Drug Rehab Nonprofit Buys CVS Site

Just what NH needs-- another draw for drug addicts.

What will happen to the abandoned Rite Aid a couple blocks down on Legion?

Millions more off the tax rolls - don't want it. Don't need it. By the way, I warned the city when they started on their faux "stitching the neighborhoods back again" campaign. Do not let non-profits take over the 34 corridor - back when the corrupt former mayor of Milwaukee came to town . Look at all of them. And not a dime in property tax.

Probably begged Yale to buy it. They all do around there.
Or was Yale outbid by them ?
$2.5 million - wow

Pharmacy Flipping now ?

One City Dump, the state, not the city, determines what types of properties are tax-exempt. And the city does not own this property. It has no control over who the owners sell it to (nor should it).

Damn. This should be sense residential with commercial. Huge loss for Whalley.

A Danbury-based addiction-treatment nonprofit plans to move its local outpatient clinic to the former CVS site at Whalley Avenue and Orchard Street.

Does zoning permit addiction-treatment clinics?

Great example of how progressive planning from our City Plan Department (under prior leadership and Mayor) delegated out to consultants and interns leads to the continued screwing of residents, and the inability to turn a vital corridor into something we can be proud of. Since this is now zoned CGD (Corridors Gateway District) most of the uses that the public is sure to oppose will be as of right. At best, the use will be subject to Special Permit approval (low standard) at City Plan Commission and site plan review (NOT a public hearing). Unless variances are sought.

Dixwell and Grand avenue organized and told the planners that they didn’t want to be lumped into the CGDs (for other reasons; fear of density and gentrification which are so far unfounded) but this was controversial and newsworthy for a few months.

I fully support addiction treatment, the good works of the APT Foundation with medication assisted treatment, and many of the other non-profit addiction support organizations. But if we’re trying to remake Whalley into a true gateway to downtown, this is a spike in the heart of that effort. In a building that size, with that amount of parking, the new owners could probably serve hundreds of patients a day. Most are probably walking from downtown. Get ready.

So, thank you planners and consultants for giving the CGD the thought it deserved.

For my last application in the CGD, City staff determined that the extensive regulations applied to renovations and new construction and ultimately denied a modest residential conversion (3 units where 10 were required). Let’s see if the regulations are applied equally to all applicants. If so, the new owners will be spending millions to get up and running.

Kevin, generally, yes, the state dictates which activities are property tax exempt. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2020/rpt/pdf/2020-R-0071.pdf
Low-income moderate income housing exemptions, however are optional on the part of towns. Nonetheless, New Haven has opted to dispose of much of the former state land on route 34 to a non-profit to build "affordable" housing and to grant it tax-exemption. This was after complaining that the proposed highway had taken property off the tax rolls and incessant whining about how much property is tax-exempt. As The Internet notes, this area was rezoned for higher density residential/commercial use. That is is not being developed as such is a failure of Elicker's economic development team.

Another property off the tax rolls.

I understand the issue of city taxes. New Haven needs more money from the State (funded from Greenwich and Stanford, New Canaan, Etc.) and certainly from our surrounding towns like Woodbridge, Orange, North Haven, Bethany, Etc. New Haven provides all the human services for our area without adequate compensation. Until there is sweeping tax reform in CT most of our 169 towns will get away without paying there fair share and New Haven's taxes will be too high. (A quick Federal fix which would also be a move toward social justice would be a PILOT for the land taken off the tax rolls by interstate highways. It should be calculated based on the population density of the city which hosts the roadway.) That being said when I worked in Danbury MCCA was the gold standard for substance abuse treatment (mostly alcohol then). They truly saw the issue as a medical problem which required a suite of treatments including therapy and other life skills. If they have the same model now we are lucky to have them in New Haven as are the surrounding towns which should be required to help New Haven.

Thank you for reading my comment, One City Dump- I wonder where you live and what your Mil Rate is?

One City Dump, I see no evidence in the assessment database that the city ever owned this property. Brandfon Family Limited Partnership bought the property in 2000, from a Joseph Whitmore, who lived there. See also https://clustrmaps.com/d/CT/New-Haven/Whalley-Avenue

Ben, as I read the Use Table in the zoning ordinance, health clinics are allowed as of right in the GCD zone. So the only city involvement would be the site review plan. And since this is a non-residential use, the minimum unit count requirement should not apply. I agree that the GCD provisions were not fully thought through. But as you know, any changes to them would apply prospectively, allowing the clinic to go forward.

1644, thanks for the shout out to my old office. Actually, there are tons of local option property tax exemptions. Branford has adopted a number of them.

While I would have preferred to see retail and dense affordable residential buildings along Whalley Ave, this organization fills a desperate need in our area, and it sounds like they have the right approach to treating the whole person, not just the substance of an addiction.
I still think we should have a hospital based clinic in the area hospitals campuses and outpatient satellite clinics in the most of the suburbs all over the state so nobody has to leave their home town to get substance abuse outpatient treatment. It’s time to treat substance abuse as a medical and mental health need, and remove the stigma, and not relegate the clinics to disadvantaged neighborhoods in the cities and large towns. Substance abuse is everywhere.
Cordalie‘s comment has a point too, about how the reason New Haven’s taxes are so high is because we keep putting all of our NIMBY use facilities into the cities and a few large towns, like substance abuse clinics, public and affordable housing, oil tanks, trash processing facilities, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, etc. and tax exempt organizations, like hospitals, government buildings, penal systems, higher educational organizations, and more. So the suburbs zone out all these social good uses, and tax exempt properties, that they make use of, and the cities and a few large towns continue to host all of these programs and tax exempt properties, as they get poorer and poorer as these properties are concentrated in cities and a few large towns. The suburbs need to shoulder some more of the burden of hosting these uses, and pay for all the programs they use that they zone out of their borders.

@Kevin

My point was simply that the medical uses are all “as of right” or by special permit. The CGD regulations are very unclear and are subject to interpretation by staff for commercial or residential uses. Whatever they do at this building will trigger site plan review for a few reasons. Change of use involving more than 10 parking spaces, change of use involving more than 5000 sf, etc. Any alteration involving a drive through window.

It’ll be interesting to see if the community comes together in opposition like upper Dixwell did to the APT Foundation.

What? No NIMBY protestations? No plans for luxury housing? Where are all the out of town developers when you need them?

This is a disaster - but let me tell you why a disaster like this can actually occur. Because taxes are so high that residential developers are not touching these sites that can't house luxury apartments, and so because taxes are so high, only non for profit can buy these sites, which in turn, reduces the tax roll, and makes it even more difficult to reduce taxes. So to all of you who always want to raise the taxes on developers and large owners, that will show you what you get instead.

A lot of teeth-gnashing here, let alone cringe-worthy comments about people struggling with addiction, when what MCCA is doing is moving it's clinic two blocks down Whalley.