning code.”
Trachten, on other other hand, noted the development’s congruence with affordable housing policy. He pointed to architectural strategies, including a brick-hued coloring scheme to suggest assimilation with the surrounding streets and an abundance of balconies and terraces, as proof of “deliberate efforts to break up that monolithic type of scale” that is commonly “forced on a neighborhood without dialogue.”
Some of the attendees of Wednesday night's meeting.
City Plan Commissioners, while sympathetic to residents, disagreed with the idea that denser development is somehow out of whack with the city’s intentions for Grand Avenue.
“It may be an as-of-right development,” Chair Leslie Radcliffe said in kicking off the commission’s conversation, “but is it right? Does it fit in with the character of the neighborhood?”
“If you were to ask me about six stories, yes I think six stories is too high,” she said. But the commission’s role was not necessarily to “hold this project hostage” to such judgments, she noted: It was to determine whether or not the project abides by the zoning and land use rules adopted by the city to govern such development.
“It’s very clearly a big building that’s gonna stick out,” Commissioner Adam Marchand admitted. “It’s not gonna be a harmonious, seamless fit in the neighborhood.”
But, he said, “we actually have a crisis here” concerning housing supply. “We’ve made policy decisions to make that a priority. We’ve changed the zoning code to foster more affordable units.”
So, he concluded, yes, “there’s gonna be more disruptions, and we’re gonna have to deal with people living in closer proximity to each other, but I think there’s so much goodness that can come from that as well.
“I think it is going to change the character of that corridor. And I think it’s gonna be a good thing. Because it’s gonna bring density, it’s gonna bring units, and it’s gonna bring affordable units.”
New apartments are sorely needed. But why is the latest trend (I have seen this type of design all over the state) to make these living spaces look so ugly and without any trace of personality or originality? Even cost-effective, budget designs should have some architectural distinction.