Allan Appel file photo
Sandra's owners Miguel and Sandra Pittman: Planning to push back on zoning board rejection.
Nora Grace-Flood photo
The contested outdoor refrigeration containers on Arch St.
City zoners turned down a Congress Avenue culinary institution’s bid to store five outdoor fridges in a residentially zoned area — following testimony from the restaurant’s neighbor that the restaurant’s expansion has resulted not just in nationally renowned chicken wings, but also pesky rodents and stenches.
The restaurant’s owners now plan to contest that decision so that they can continue to keep corn, sugar, flour and plenty of perishables nearby as they look to continue serving the neighborhood they’ve long called home.
That was the upshot of an hour-long hearing held Tuesday night by the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals which pitted owners and supporters of Sandra’s Next Generation, the beloved Congress Avenue soul food stop, against Hill Alder Evelyn Rodriguez and other residents of the perpendicular Arch Street in a fight over outdoor refrigerators and residential rights.
Sandra’s owners, married couple and business partners Miguel and Sandra Pittman, showed up to the Zoom meeting seeking permission to keep in place a slate of refrigerated shipping containers they first installed behind their property back in 2017 to support their growing Hill business. They said they learned only last year that zoning technicalities meant those coolers were non-compliant with local law.
Rodriguez and fellow critics of Sandra’s outdoor fridge-placement setup, meanwhile, argued that the refrigerators were and should be “illegal” — and that their presence in a residentially zoned neighborhood was causing annoyances for residents.
“We’re here to make the community better,” Sandra Pittman told the BZA. “We have 25 employees — they have homes, they have mortgages,” she said. For Sandra’s “to be able to really thrive and pivot,” the restaurant remains dependent on keeping at least three of their five refrigerators intact.
Abdias Rodriguez, who is the brother of Ward 4 Alder Evelyn Rodriguez and who lives immediately to the south of the outdoor refrigerators, argued that the restaurant’s growth has brought with it an abundance of rodents, vermin and smells that have made it impossible for him to “enjoy” his Arch Street home. In particular, he claimed a family of skunks have moved in underneath the refrigerators: “I could imagine the tunnel system — my man Chapo couldn’t even keep up with the tunnel system!” he declared.
Tuesday’s debate was augmented by a host of testimony from supporters of the restaurant who piled into the Zoom room to defend Sandra’s role in feeding an otherwise food-deserted community, and to press the importance of helping a local Black business thrive against the odds.
In the end, the zoning board voted 2 – 2 on the restaurant’s application seeking a use variance — as the meeting’s agenda put it — “to permit refrigerated and bulk storage of food items in a residential zone” at 85 Arch St. The board also deadlocked on the restaurant’s application for a separate variance “to permit a side yard setback of 0ft where 8ft and 10ft is required” at that same address.
That vote meant that Sandra’s zoning-relief applications failed. After the meeting, Miguel Pittman told the Independent that he plans to apply again so that the restaurant can keep the current outdoor fridge setup intact.
Business Booming, Costco Corn Scarce
City zoning board staffer Nate Hougrand reported at the start of Tuesday’s Zoom hearing that the city had received emails in opposition to the zoning relief request from Alder Rodriguez complaining of the proximity of the fridges to her property as well as from Arch Street neighbors upset about parking violations. He also said the Pittmans had received support from the Hill North Community Management Team and had submitted a petition of support with over 200 signatures, including from Arch Street residents.
While Sandra’s restaurant itself is located at 636 Congress Ave. in a commercial district, the refrigerators were built on 85 Arch St., a second property owned by the Pittmans directly behind the restaurant. That Arch Street address is zoned residential.
The Pittmans said Tuesday they introduced their first refrigerator back in 2015. As their customer base grew and as they took on more large-scale catering gigs following national attention and rave reviews of their soul food, they began to depend on and increase their outdoor refrigeration infrastructure.
By 2020, they had five large refrigerators lining their back property to stockpile ingredients in the face of supply chain issues that left them unable to store all of their food they use to produce over 300 meals daily within their 900 square foot restaurant space.
In 2021, Miguel Pittman said he learned during an inspection by the city’s building department that he was supposed to have applied for city zoning approvals prior to putting those refrigerators on his property.
In December of last year, the Pittmans submitted an application to keep all five refrigerators. They said they received criticism from neighbors that prompted them to wait until a January hearing to propose what they described as a compromise with Arch Street residents.
Alongside their lawyer Ben Trachten, they developed a plan that would lower the number of outdoor refrigerators from five to three, install screening around the refrigeration system in the form of a seven-foot fence and establish a pest control plan — should they receive the requested variance from the BZA.
That plan was put together, the Pittmans said, in an attempt to accommodate the neighbors, including Alder Rodriguez, living to the immediate south of 85 Arch St., whose actual home is separated from the refrigerators by a small sliver lot.
The lot at 85 Arch St., Trachten wrote in Sandra’s zoning-relief application, “is too small to support residential use. It abuts the BA zone along Congress Avenue and is more appropriately considered accessory to 630 Congress Avenue.”
On Tuesday, he further said that the refrigerators “fit harmoniously with what is currently there, dumpster and parking spaces,” and that in lieu of any other productive way to use 85 Arch St., the city should work to support a “world famous restaurant” that otherwise “could no longer handle the volume of business that it generates.”
To win a variance, applicants must provide proof of hardship that would be alleviated by a zoning exception.
Miguel Pittman said that in the face of food shortages and inflation, Sandra’s depends on extra refrigeration space to accommodate their new tactic of buying more ingredients in bulk than was normal just a few years ago.
For example, Pittman noted that the other day he had to travel all the way to Rochester, N.Y., to buy Costco corn. All of the Connecticut Costcos, he told the Independent, had run out of the corn product he usually purchases. “Whenever I take these trips I have to buy at least four to five months’ worth.”
The same is true for everything from cornbread mix to eggs to napkins, forks and cups, he said. As costs spike and the lengths he has to travel to acquire such supplies get longer, “I can save anywhere from 10 to 20 percent on the product because we’re gonna be able to buy it in bulk,” Pittman said.
Thirty five percent of business, he said, is catering for places like Yale or the University of New Haven. In the past, that has involved producing over 1,000 meals at a time — something that he said the restaurant could never accomplish without the extra space outdoors to stock food.
“We probably wouldn’t even be able to make 300” meals without that extra storage space, Pittman estimated. In addition, the restaurant’s charitable work, such as distributing 700 free meals to New Haveners last Thanksgiving, would be impacted alongside the restaurant’s ability to keep on their 25 employees, most of whom are locals who depend on the consistent work and community they find at Sandra’s.
“They give jobs to people who need a second chance,” Andre Cuvilie, who works at Sandra’s, urged during the Zoom meeting.
“Look at what happened to a lot of Black businesses when Covid came,” community member Rodney Williams further pitched in. “Pittman is one of very few Black businesses that’s still in business… Pittman ran around the whole state looking for products just to feed people on a daily basis.”
“New Haven is growing, we’ve got growing pains all over the place. I would say we all need the opportunity to grow with the city; not just people who don’t look like us,” Williams said.
Leslie Radcliffe, the chair of the City Plan Commission who joined Tuesday’s meeting as a member of the public and Hill resident, said that Sandra’s has been “a landmark in the city of New Haven for over three decades.”
“Their contribution to the community goes far beyond their succulent and delicious chicken wings, the best chicken wings on earth… And unless they change their recipe for their chicken wings, I’ll continue to support them.”
Following more testimonies from Sandra’s supporters, Sandra Pittman herself spoke up: “The Hill is our home. We don’t wanna go anywhere. We’re here to make the community better… to know that every single day there is hope.”
"They've Taken Over The Hill!"
Thomas Breen file photo
Alder Evelyn Rodriguez (right): “Arch Street should remain purely residential."
Alder Evelyn Rodriguez, however, was not satisfied by what she heard Tuesday night. “Business is very important to the community… but this is not about the business fully, this is about the neighborhood,” she said during the zoning board meeting. “In 2017, Sandra’s business per the media became more national and that’s a great thing. But we have to understand that this is business in a commercial area and our street is residential.”
“Arch Street should remain purely residential,” she continued, reporting that neighbors and their landlords who had asked her to speak on their behalf Tuesday were spending an increasing amount on pest control as a result of the restaurant’s growth and that Sandra’s was further prompting issues with traffic and parking.
Ben Trachten noted that the restaurant’s parking lot and trash disposal system were both previously approved and located on Sandra’s commercially zoned land.
“I’ve been told they’re going to try to put another one,” Rodriguez said of the fridges, “up to six,” despite the fact that Tuesday’s application was to lower the number of refrigerators down to three.
“While I understand it’s a beloved restaurant, we have to understand that we need to consider the residents — we pay taxes here, we live here. They leave and go home!” she said.
Rodriguez’s brother, Abdias Rodriguez, also spoke up.
“They’ve outgrown the spot,” he said of Sandra’s. “They’ve just got to admit that. Bygones be bygones, man, I don’t have an issue with nobody. But we live there. We’ve been there for 55 years… And oh, man, they’ve taken over the Hill!”
He blamed the fridges for attracting new rodents to the area and complained of smells wafting from the dumpsters of the commercial Congress Avenue drifting towards his home, forcing him to keep his window closed.
“These ordinances are in place,” he said, for a reason. “I need to enjoy my peace. My home is my castle, and I cannot enjoy it.”
“You need to protect me!” he told the commissioners. “I wish the law would be abided by. If you break the law, you should be getting fined.”
Following the back and forth, BZA Chair Mildred Melendez made a motion to deny the Pittmans’ application.
“This is a residential zone. It started with no containers. It went on to put on containers without permission of the city or coming before this board.”
Then she said, “I think it’s only gonna be a matter of time before we see this application come before us again,” expressing concerns that the number of refrigerators requested by the Pittmans would keep rising.
She and commissioner Alphonse Paolillo both voted against Pittman’s plan. Commissioners Errol Saunders and Michael Martinez voted in support.
Tied two to two, the vote failed.
Attorney Roderick Williams said that the application could not move forward because all four votes would have to be in favor to grant the variance. He said that the Pittmans could still reapply for permission to maintain their refrigeration system.
Miguel Pittman promised to submit an appeal. “We’re currently getting legal advice. And I’m gonna reapply.”
“To remove those [refrigerators] I’m gonna have to get a crane… I had no idea that you had to have a permit to have a storage container,” he said. “That’s my property.”
If the building department issues an order to take down the refrigerators or Pittman doesn’t receive relief down the line from the board of zoning appeals, he said the immediate impact will be that “we’re not gonna be able to sell as many dinners as we are in this moment — and we’re gonna have to probably reduce our staff by like 40 percent.”
Asked after the meeting what next steps the city might or might not take in response to the refrigerators, City Plan Director Laura Brown said that “zoning enforcement is undertaken by the Building Department… since Jim Turcio’s departure I know they have been swamped.”
I understand both sides, but I take issue with the following statement:
“New Haven is growing, we’ve got growing pains all over the place. I would say we all need the opportunity to grow with the city; not just people who don’t look like us”
Mr. Williams, if you read this, I urge you to reflect upon it. Imagine if someone from a different race or background said that to you. Would you find it racist? I can sympathize and understand racial inequities, but that type of language and belief is not the answer. I hope that they can find a bigger place to run their successful business in the immediate vicinity.