Thomas Breen file photos
270 Foxon Blvd., newly acquired by the city ...
... ex-Church Street South land, newly bought by the housing authority.
The city has officially purchased a Foxon Boulevard hotel for $6.9 million, and is now busy converting it into a non-congregate homeless shelter that the Elicker administration said it hopes to open before Christmas.
And the housing authority has closed on its $21 million acquisition of more than eight acres of Union Station-facing vacant land that used to house the Church Street South apartment complex, and is about to embark on a year-long planning process to determine how best to transform that empty expanse.
Those two private-to-public property deals were recently recorded on the city’s land records database, marking major milestones for two government agency initiatives to put more roofs — both temporary and long-term — over more New Haveners’ heads.
On Nov. 20, the City of New Haven paid $6.9 million to Minal Inc. — a company controlled by Jagdish Patel of East Haven — to purchase the 57-room Days Inn hotel at 270 Foxon Blvd. That property last sold for $2.5 million in 2001, and the city last appraised it for tax purposes as worth $2,340,700.
The hotel purchase marks the latest step in the Elicker administration’s plans to convert that ex-hotel site into a non-congregate homeless shelter to be operated by the local homelessness services nonprofit Continuum of Care.
On Oct. 2, the Board of Alders signed off on the $6.9 million hotel purchase, with $5 million of those funds coming from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. On Oct. 16, the alders approved a separate $3.5 million contract with Continuum of Care to run the non-congregate shelter with roughly five staff members.
The building itself contains 57 rooms, and is expected to house up to 112 individuals for periods of 65 to 100 days at a time. In addition to private rooms and a chance to stay off the streets, Continuum of Care will offer case management, job training, primary healthcare and mental health services as well as meals, clothing and other basic needs on scene. The shelter will be open to those aged 18 and up only, and will allow for pets on site.
Thomas Breen file photo
Mayor Justin Elicker: "Not easy."
“It’s really exciting to see how quickly our team at City Hall worked to get the deal done,” Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent in a Monday afternoon phone interview. “These things are not easy.”
He said that the city’s engineering department is currently overseeing “some repairs and minor construction” at the ex-hotel site, including “replacing all the toilets, replacing some flooring,” nothing major. Continuum of Care is also looking to hire staff to run the new shelter, he said.
Elicker said the city’s goal is to open the ex-hotel shelter “as soon as possible. We’re hoping to open before Christmas.”
Asked about the difference between the final purchase price and the most recent tax appraisal, Elicker stressed, “We’re comparing this to what other options are out there. If we were to build this from scratch, it would be more than $6.9 million. This is effectively turn-key.”
Ex-Church St. South Sold
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Housing authority chief Karen DuBois-Walton: Thinking big.
According to a separate recent land records filing, on Nov. 13, the Housing Authority of the City of New Haven paid $21 million to Church Street New Haven LLC — a holding company controlled by the Massachusetts-based developer Northland Investment Corp. — to purchase 89 Union Ave., 169 Union Ave., 91 Columbus Ave., 94 Columbus Ave., 86 South Orange St., and 1 Tower Ln.
Those six properties comprise a total of 8.27 acres of vacant land directly across the street from Union Station. They used to house the privately-owned, government-rent-subsidized 301-unit Church Street South apartment complex, which was demolished in 2018 after years of neglected maintenance destroyed roofs and walls and poisoned kids with asthma.
The properties have sat vacant for years ever since talks stalled between the now-previous landlord, Northland, and the city over how to close the funding gap for Northland’s redevelopment plan, which included constructing 1,000 new apartments, 300 at affordable rents. Earlier this month, the housing authority announced that it had reached an agreement with Northland to purchase the ex-Church Street South site with the goal of converting it into “Union Square” — a new mixed-use development that, while not committed exactly to Northland’s previous building plans, will be significantly denser than the former apartment complex.
The city most recently appraised these six now-sold properties for tax purposes as worth a combined sum of $7,258,400. The Independent was unable to confirm exactly how much Northland paid to buy these properties back in 2008, when the Church Street South apartment complex was still standing. A July 2008 open-end mortgage loan that Northland’s holding company pulled at the time it bought the property was for up to $4.8 million. That document indicated that Eastern Bank had advanced Northland’s holding company $2.8 million for costs associated with the acquisition of the property.
Asked about the difference between the purchase price and tax appraisal for the ex-Church Street South site, housing authority Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton said, “In determining our price, we considered the appraisal, the location, the potential for redevelopment and the importance of the asset as a transit oriented location prime for redevelopment and adjacent to our existing parcel at Robert T. Wolfe. Additionally, we were in negotiations with Northland and competing with at least one other interested purchaser.”
Now that the housing authority has officially acquired the former Church Street South site, DuBois-Walton said that the next step is to develop a “Union Square Transformation Plan.”
That will likely be a year-long project itself, DuBois-Walton said, funded by a $500,000 federal Choice Neighborhoods planning grant the authority secured prior to closing the cash deal with Northland.
The first public meeting to inform such a plan is slated to take place on Monday at 5:30 p.m. at High School in the Community at 175 Water St.
The idea is to identify not only what kind of housing can be established on the property, but what sort of community and residential amenities — anywhere from education, workforce development, job training, healthcare services, and/or entrepreneurial support — can be bundled into a broader affordable neighborhood development that would transform eight acres into what DuBois-Walton said will ultimately be known as “Union Square.”
Creating that particular blueprint is also a prerequisite for applying for a larger Choice Neighborhood Implementation (CNI) grant, which could award anywhere from $30 to $50 million to the development, according to DuBois-Walton.
That program is an extension of the federal government’s HOPE VI funding. While the latter provides grants to help rehab distressed buildings, CNI focuses, as the name suggests, on revitalizing entire neighborhoods.
DuBois-Walton said that she’s particularly optimistic about acquiring funding for the project through CNI because of the housing authority’s previous successes securing HOPE VI grants. Both Monterey Place, the 339-unit public-housing complex in Dixwell, and Quinnipiac Terrace, the stretch of two- and three-story homes full of affordable apartments along the river, were funded by HOPE VI, DuBois-Walton recalled.
“We have experience working with these big HUD grants,” she said. “There’s no guarantee that the planning grant leads to that,” she noted, but the planning process itself should catalyze “lots of conversations with partners so that we can go after the kind of funding we need.”
"On Oct. 2, the Board of Alders signed off on the $6.9 million hotel purchase, with $5 million of those funds coming from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. "
According to Alder Rosa Santana, when officials were questioned about the high cost of purchasing this property, no answers were given. Nonetheless, the Board of Alders voted to approve the expenditure.
Just one example of why a one-party town does not serve the public interest.