Biomed Builder Seeks Parking Pass

Should a planned new medical office building on a West River superblock be allowed to have 0 off-street parking spaces — when there’s a 700-space parking garage right next door?

That question is now before the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) in the form of a special exception application submitted by a local developer looking to build up a portion of 149 Legion Ave. that is currently a surface parking lot.

The developer, Yves Joseph of RJ Development + Advisors LLC, has already won site plan approval from the City Plan Commission to construct four stories and 47,000 square feet of medical research and office space on that site. 

The project is the last proposed development for the Route 34 West superblock — bounded by Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Legion Avenue, Orchard Street, and Dwight Street — as laid out in a 2014 Land Disposition Agreement (LDA). That decade-old master plan also brought Continuum of Care, a now-closed Rite Aid, The Learning Experience, the Cambria Hotel, and a 763-space parking garage to the former Urban Renewal-bulldozed stretch of land.

During Tuesday night’s latest online monthly BZA meeting, Joseph and project engineer Emilia Perez and architect Chris Bockstael pitched the commissioners on zoning relief that would allow 0 off-street parking spaces at 149 Legion Ave. where 63 are required for the planned medical office building.

The applicant ​“wishes to subdivide this portion of lot” from the part that already holds the 700-plus-space parking garage, Perez said. 

The existing parking garage and the site of the planned new medical office building share the same address of 149 Legion Ave. The new biomedical building would be constructed atop an existing surface lot just southwest of the existing four-story garage. 

The 1.75-acre at 149 Legion is owned by an affiliate of the Hartford-based LAZ Parking, which bought the plot for $1 million in 2019 from a holding company controlled by Robert Landino of Centerplan, which had in turn bought the property from the city. (Joseph used to be a vice president at Centerplan.)

At the end of the day, Perez said, the parking for this planned new medical office building will be provided in the existing 700-plus-space garage. 

Wait a minute, BZA Commissioner Erroll Saunders asked: ​“Why go through subdividing the lot if everything is compliant as is? It seems as if you’re creating a hardship for yourself … and then asking us to fix the hardship.”

Joseph explained that, ultimately, if the part of the lot with the parking garage is subdivided from the part of the lot with the medical office building, then those two newly subdivided lots will have different owners. 

That is: the owner and lender for the existing parking garage are different from the planned owner and lender for the new medical research building. ​“Because the ownership and the financing will be different, it will be two unique situations.” 

The medical office building development can be financed only if the lot it is on is zoning compliant, Joseph continued. 

Thus the zoning relief application before the board on Tuesday. 

First comes the zoning relief, then comes the subdivision, then comes the ownership change and financing and development for the medical office building.

Is there an agreement in place for the medical office building to use parking spaces at the garage it currently shares a property with, but is looking to be subdivided from? asked BZA Commissioner Chris Peralta.

“We are in the process of putting in place” such an agreement, Joseph said. Right now, his company has a ​“verbal agreement” with the parking garage owner.

So, Saunders jumped back in, ​“You don’t currently have the agreement for the parking.” And if the BZA granted the zoning relief to allow 0 parking — then the medical office developer would not necessarily be required to follow through on signing such an agreement with the garage. 

“The plan was always contemplated for the [medical office] building to park in the garage,” Joseph replied. ​“And we’re working towards making that take place.” But, he said, the required special exception allowing for 0 parking is necessary ​“because the site must be zoning compliant in order to be financed. … We’re really here to clean up the paper trail to allow us to build, nothing more, nothing less.”

The order just seems wrong, Saunders said. Shouldn’t you finish the parking agreement first and then get zoning relief? ​“If we give you permission first, then you don’t actually have to do the second thing” of finishing the parking agreement. 

The commissioners ultimately voted to keep the public hearing open until next month to give them and members of the public time to review the city transportation department’s traffic report on the zoning relief proposal. (That one-sentence report, posted to the BZA’s website after Tuesday’s meeting, states that the city does not expect any major traffic or parking impacts to result from this requested special exception.)