Paul Bass Photos
Holmes (at left): What about that 9th “whereas”?
Salvatore: I don’t want to fight to build.
Jessica Holmes had a gun — a figurative gun — pointed to her head Thursday night.
She didn’t blink.
At least Holmes concluded that a figurative gun, in the form of an “either/or” choice that sounded fishy, was being pointed by city officials.
She rejected that choice, and voted with her colleagues to table a decision on whether to allow a controversial development project to proceed.
Holmes, an East Rock alder, was chairing a public meeting at City Hall that could prove crucial to the fate of the project planned for an amoeba-shaped stretch of the Hill decimated by mid-20th Century urban renewal. Developer Randy Salvatore is looking to pay the city $1.25 million for two of ten pieces of property there (and then a to-be-determined “fair market value” worth millions more) in order to build 140 apartments, 7,000 square feet of stores, 120,000 square feet of research space, and 50,000 square feet of offices on 20 acres bounded by Church Street South, Amistad Street, Cedar Street, Congress Avenue, College Street, and South Frontage Road. (Read more about the plan here and here.)
First Salvatore needs the city’s Board of Alders to vote to rezone the land in question from a BA to a BD‑3 district, accommodating taller buildings (up to 70 feet) and denser development with a wider mix of uses (like apartments and labs). He needs the alders to vote as well to amend the project area’s map as well as a previous land-sale agreement the city struck in 1989 with a potential developer who never ended up building there. (That developer has now brought in Salvatore as a partner)
Salvatore has won neighborhood support for two other projects in town, a recently completed luxury apartment building at Chapel and Howe streets and a newly announced proposed renovation of the former C. Cowles factory on Water Street.
But neighbors have raised a range of objections to his Hill plan. Those objections carried over to the public hearing Holmes chaired Thursday night, a joint meeting of the board’s Community Development and Legislation committees.
At a two-hour public session—a carry-over from a previous extended hearing — city officials and Salvatore pleaded with the ten committee members present to approve the zoning and sale-agreement changes and send them to the full board for final approval. Neighbors criticized it for including too little affordable housing, too-tall buildings, the wrong kind of businesses, or, most of all, too little public input.
The proposed project area.
After the public session, the committees voted unanimously to table the proposed changes until officials return to the neighborhood to meet with seniors at the Tower One/Tower East complex as well as the steering committee of a “Hill-to-Downtown” planning group.
Holmes praised Salvatore’s willingness to work with the neighborhood as well as the “improvements” made to the original plan for the complex. But she and her colleagues said the neighborhood needs to have more say first in how to make the project even better before the alders will allow it to proceed.
“This is not to say we are not in favor of beginning a partnership” based on the proposal’s underlying principles, Holmes said.
But after the vote, a “disappointed” Salvatore said he will now reexamine whether to proceed with the project.
“I’ve really got to reconsider everything right now,” he said.
“We invested a lot of time in this project. I thought we had [community support]. We met with a lot of people. … I’m a little confused. I’m a little distraught. Obviously [the project] is in jeopardy. I would like to develop where people want me to develop. I don’t want to be here if the community doesn’t want me to be here.”
The 9th “Whereas”
A turning point in the evening came when officials sought to salvage the project’s progress with what Holmes concluded was a false dilemma. She reached that conclusion in part by paying close attention to the “whereas” clauses in the documents submitted to her committee.
The officials made the salvage plea after neighbors like Anita Cotton (pictured above) of Tower One/Tower East testified against the project. Cotton said she and her neighbors already “have so much pollution from the traffic coming off the highway” and would rather see the lot next to them turned into a park rather than, as Salvatore envisions, a lab building.
Donna Greene of Salem street argued that “we need more grocery stores,” not bioscience facilities.
“They’re making work space for everybody that doesn’t live in New Haven,” complained Helen Dawson-Martin of Liberty Street, who sits on that Hill-to-Downtown steering committee, a group formed with city a couple of years ago to produce a long-term plan for developing the area between the train station and the Yale medical district, which includes the proposed Salvatore development.
Another speaker, Anstress Farwell of the Urban Design League, criticized the plan for including only 10 percent affordable housing — and defining “affordable” for people who earn 80 to 120 percent of the area’s median income.
Hill Alder Dolores Colon (at left in photo), who represents the neighborhood, testified that despite a letter sent by Tower One/Tower East’s president in support of the project, most seniors there with whom she spoke this week oppose the project — mostly because they hadn’t heard about it. (Colon took some of the blame for not informing them.) She said those neighbors and others consider the proposal a “done deal” crafted before they had enough say. She submitted a letter from five members of the steering committee, including former Hill Alder (now state Banking Commissioner Jorge Perez), opposing the proposal for now because city planners and Salvatore didn’t bring it before the Hill-to-Down steering committee until late in the process.
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson came forward to try to rescue the project by reminding the alders that this isn’t a new land-sale agreement (technically called a Development Land Disposition Agreement or DLDA). It’s a much-improved updating of an existing DLDA struck in 1989 and in force until 2025. Under the original plan the owner would pay the city only $150,000 for all the land and put up a dreaded (in new-urbanist circles) parking lot next to Tower One/Tower East. And the owner can still carry out that undesirable plan as of right, he suggested.
“Do you have any reason to believe that would ever happen?” Holmes asked Nemerson.
“I do,” he responded.
“It hasn’t happened all these years!” Holmes pointed out, noting that the old plan has remained in place with no action for 26 years.
The market has changed, Nemerson responded; New Haven’s hot now. Plus, he said, two schools that would be torn down under that originally plan had previously been occupied (meaning it would take longer to clear them out). They’re empty now. ‘The clock’s ticking,” he said.
Holmes wasn’t buying.
Two experts — city attorney John Ward and Carolyn Kone, attorney for the current and previous developer — swooped to either side of Nemerson at the table.
“Welcome!” Nemerson proclaimed. “The lawyers have arrived.”
The lawyers assured Holmes that the developer can, and may very well indeed, proceed with the undesirable previous plan if the alders failed to advance the zoning and LDLA changes Thursday night. Kone said the old plan included putting up that parking garage as well as assisted-living facilities.
Holmes offered a reason why she remained doubtful that the only choice was to immediately advance the new plan or else see the old plan proceed. Or that the original plan would ever materialize at all.
The reason came in the very proposed order Nemerson’s department submitted to the alders to approve the LDLA change.
The document begins with 19 “whereas” clauses. The ninth of those whereases begins: “WHEREAS A.M.A. [the pre-Salvatore partnership owning the property] has determined that the implementation of the Project has become impractical due to market conditions …”
In other words, the developer and city officials themselves argued that the changes should be approved — because the original plan isn’t economically feasible to carry out.
Salvatore took a turn assuring the alders that he will continue to meet with all interested parties, as he has in recent months, and that he is confident he can meet all concerns. But he needs these initial zoning and LDLA changes in order to start fleshing out details and get started on what wil be a years-long process, he said. Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo reminded the alders that her staff has met with neighbors for years to develop the Hill-to-Downtown plan, and she promised that it will continue to work closely with neighbors on the details on the proposed portion of the district that Salvatore would develop.
It was too late. Colon formally proposed (in video) that the committee table all three votes — on the zoning and map changes and the amended DLDA — until planners meet with the Tower One/Tower East seniors and the Hill-to-Downtown steering committee. Her proposal passed unanimously. The project was officially stalled.
Tomorrow’s Another Day
Winkel and Holmes agree to try again.
After the vote, Nemerson pledged to respond to the request to organize meetings with neighbors. And he vowed to work hard to convince Salvatore to stick with the project.
“We heard loud and clear that we have to do better. We have to do more. This is a city that wants more conversation,” he said.
“No other city — except maybe a few neighborhoods in New York” — would tell a developer “who wants to invest” more than $100 million that his plan is “not good enough,” Nemerson added.
“You know what? That’s what makes New Haven great. We’re going to figure out how to do it.”
Jessica Holmes has heard such criticism before. Years ago she helped kill a proposal to build new housing at the old Star Supply factory in her Goatville neighborhood. Then, as now, she argued that planners failed to take into consideration neighborhood concerns about parking and gentrification. Critics accused her of killing needed new jobs and taxes. But the developer ended up returning to the neighborhood, holding meetings, crafting what all sides considered a better plan — and now the project is under construction.
Thursday night Holmes and colleagues Colon and Adam Marchand made a point of stressing that they’re looking to improve, not stop, Salvatore’s Hill plan.
“This is a bump. This is not the end. At least I hope it’s not,” Holmes remarked.
Holmes said the same in a conversation after the meeting with another disappointed player, Cliff WInkel. Winkel is the developer who originally struck the 1989 DLDA with the city to build on the property and has now brought Salvatore in as a partner for the new version of the project.
“This is the old Board of Aldermen,” Winkel grumbled. He claimed he just “may have to” go ahead and build that big concrete garage next to Tower One/Tower East and new assisted-living facilities.
“This is definitely not a ‘no’” to the new plan, Holmes assured him.
The two shook hands.
“We’ll get there,” Winkel told her.
1989 to 2015, so 26 years? I'll be interested to see the next step of this saga in 2041. I wonder if the portion of the collective hive mind that inhabits that section of the city will still be able to muster enough nimby to shut it down for another two and a half decades.