The Mandy-controlled two-story house at 698 Dixwell.
An affiliate of the local megalandlord Mandy Management is looking to add one more apartment to a two-story Newhallville house — rather than build six new rental units or bring in a commercial tenant.
Mandy is seeking that relief from the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) to turn the vacant ground floor of one of the company’s properties at 698 Dixwell Ave. into a rental flat.
Attorney Ben Trachten represented the applicant, the Mandy-affiliated ABCD Investments De LLC, during in a presentation to the BZA during the zoning board’s latest monthly meeting online Tuesday night.
“This is undersized housing on an undersized lot,” the Mandy affiliate’s zoning-relief application reads. According to Tuesday night’s agenda, the landlord is seeking a variance to allow for 760 square feet of floor area per apartment where the city requires a minimum of 1,000 square feet.
“Based on the assessor data, it looks like we’re asking for a lot of relief… but there’s a lot more gross floor area to be considered,” Trachten said on Tuesday, noting an additional 304 square feet on the third floor of the building and 24 square feet of porch space.
“This is another one of these typical applications in the BA zone where there’s basically an unrentable first floor commercial unit,” he said. Though the home is in a business district, residential ground floor use is allowed on site. Trachten said that the full property’s 3,300 square feet could theoretically accommodate six new apartments, but the landlord is looking to convert the existing home into two apartments where one currently exists on the top floor rather than demolish the entire house and rebuild.
That way, the application states, the property can serve as “an ordinary two-family dwelling consistent with the neighborhood.”
The application also argues that a variance is due to the owners because “a hardship can be found in the changing neighborhood and general commercial market which renders these neighborhood level small commercial spaces nearly impossible to rent.
Tuesday's Zoom attendees.
The board did not vote or discuss the requested zoning relief or planned commercial-to-residential conversion of the Dixwell property’s ground floor given that the matter will first be referred to the City Plan Commission for further review.
The board did, meanwhile, unanimously vote in favor of a separate application that will allow for residential use of 114 Sylvan Ave., a similarly undersized two-family home like 698 Dixwell. Read more about that house in the Hill here. That property’s owners originally sought permission to convert the historically commercial ground floor into a convenience store until neighborhood opposition citing oversaturation of the area with unhealthy food sources prompted a withdrawal of an application.
On Tuesday night, the board granted Jasim Uddin a variance to permit 786 square feet of gross floor area per dwelling unit where 1,000 square feet is required as well as a special exception to allow for no off-street parking where one space would otherwise be required.
On Tuesday, the board also granted unanimous zoning relief to the childcare non-profit known as The Friend’s Center to build housing for teachers in Fair Haven Heights with the condition that the organization hold one more meeting with the Community Management Team prior to moving forward with broader site plan applications. (Board Member Errol Saunders opposed that condition but supported the application, arguing the Friends Center has already undertaken sufficient public outreach.)
Read more about that project here, which entails constructing four new homes so early childcare workers can live in them rent-free.
The easiest, cheapest thing the city can do to promote housing affordability is to reduce the 1,000 gross square foot (approximately 800 rentable square feet) apartment standard. It already allows apartments built under the inclusionary zoning ordinance to average 600 gross square feet.
Nothing would preclude developers building larger apartments. But the average household now is substantially smaller than it was when the current requirements were adopted decades ago. About one-third of renter households consist of one person.
And New Haven needs more housing. It has a surplus of commercial space. Not that I begrudge my friend Ben Trachten the billable hours, but you shouldn’t need an attorney to convert the latter to the former.