Paul Bass Photo
The city decided this place is dangerous.
If you tiptoe up these concrete stairs, you can see why.
They take you inside the shell of the entryway to an 18-unit apartment building that no longer exists. You lean over through a nonexistent portal and peer down into a vast debris-strewn foundation. Any kid who wanders up here could easily plunge to a perilous fate.
City inspectors visited this lot, at 235 Winchester Ave. They saw all this.
After that inspection, city Building Official Jim Turcio wrote a letter to the property’s owner, former New York Giants and Yale football cornerback-turned-developer Kenny Hill. Actually, the letter was an official “final notice” of an “unsafe structure.”
“[T]he vacant structure is unsafe and in violation” of the state’s building code, Turcio wrote. “[T]he front porch roof has rotted, the vacant structure is open to trespass, and the foundation wall and fencing surrounding the property has collapsed. The abandoned electrical equipment and excess debris is also causing an unsafe condition, endangering public safety and welfare.”
The notice “hereby” ordered Hill “to immediately … secure all accessible openings with opaque material of adequate strength and durability to prevent the entrance of all trespassers” and “maintain the property in this secure condition from this date forward.”
The letter was dated July 6.
The pictures you see above were taken Wednesday. Wednesday was Aug. 12. It looked the same on Thursday.
New Haven officials have been telling Kenny Hill that 235 Winchester is unsafe for years. Fifteen years. Ever since he bought it, when it still had 18 crumbling, rat-infested apartments and he promised to fix it up nice.
Since then he and a succession of inspectors and code officials and three mayoral administrations have veered from impasse to threats to citations to negotiations and back. The building eventually came down. The danger persisted.
Meanwhile a building boom swept New Haven. Including on the blocks around 235 Winchester. One block to the north, Science Park filled up with tech businesses. A former factory in the complex became luxury apartments. An old social club was rebuilt as a hair salon with new apartments. Three blocks to the south Yale built new residential colleges.
Some stubborn blight has remained as well, including at the abandoned home (pictured at right) next door to 235 Winchester …
… a stretch of the former Winchester arms plant that never got renovated …
… and at a dumped-on field at 201 Munson St., where out-of-state developers promised to spend millions building 400 mostly market-rate apartments. (The owners recently said they’re finally about to close on the financing.)
Kenny Hill erupts in years worth of pent-up rage at the city whenever asked why his planned new apartment building remains a hazardous pit.
This week he didn’t do any of that on the record. For the record he had no comment on the city’s notice, his planned response, or his next steps with the lot.
He did not contradict anything he has repeatedly said on the record in previous Independent interviews, in which he blamed the city for the mess. The dispute stems from a $168,000 loan the city gave him 15 years ago to remove lead from 14 of the 18 apartments at the property at 235 Winchester Ave. before he conducted a full renovation. He claimed the city forced him to hire an unqualified contractor who took the money but never did the work. The city claimed that it acted appropriately and Hill owed them the money and needed to proceed with the renovations.
Read about all that in detail here, here, here, here, here and here.
Asked about the city’s next step following the emergency notice and order, Jim Turcio, too, said he would decline comment.
“He hasn’t responded yet,” Turcio said of Hill.
Turcio also said his office is working with Hill to help Hill’s crews finally finish another long-delayed project a block away, the renovation of a stately 12-unit apartment building at 201 Winchester (pictured) that a fire ravaged in 2012.
“We’re seeing progress” on that project, Turcio said: Hill is finishing up the HVAC work and is hiring a plumber, to be followed by an electrician, to be followed by sheetrock and insulation crews. He has six months to finish the work, according to his permit.
“We need him to finish,” Turcio said.
Kenny Hill.
Two years ago, Hill and Livable City Initaitive (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo told the Independent that were optimistic about a deal to restart the 235 Winchester building project. Hill obtained a new $950,000 mortgage. The two sides were working on a settlement of past blight fines and other debts to enable construction to proceed. LCI is city government’s neighborhood development and anti-blight agency.
Despite the new mortgage, the new apartment building never went up.
Neal-Sanjurjo was asked this week what will happen now with 235 Winchester.
“Since I’ve been here I have tried to work with Kenny to move the project long. Every opportunity that we have tried to help him move it along, he has not followed through,” Neal-Sanjurjo responded.
“It’s time we do something to clean up that site. He’s not done anything he said he was going to do. We should pull the trigger.”
Alder Jeanette Morrison: City should act.
Neighbors pretty much demanded that at a June meeting with city officials about Hill’s two Winchester properties, according to Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison. Morrison organized that meeting.
Morrison said she has been contending with complaints about the two properties since she was first elected in 2011.
“We don’t deserve to live like that. He’s not a friend of ours,” Morrison said of Hill’s handling of the two blighted properties. “‘I don’t know what’s stopping the city” in addressing the problem.
Meanwhile, Kenny Hill does have new cash flowing in. On March 12 his limited-liability corporation that owns the Winchester properties obtained a $2.7 million mortgage from Harrison Vickers and Waterman LLC of Bronx, N.Y. The mortgage deed lists 235 and 201 Winchester as collateral. Asked how he plans to spend the money, Hill declined comment.
LCI is supposed to be our anti-blight agency, but for 3 years LCI has ignored complaints about 714 Q. Avenue which is becoming a demolition by neglect of a 19th century home on the Quinnipiac River in the Heights.
At this point I have contacted every official at LCI, plus our Alder.<br /> Why is it so hard to make government work?Why are some properties ignored, despite their dilapidated condition? Why are no fines issued? How can people collect a salary and not do their jobs?