Ex-Factory Tax Break, Redev Plans Advance

Alders endorsed a 17-year tax break deal for dozens of planned new below-market-rent Science Park apartments — as part of a broader set of local legislative proposals designed to further the redevelopment of the former Winchester Arms Factory’s remaining parking lots and vacant industrial buildings into new housing, retail, and bioscience labs.

Those two unanimous votes were the upshot of a three-hour meeting held on Tuesday during a joint meeting of the Board of Alders Legislation and Tax Abatement Committees. 

The meeting took place in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall. Before the votes of support, the meetup featured a larger debate about how to develop an area at the crux of the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods without losing character or long-standing residents.

Both pieces of legislation that were backed by committee alders Tuesday night still require support from the full Board of Alders. Click here and here to read the proposed ordinance amendment and zoning text amendment in full.

They represent the latest movement on the collective development of Planned Development District (PDD) #49, a 40-year-old district made up of specially zoned properties based around the former Winchester Arms Factory.

On Tuesday night, city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli framed both requests by the developers, including the Science Park Development Corporation and Alex Twining, as part of a ​“series of enabling things we’ve done over time” to support a ​“journey of brownfield redevelopment, creation of new jobs and being a strong neighborhood.”

The pieces of local legislation that the aldermanic committee endorsed Tuesday night included a tax abatement agreement that would fix property taxes for the 57 ​“affordable” units at the planned new Winchester Green apartment complex at $450 per unit per year — with a 3 percent annual increase — over the next 17 years. 

Those 57 units make up 20 percent of the overall 283 apartments approved to be built on top of a surface lot at 315 Winchester Ave. The apartments are deed-restricted and must remain at rents that affordable to tenants making an average of 50 percent Area Median Income (AMI) for the next 40 years.

In all, the income-restricted apartments at the Winchester Green will include 23 studio apartments, 13 one-bedrooms, 14 two-bedrooms, and 7 three-bedrooms.

The committee alders also voted on Tuesday night in favor of amending the underlying zoning regulations of the PDD itself to incorporate a parking lot spanning across 88, 110 and 116 Munson St. into the district and to allow for potential biotech research on that site. 

That amendment includes a plan to demolish the long abandoned factory buildings at the corner of Munson and Mansfield Streets — after a state examination found the buildings to be hazardous — while opening the possibility of constructing a parking garage and/or mixed-use building on the lot. Read about that plan in more detail here.

“To have a strong economic base in the northern part of our city is really important,” Piscitelli told alders Tuesday, as he described the importance of a development ​“that doesn’t displace” but ​“grows an economic center.”

“Our objective is to make a vibrant neighborhood place, a place where you wanna stop and have a drink” said developer Alex Twining of Twining Properties. ​“Today it’s mostly cars bussing up and down Winchester Avenue… that’s why filling empty lots will have a huge impact.”

The expansion of the PDD to include ​“Parcel M” at the Munson Street parking lot and the demolition of the former factory buildings means that in addition to building housing at the Winchester factory complex, the Science Park developers would have the opportunity to construct biotech lab space and potentially additional office space and retail on the property. ​“If there turns out to be no need for a lab, we can build more housing,” Twining offered as an example for how to develop Parcel M, which won’t be determined officially until later down the line. 

Twining said the intention is to source a wide range of retailers to provide business, job and shopping opportunities to those who live in the neighborhood. 

For example, he said his company provides percentage leases which offer potential business owners relatively low rents with the terms that the developer shares a percentage of the business’ profits as it grows. ​“That way if they’re successful, we’re successful,” he said. He said he and his partners actively search for strong retail fits by going ​“door to door” around the neighborhood or reaching out to businesses like food trucks, which he described as ​“the lowest barrier to entry” in the food world.

Members of the public who attended Tuesday’s hearing primarily offered support for the development. The majority included business owners in the area, such as representatives of the Connecticut Community Outreach and Revitalization Program (ConnCORP) and individuals like Ricky Evans, who runs Ricky D’s Rib Shack on Winchester Avenue, and Jason Price, the co-founder of NXTHVN (read about their testimony about the project in a previous article here).

Former Factory "Facelift"

Neighborhood residents like Newhallville community leader and organizer Kim Harris also showed up to testify. Harris brought two children she works with at Harris & Tucker School to talk about how ​“building relationships starts with this generation right here.”

She asked 10-year-olds Eli Bolden and Kauren Gaines what they think of when they hear Science Park.

“We eat there,” Gaines said. Right, Harris agreed, at ConnCAT’s Orchid Cafe.

“This generation will turn the tides in what happens with Division Street,” Harris said. The Science Park development has the power to influence ​“new memories” for children who will no longer recall the area as a gun factory like many of Harris’ generations do.

She said she hoped to see the space turn into a ​“great, eye-popping development that will move everyone forward,” as developers are promising, and bring new businesses like Orchid Cafe to nourish existing neighbors. 

Raymond Jackson, who lived on Winchester Avenue for over 40 years and whose father was ​“one of the polisher of barrels” at the former gun factory, said he is interested in a ​“facelift” of the current businesses and retail opportunities in the area. ​“Right now there’s really nothing there,” he said.

Former alder and newly appointed city Climate & Sustainability Director Steve Winter also testified in support of the project, arguing in favor of greater density that seeks to quadruple the minimum standard of affordable housing demanded by the city’s inclusionary zoning regulations from 5 percent to 20 percent for this project. And, he mentioned, a 100 percent electric residence like Winchester Green is in line with the city’s sustainability goals.

Alders ultimately agreed with city staff that both requests by the developers — the tax abatements and PDD expansion — would positively impact the city and adjacent neighborhoods through growing local housing stock and turning surface parking lots into more productive uses. They also discussed the importance of detailed site review and thoughtful execution of the upcoming developments when it comes to growing the neighborhood rather than displacing it.

"A Good Example Of How Our Economy Has Changed"

Westville Alder Adam Marchand said that ​“this is yet another example of the city making an investment in a project… that financial investment is lost tax revenue.”

“Affordable housing is a top priority,” he asserted. ​“The investment we’re making is yielding real benefits for real people.”

Dwight Alder Frank Douglass agreed: ​“Five years ago we were looking at affordable housing of just about zilch. We’re moving in the right direction.”

The question of whether or not to allow for the expansion of the PDD brought up broader questions of how to ensure the developers’ plans for the Science Park district serve not just New Haven at large but the neighborhoods it would directly impact.

Marchand began by examining the potential consequences of allowing for a biotech facility on Munson Street directly situated next to housing.

“Generally speaking, moving away from large surface lots that aren’t producing any revenue to ones that are producing affordable units and job opportunities, that’s a really good thing,” he said. ​“But is it good for the neighbor right next door?”

The developers assured the aldermanic committees that a potential biotech laboratory would not pose health risks. But Marchand and others still pressed about whether it was appropriate to introduce a new use into a neighborhood that includes a long-standing housing cooperative, worrying, for example, that a side yard setback of just ten feet as laid out by the PDD would not suffice for substantial distance between a potentially towering biotech building and a neighboring house.

“I thought about whether to propose an amendment,” Marchand said of some of the proposed PDD details. ​“But I have confidence we could deal with this at city plan,” he added, noting that he is on the City Plan Commission.

“I think in this case if agreements are upheld and commitments are followed upon, this could be good for the community.”

Alder Eli Sabin agreed. ​“Science Park is a good example of how our economy has changed in New Haven over the past 50 years,” he said. ​“Factories provided many thousands of jobs for blue collar workers,” he continued, while a growing biotech industry is ​“providing dozens of jobs often requiring advanced degrees.”

He said that economic shift has brought opportunity, such as the capacity to ​“draw more people to the city,” but also poses new concerns around ​“displacement and gentrification.”

“It can’t be at the expense of the people who have been there the whole time,” he said of the potential biotech jobs and development boom in Science Park. ​“We need to make sure they don’t get pushed out.”

Newhallville native and Alder Kimberly Edwards emphasized the need for hefty community outreach moving forward.

“Come to our space, we can have a meeting on the street or outside… it’s a perception thing, but it’s also a respect thing.”

“In this city, residents have been made to feel like they are not invited into spaces because of institutions,” she said, recalling a childhood spent navigating the dividing lines between Yale and the city’s heavily segregated neighborhoods. ​“I think it’s important that everyone here takes that into consideration.

“We have to take care of our constituents, our residents and the people who work here. But we have to take care of home as well.”