No Easy Easement

The completion of the renovation of a former Dixwell Avenue funeral home into a four-story, seven-unit apartment complex hit another speed bump when a proposed easement failed to gain a necessary approval.

At its monthly meeting at City Hall Wednesday, the Livable City Initiative (LCI) Board of Directors was unable to move forward a plan that would grant a five-foot easement on city-owned property at 55 Dixwell Ave. to local pizza maker turned Dixwell Avenue developer, Kadir Catalbasoglu. The easement, should he get it, would allow him to finish work on a funeral home turned apartment building project he’s constructing next door at 59 Dixwell Ave.

But the board ultimately didn’t have enough voting members present to advance the measure to the Board of Alders. It could have had enough members, but its newest member, Neil Currie, abstained from voting.

Currie raised what he said were questions of fairness and equity around how Catalbasoglu and the city came to strike a deal to purchase 55 Dixwell and the extra steps LCI is taking to grant an easement on disputed land to help the developer on his project at 59 Dixwell Ave.

Currie said he abstained from the vote because he knows Catalbasoglu and the owner of 51 Dixwell, who happens to be suing the city. Currie is the property management director for WD Management LLC and a realtor at Real Living Wareck D’Ostilio. He also has a master’s degree in urban and environmental planning from the University of Virginia.

“I’m interested in the city being equitable and fair,” he said. ​“There seems to be a strong concern to provide a reasonable solution for Mr. Catabasglou to move forward with the development at 59 and to find a means of doing that by permitting an easement on a parcel that is currently in dispute seems to me, going above and beyond.”

Catalbasoglu was not at Wednesday’s board meeting. He and his wife Fatma purchased 59 Dixwell back in 2015 to transform the former Keyes Funeral Home into an apartment building. Two years later, Catalbasoglu made a successful response to a request for proposal from the city seeking developers for 55 Dixwell, which is a vacant 3,000 square foot parcel the city bought at a foreclosure sale about four years ago.

The owner of the nearby former Reaves barber shop building at 51 Dixwell, Yehoshua Rosenstein, also responded to that RFP, apparently offering the highest bid for the property that the city received, according to Currie. But the city ultimately chose Catalbasoglu’s plan, according to LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo. Prior to the RFP, no one had shown interest in purchasing 55 Dixwell.

The overall alignment of Catalbasoglu’s plan with the city’s objectives for revitalizing the Dixwell corridor outweighed the amount of money that the city might have gotten up front for the parcel, according to Neal-Sanjurjo. Rosenstein later filed a lawsuit arguing that he, not the city, rightfully owns a driveway and dilapidated garage next door to 55 Dixwell.

Catalbasoglu has waited to close on his deal for 55 Dixwell with the city because of the lawsuit. But he has continued to move forward with the redevelopment of the funeral home. He needs an easement so he can replace windows that are in the lot line between his development at 59 Dixwell and 55 Dixwell so that he can finish the apartment building.

“I’m sure he appreciates the extreme effort that LCI has gone to,” Currie said. ​“I don’t yet understand why LCI has gone to such extreme for this particular developer.”

Neal-Sanjurjo said LCI is making the effort because Catalbasoglu was awarded the property through the agency’s disposition process and the city has an interest in seeing it completed. (It also was noted during the discussion that Catalbasoglu was awarded the 55 Dixwell site before his son, Hacibey, became Ward 1’s alder.)

“We are now trying to make good on that. That’s the end of the story,” Neal-Sanjurjo said of the push for the easement. ​“And he’s doing a significant amount of work on that corridor, one of the mainstays of what we’re trying to do in revitalizing the Dixwell corridor. The work that he’s doing at the existing building at 59 is important to that community and is important to the corridor. And so, his award at 55 assisted in the redevelopment and revitalization strategy that we are currently working on. It is not about anything else other than the fact that we have a corridor we’re trying to turn around.”

Evan Trachten, LCI acquisition and disposition coordinator, said that LCI would have liked to enter into a simple access agreement but the city’s building department wouldn’t accept it. In the face of the lawsuit, the city’s Corporation Counsel advised LCI to issue a formal easement to Catalbasoglu. The item was tabled because of the lack of votes and will be reconsidered at the board’s next meeting.