PDD update pitch, with planned new developments in red.
The current surface parking lot at 110 Munson.
Thomas Breen fill photo
Developer Alex Twining: Part of the "replacement of parking lots with places to work and live."
A 200-space Munson Street parking lot could be the site of New Haven’s next biotech lab building — according to a Winchester-factory-redevelopment zoning update that received a favorable, if still skeptical, recommendation from the City Plan Commission.
Local land-use commissioners took that vote Wednesday night during the City Plan Commission’s latest special meeting, which was held online via Zoom.
The vote was in support of a request submitted by the redevelopment team behind the so-called “Winchester Center” project in Science Park.
That Planned Development District (PDD) zoning-update request would take the expansive surface parking lot near Munson and Winchester and include it into the existing Science Park PDD — which is a slate of specially zoned properties based around the former Winchester Arms Factory that developers have been looking to repurpose since the 1980s.
The proposal gained a vote of support Wednesday night alongside a few other changes to the self-described neighborhood reinvestment project. The requested PDD update now heads to the full Board of Alders for further review and a potential final vote.
Wednesday’s 3 – 1 vote (with Chair Leslie Radcliffe casting the sole dissenting vote) saw the the City Plan Commission support the following changes to the city’s zoning manual which governs the rules of the 40-year-old district, known as PDD #49:
• Add 88, 110 and 116 Munson St. to the PDD under the title of “Parcel M” and allow the developers to use the land for potential lab use.
• Allow for the demolition of the former Winchester Factory buildings at Munson and Mansfield, which were recently found to be contaminated to the point that past plans for conversion are impossible, and approve a proposal to build a parking structure topped with a mixed-use building on the site.
• Grant residential and retail uses while reducing the required number of parking and loading spaces at “Parcel B,” a PDD lot located at the corner of Division Street and Winchester Avenue.
Click here to read a summary of the proposed PDD amendments in full.
Those proposed amendments to New Haven’s zoning ordinance text and map were submitted by the city’s Economic Development Administration and presented on Wednesday by local attorney Carolyn Kone.
Wednesday’s meeting focused primarily on the addition of “Parcel M” — that is, the surface parking lot on Munson Street — to the PDD. Commissioners questioned and debated whether laboratory use immediately adjacent to what are primarily residential properties would be appropriate.
Twining Properties founder Alex Twining, whose company is one of the lead co-developers of the “Winchester Center” project, pitched the PDD expansion and amendments on Wednesday as part of the “making of a neighborhood place” that would see the “replacement of parking lots with places to work and live.”
He said the each portion of the overall PDD could create up to 1,000 apartments — with 20 percent set aside for tenants making no more than 50 percent of the area median income (AMI). It would also lead to business and job opportunities, and new green space.
Overall, he said, the changes to the area would create “more reasons to come to this location and reconnect the neighborhoods that used to be connected through Winchester.”
Read up on the latest of that ever-evolving PDD here, and about the rise of bioscience research and programming developments across the city, not just in Science Park but at places like the new lab and office tower at 101 College St, here. And click here and here for previous Independent articles about the overall Winchester Center development, including already approved plans to build 287 new apartments, two new privately owned streets, and a new public plaza.
Wednesday’s proposed amendments to the PDD also sparked further debate about the broader implications of bringing new housing, retail and science centers to a long under-invested area at the crux of two historically Black neighborhoods, Dixwell and Newhallville.
The public hearing, during which only a handful of individuals testified, saw disparities in warmth towards the project, with some local business owners welcoming the PDD expansion as Newhallville native and local small-business contractor Rodney Williams warned about a potential gentrification threat that he said has failed to engage members of the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods.
Those words of caution swayed at least one member of the City Plan Commission, Chair Leslie Radcliffe, to vote against the PDD expansion.
Radcliffe argued that while the project might help New Haven when it comes to housing and job creation, she wasn’t convinced it would help the long standing neighbors of the communities located directly next to the ongoing and upcoming developments. Commissioners Adam Marchand, Joshua Van Hoesen, and Carl Goldfield, voted in support of providing a favorable recommendation for the amendments — and asked the Board of Alders to specifically examine the potential impact of placing a biomedical research facility directly next to current housing.
Apartments & Jobs For Whom?
Attendees of Wednesday night's Zoom meeting.
During his presentation to the commissioners Wednesday, Twining detailed what he saw as the benefits of the PDD amendment and resulting redevelopment.
He said that including 88, 110 and 166 Munson St.in the overall PDD would allow for the congruent redevelopment of a significantly sized parking lot that is rarely filled while providing parking for the employees of Winchester Works. Twining also sought permission to allow biotech and lab use in the lot, though the area may ultimately be developed as a mixed-use residential building.
Carolyn Kone spoke to the deteriorating former Winchester factory buildings at the corner of Munson and Mansfield Streets. While the PDD had originally included plans to rehab the properties, a recent environmental study found “there were all kinds of gasses emanating from slabs of the floors and ceilings due to the kind of manufacturing that was done there.” She said the State Department of Health had found that some of the gasses were concentrated at amounts more than 400 times what the Department of Energy & Environmental Protection would permit. As an alternative to the previous rehabilitation plan, Kone said developers are hoping to tear the buildings down and build a parking garage topped with mixed use development including more apartments.
State Department of Public Health photo
Conditions inside the former factory at Munson/Mansfield.
Science Park and neighboring business owners and workers jumped on Zoom Wednesday to voice support for the development.
Ricky Evans, who has owned Ricky D’s Rib Shack on Winchester Avenue for seven years, said the project would be “good for business and good for the community… if you plan to add more restaurants, don’t make it anymore barbecue, because we got barbecue over here.”
Jason Price, one of the cofounders of Henry Street art gallery NXTHVN, said “the use and goals of this project are consistent with the work we’re already engaged in,” pointing to NXTHVN’s work “developing dilapidated properties” in the hopes of both revitalizing specific neighborhoods while benefiting the city at large.
“I think it would be great to address the rundown buildings in the area, to improve safety, to bring jobs to the neighborhood and just improve the overall vibe of the neighborhood,” added cancer therapy researcher Scott Phillips. Phillips, who works at 150 Munson St., argued the project “would attract a lot of energy and improve the economics of the area.”
Walter Esdaile, the managing director of the New Haven Regional Contractors Alliance, complimented the developers’ commitment to engaging minorities and local businesses in the development of Science Park. Esdaile said the developers have agreed to participate in city programs to hire both minority-owned conrtactors while also helping with a student contractor program operating out of 30 different New Haven schools.
Rodney Williams.
Rodney Williams, who grew up in Newhallville and founded Green Elm Construction, disrupted that line of praise.
“I’m not saying I’m for this or against this,” Williams repeated throughout his testimony, “but I’ve got some concerns.”
“This project isn’t gonna be in either Ward 20 or Ward 21,” he said, “but it’s a minority community. What’s actually gonna happen is the Blacks in this community that elect alders, they won’t have any representation because downtown is now moving into Newhallville.” He warned that the long-term impact of the development would be the displacement of Black residents from their own neighborhoods.
He said that while the development might create jobs and housing, the individuals in the community would not be the ones to receive those jobs or live in those apartments.
As far as construction opportunities go, he mentioned, nobody had reached out to his company for contracted work.
He further observed that “nobody’s here from the city saying this is a great thing for us.” Where, he wondered, were the alders or community management teams looking to express support or opposition for the development. “I just feel like they need to put people in the community at the table with them,” Williams concluded.
Fussin' Over Fussy
The developers said they have held 60 community meetings over the past three years.
Speaking widely about the PDD, Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand weighed in that the success of the district in terms of uniting neighborhoods without phasing out long-term residents depended on execution.
For example, he said, developers should be thoughtful when it comes to site plan review stages about which businesses are brought into the mixed-use complex.
He pinpointed Fussy Coffee on Winchester Avenue as an example of an extant business that is less than accessible to certain consumers.
“When I go to Fussy Coffee I have to be prepared to spend a lot of money,” he said. “It’s not affordable for a lot of people unless you wanna get a quarter of a cup of almond milk.”
With a laugh, he admitted to “exaggerating a little.” Still, he said, “I don’t know how accessible that place is to people who live a stone’s throw away from that building… You gotta have a pretty dang good job to get a bagel from the place, although it’s a pretty good bagel, let me tell you.”
“The broader question,” he said, is the “significant increase in intensity of development in this area and what does that mean, how does that fit in with the neighborhood?”
“From a certain perspective, yes,” he said, arguing that turning vacant lots into housing and business “is certainly a more productive use of the land.” However, he said, upcoming and independent developments in nearby sections of the Dixwell and Newhallville, he said, could collectively cause larger issues with traffic impact and “change the character of the surrounding neighborhood.”
Commissioner Joshua Van Hoesen argued in favor of a build, build, build mindset, asserting the more density the better for confronting the housing crisis. Commissioner Radcliffe, on the other hand, questioned whether the affordability requirements imposed by the developers onto themselves, although higher than the city required amount of 5 percent, would do enough to help a community in need of deeply affordable, family-sized housing.
The developers have committed to making 20 percent of all the apartments they develop affordable at an average of 50 percent AMI.
“Of great concern for me,” Radcliffe added, is “where’s the community input?”
“This is something that’s sitting dead center in the middle of the Newhallville-Dixwell community and the University. It will be a positive development for the city of New Haven, it will bring more housing to the city of New Haven, more dollars to the city of New Haven,” Radcliffe said.
However, she compared, “I don’t see the positive impact on the surrounding community in the long term,” she said. If one of the proposed apartment complexes included seven three-bedrooms, as Twining had suggested earlier in the meeting, 20 percent affordability would mean just one three-bedroom apartment made less than market rate within that building.
Marchand then reoriented the commission’s attention to the specific amendments before them that night.
One of the most fundamental questions, Marchand posited, was whether it was appropriate to build lab space on Munson Street next to what commissioners said was a long-standing housing cooperative and additional single family homes.
“What’s the usage differential between an office building and a medical research facility? I don’t have that answer, I’m not as familiar with the difference in foot traffic,” Commissioner Van Hoesen said. “I don’t necessarily know the difference off hand.”
“This isn’t like they’re creating chemicals that are gonna run over a border into somebody’s well,” Commissioner Carl Goldfield said, adding that the location of potential biotech labs is “more an issue of should they be happening in a densely populated city rather than next to someone’s house.”
Ultimately, Marchand, Goldfield and Van Hoesen provided a favorable recommendation for the project, with Radcliffe the sole vote against the PDD amendments. Marchand made a note that the Board of Alders should examine exactly what uses, activities, and building type would be implied by the presence of biotech facilities and whether that was appropriate next to residencies.
The dig at Fussy was unnecessary. Their prices aren’t exorbitant for quality product. Clearly plenty of people can afford it as they’ve flourished through a pandemic. Give me a break with this nonsense, as if businesses need to be non profits or something.