Housing Authority To Buy Ex-Church Street South Site For $21M

Excellent. 1,000 units should be a lower bound for what can be done here. We need large amounts of market rate and affordable housing.

$21m for the site alone? What will the whole shebang cost to construct? Sweetheart Deal for the Developer who “has a strong working relationship” with the Housing Authority? More pork for the union labor that the HA will use?

Let’s see how affordable the building process will be.

Question...who paid for the demo of this site?

Good opportunity to bring in large office/lab buildings like 100 College Street, which are among the top sources of property tax revenue in New Haven. Each one of those buildings pays enough in taxes to support dozens of city workers.

Governor Lamont should step in with large development subsidies now, given the importance of this site to the entire economy of the state. It’s easy for more than a million people to commute to it.

This property is one of the most important development sites in the city. It is the first thing you see when you get off the train at Union station. It is visible from the highways. It had 301 subsidized affordable housing units, and should have high rise building(s) with the same number of affordable units mixed in with market rate units and luxury penthouse units. The ground floor should be businesses like retail, food and beverage places, entertainment, activities, lifestyle and personal services businesses, and a large full service grocery chain store like the super ShopRite in Milford, or Wegmans, and specialty food stores like Trader Joe’s/Whole Foods, a daycare, and other things that residents, train station passengers and employees, pedestrians, hospital and medical students and employees and visitors would all patronize.
It should have solar panels, storm water collection irrigation systems, nicely landscaped grounds for urban heat island mitigation and flood mitigation, with a community garden and terrace, secure and easily accessed bike storage, and a loading drop off and pick up zone for residents.
This is a tremendous opportunity also to build an attractive statement building, not the current trend of ugly clashing colors Lego blocks style or the previous corrugated cardboard concrete brutalist style monstrosity.
We have one chance to make this a development worthy of this cornerstone location, please don’t mess it up.

This is potentially huge. But under the best of circumstances, it will be years before anything is built on the site.

EastWest, I live just outside of downtown. If the assessor is right, land on my block is worth $2 million an acre. The Zillow valuation of my home (which is on a VERY small lot) supports this estimate. I’m sure Northland is making money on the deal. But the price is not outlandish.

Esbey, there is a huge need for affordable housing. But making a newly-built apartment affordable to a working poor household requires a subsidy of well over $1,000 per month. Per unit. Indefinitely. (A person working full-time at a minimum wage job can afford $750 per month using the 30% of income standard. Doubling up works for some people, but not others such as single parents. A 537 square foot studio in the Pierpoint in The Hill rents for nearly $2,200.)

This will be ANOTHER complex that will NOT solve the homeless problem in New Haven! WHY CAN’T THE 1,000 UNITS ALL BE LOW INCOME! GOD KNOWS ALL THOSE NEW APARTMENTS POPPING UP ALL OVER EVERY EMPTY PIECE OF PROPERTY IN NEW HAVEN HAVE DONE NOTHING TO HELP SOLVE THE PROBLEM WITH THE COST OF THOSE RENTS!

Is Northland the company which allowed the original housing projects to become so neglected it had to be destroyed? If so, it is infuriating to see them make a profit.

If not, well then I'm angry for nothing :-D

Today, the Church Street South site isn't worth much. The current zoning limits the site's use, there is likely environmental contamination in the soil, and the infrastructure serving the site likely needs to be upgrading and extended to support a high-density redevelopment project.

The Housing Authority likely assumes that the State and Federal governments will provide grant funding for environmental cleanup and infrastructure. The Housing Authority is likely confident that they will be able to get the requisite zoning approvals to develop the site with high-density buildings. The Housing Authority likely also assumes that the City will provide property tax abatements for any below market rate units, and State and Federal housing programs will provide subsidies for rent and development gap financing. Under these assumptions, $21,000,000 is a fair market value for the property.

In a competently run City and State, much of that $21,000,000 in land value would be captured and used to cover infrastructure and environmental costs and subsidize housing affordability so that tax payers wouldn't have to pay most of those costs through various local, state, and federal programs.

It's possible that there could be some high rise buildings built along the Church Street end.. and then closer to the train station there could be smaller buildings (5 to 7 stories) with spaces for retail, offices, greenspace, or even an area for a new park, and more affordable units included there..

I guess it is good for the City to take control of this very important parcel, but I don’t think the Housing Authtority should be in the development business.

Why not put it out for proposals?

People interested in the future of this area may want to participate in a meeting at 5:30 on 11/30 at the Canal Dock Boathouse. The Parking Authority has proposed amending the zoning ordinance to creare a transit orientated district adjacent to Union Station. Under the proposal, buildings on this site could be 10-12 stories if they occupy an entire lot, taller if they occupy less than the full lot.

I support this concept and believe something like it should be applied on the Church Street South site (Esbey’s idea). I believe that Anonymous overstates the size of the local market for 10-story buildings. But they make sense here.

Fastdriver109, I have no problem requiring developers to reduce their profit margins when they get benefits from the city. But absent huge, on-going subsidies requiring that all of the units be affordable for low-income households would force Northland to lose a fortune. My back of the envelope calculation is the subsidy needed for the project you suggest to break even would be more than $12 million per year. If you or I were king, this might happen, elsewise, probably not. And cost aside, we really do not want to ghettoize low-income people. That is what happened to public housing projects.

Also, doesn't the City own 3.5 acres of land on the Church Street South site? Is the Housing Authority going to pay the City millions for the development rights of its land? Is the Housing Authority assuming it can acquire the City-owned land for below market prices? Are they not going to acquire the City-owned land?

BTR, to be very charitable, Northland has not been a responsible property owner. But until the deal closes, it owns the property.

Anonymous, 100 College is very attractive as a lab building because it is adjacent to the medical school. This site is three quarters of a mile away. I fear it does not have the same magic.

Heather, I agree this site should become a large mixed income, mixed use development. But adding design review will notably lengthen the review process. In development, time is money. Lengthening the review process will result in fewer and/or less affordable housing units. And adding design review increases the developer’s risk. Currently, a person can appeal the city’s approval of a development by arguing it did not follow proper procedures or allowed a development that violated the zoning ordinance, e.g., was taller than permitted. Adding design review also would allow appeals based on aesthetics, an inherently squishier consideration.

This is concerning because isn't the housing authority the organization that ran the prior building into the ground to begin with?
Also, the housing authority does not have a very good track record of managing buildings....See below article....And Dubois Walton was at the helm at the time of this article as well.....
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/es_whistleblower_suit

So we have 30 plus thousand people on a waiting list and so far the Housing Authority is building a building on Whalley Avenue that is going to provide about 50 units, and they aquired that clock shop building which is going to provide roughly 100 units and it is going to take several years to build both. So that means so far we can expect 150 units to be available two years from now and we have 30,000 plus people on the housing authority waiting list. I think we are going to need to come up with better solutions for the homelessness epidemic and need for affordable housing in New Haven. I think we need a bit more urgency.

I agree with Average Taxpayer. Also, if the Housing Authority develops this property, then doesn't that mean another 300+ units stay off the tax roll, which means higher property taxes for us average taxpayers?

I think the mix should be healthy. At least 1000 units (build higher than 6 stories), some offices (great location for commuting), and retail.

With the large footprint, this could be the opportunity to bring in a major grocery store or something like Target walkable to downtown.

This is a true planning process,” DuBois-Walton said about next steps. ​“We’re not committed to the previous plans” for the site, referencing Northland’s stated intention to build 1,000 new apartments, 300 of which would be set aside at affordable rents. But, she said, that 1,000-unit Northland plan ​“gives us a sort of starting point” for what the housing authority and its development wing, Glendower, might build there next, perhaps in conjunction with another development partner.

There is a plan alright.This is the plan for PUBLIC HOUSING across this country.


THE PRIVATIZATION OF
AMERICAN PUBLIC HOUSING
Leaving the Poorest of the Poor Behind
Lawrence J. Vale and Yonah Freemark



THE PRIVATIZATION OF
AMERICAN PUBLIC HOUSING
Leaving the Poorest of the Poor Behind
Lawrence J. Vale and Yonah Freemark
Introduction: Pathways to Privatization

In recent years, the public sector has played a shrinking role in direct housing provision for eli-gible lowest-income Americans, leading to what critics frequently decry as “the privatization of public housing.The Rental Assistance Demonstra-tion (RAD) program, authorized by the U.S. Congress in 2011, has brought this language to the before—even though supporters of the program insist that its sole purpose is to “save” public housing by providing a mechanism that raises substantial funds to repair or redevelop it so that it can remain an asset for the lowest-income households. Detractors, however, see RAD as an unwelcome blurring of the public-private boundary since the program permits conventional public housing apartments to be converted to long-term project-based contracts that no longer require public ownership or management. Privatization, in this sense, is a term of derision proffered by those who see RAD as no more than another component in the neoliberal takeover of American cities.

https://yonahfreemark.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Chapter-14.pdf

Part one.

That is a very large amount of money for undeveloped, possibly contaminated land. Did the Housing Authority have an independent appraisal of the property prior to agreeing to this deal? I can't tell from reading this article.

Part Two
Notice the word RAD.RAD is being used to push the poor and working poor out of public housing across this country.Rad is nothing more then privatization vampires.

RAD is a federal grant program that incentivizes local housing authorities to seek out private investment.A small federal program has become a big federal program with no oversight of how it’s actually working.


Public Housing Is Going Private—and Residents Are Fighting Back

Public-housing residents from cities ranging from Boston to New York and Milwaukee are pushing back against RAD and other private-public partnership schemes in what they see as the federal government’s plan to privatize most of the nation’s public-housing stock.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/public-housing-going-private-residents-fighting-back/

I have peeps in New York who live in public housing.New York has a lot of public housing in prime real estate areas.The told me,The public housing in prime real estate areas are the ones they are going after.
Look at this

Like many of its properties, Fulton-Elliott-Chelsea sits on land so valuable that it could be sold, provide generous buyouts for current tenants and be cleared for private development.

Based on property assessments from NYCHA, the Chelsea Houses land is worth $67 million; the Elliott Houses, $77 million; the Fulton Houses, $101 million.

Selling the sites could provide Chelsea tenants up to $157,000 each — and allow the sites to be put on the tax rolls.

(The Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side are worth even more — $111 million, enabling tenant buyouts of a staggering $564,000 each.)

Keep sleeping if you think these Church Street South apartments will be for the poor and working poor.

NewHavenUrbanism, I believe the story is clear that the Housing Authority is only buying the Northland property (second paragraph).

Northland are the folks who allowed the housing complex to deteriorate to the point where it had to be demolished, right? Permanently leaking ceilings, black mold, etc. -- all while raking in government money from Section 8? Then dragged out a class action for years instead of compensating the residents for the ensuing health effects? And then just sat on the site for five years, making an empty lot the first thing that visitors to New Haven by train see when they arrive?

Can't we just eminent domain the property at this point? I'd cite Larry Gottesdiener's smirk as sufficient evidence that he's remained 100% insulated from his company's failures -- and is really excited about the coming $21m windfall.

This needs to be mostly market-rate and PLANNED WELL.

Please, this may be the most important redevelopment site in Connecticut and is CLEARLY the key site to this city's long-term growth.

GO BIG. Tall. Please.
We also need to think of MIDDLE INCOME: NHPS Teacher housing / police / fire /etc housing included in this at a subsidized rate as well!

Christel, I also am a New Haven taxpayer. But any commercial property included in the development is fully taxable, and the city can require a Payment in Lieu of Taxes for the housing (CGS § 8-58). And I suspect the Authority won’t own the property in the long run. Private developers routinely sell their developments a few years after they are completed, using the sales proceeds to finance new developments. This has already happened with a number of the recent developments in town. The Authority could do the same thing, setting long term affordability requirements as part of the sale.

New Haven Urbanism, I believe the city is contemplating using Tax Increment Financing (the approach you described) in connection with this project. If not, they should consider it. TIF is not a panacea. But it can be an efficient mechanism for funding infrastructure.

A correction. I used the term “king” in referring to Fastdriver109. I actually do not know their gender. And there are plenty of female fast drivers. 🥸

This is a very unfortunate development. HANH has not executed on anything I would consider transformational. In fact they own a lot of vacant and or undermanaged property. Mill River Crossing, maybe their only mixed use project, is an embarrassment. On top of the cost per unit was nearly 2x what most nice projects sell for in town. Get ready to fund some pork!

This site truly should be a transformational mixed use development that could propel NHV into the next strata of cities nationally, providing mixed income housing, retail, access to transportation, a multi modal connection to Tweed, office space, public space and a pedestrian/bike/park connection to the Downtown. Maybe I am being pessimistic but as Kevin highlights, we wont know for another 10 years.

If there is an example of a housing authority project like this that has been well executed please share to change my opinion!

The return to the 1970's throw up another wall between the hospital, downtown and the train station, which will make the redesign of the 34 Connector just another waste of money and time. It would have been nice for at least one of those two buildings that are stacked above the Air Rights Garage to have been on the South Orange area so at least their would be a chance of economic growth around New Haven's "gateway." I really wish the over degree holding city planners will realize that if given the choice people who can afford to play market rents will look or pay above market to be in building that will be maintained and who's residents have a stake in the buildings health than be "pioneers" in someone's doctorate thesis. I am all for lower rents and the city needs more apartments but doing the same thing over and over again, even if you give a new name with a few different pie charts and spread sheets is still the definition of ......you know the word.

EastWest, I hope you are right and I am wrong about lab space locating at this site. But physical distance is really important in siting decisions, which is why bio-tech is so incredibly geographically concentrated. There are really bright people in the life sciences across the country. But bio-tech is largely located in the shadow of leading medical schools and teaching hospitals.

Samuel Browning, I don’t think there is reason to believe the site is contaminated, beyond the background level of lead which affects the whole city. The area has been residential a very long time. The buildings had mold (and probably asbestos) but their debris was carted away

Excited to see what new and interesting way New Haven messes this up

The Church Street South site should be rezoned to allow a residential density of approximately 90 units per acre. This would allow for around 700 units to be built on the land the Housing Authority just bought from Northland. The City should sell the development rights to an additional ~300 units on their portion of the land to the Housing Authority at fair market value. The City can require that public parkland be maintained on the site and the Housing Authority can build ~1,000 units across the site. Zoning could allow for commercial and biomedical space as well.

Kevin,
As I'm sure you are aware, the rights to build a large biomedical building at the Coliseum site was recently approved. It seems to me that if a biomedical building is feasible there, it might also be feasible at the Church Street South site, especially given the recent RMS developments between Church Street South and the Medical Center.

And yes, the second paragraph of the article answers the question about the City-owned land on the site.

Kevin,

As for Tax Increment Financing, I'm not the biggest fan. As you know, TIF foregoes assumed future tax revenue in exchange for funding now. Its just a loan paid with future tax revenue. I'm not a fan of this method of value capture to fund things like upgrading and extending infrastructure (streets, utilities, etc.). I'm much more in favor of methods of capturing value from land speculation and development to fund infrastructure.

New Haven Urbanism, I’m cautiously optimistic about the new office building going up on the Coliseum site. But as you know, the market for office space has tanked nationally. Lab space is a distinct market, but it is really expensive to build.

Your proposal for rezoning the site is similar to what the city just did for Long Wharf, and what the Parking Authority proposes for the Union Station parcels. I am cautiously optimistic that Church Street South will be rezoned along these lines.

I agree that there are real limitations to TIF. But there is clear statutory authority to do it. I’m not aware of any statutory authority for what you propose. Municipalities can only do what the statutes (and Special Acts) allow them to do. At some point we should chat about the failure of Land Value Taxation to take root in this country. (I helped develop the statute that authorized a LVT pilot in the state. It never happened.)

Hard to comment on this without a full disclosure of all the financials. Where is the $21 million coming from? How was the purchase price determined? Where do we find out how well or how poorly Elm City Housing has done with other properties and projects?

This is a sad development in the history of a troubled site. HANH has not executed anything I would consider transformational and their last mixed use development, Mill River Crossing is underwhelming. Not to mention the cost of that project was nearly 2x what most project sell for locally! Readers here are usually up in arm for what properties sell for vs their city appraised price. We should be be equally concerned with the cost of public housing and the cost paid by all residents vs what market rate housing costs to build. I assure you the product isn't superior. Its institutionalized corruption.

I hope this is taken away from HANH because this could be transformational mixed income and mixed use project with that can enhance the pedestrian connection to downtown. Unfortunately however as its a city project with no transparency this wont get built for another ten years.