Old Cott Factory Eyed For Resuscitation

A local architect has his eye on a Fair Haven eyesore — and wants to help the neighborhood rescue it.

The architect, Fernando Pastor, showed up Tuesday night at a City Hall meeting called to strategize about how to prevent the abandoned factory building spanning Chatham Street between Ferry and Rowe from falling into the hands of another out-of-town investor.

Pastor found out about the meeting on the SeeClickFix website, where neighbors have complained about how the empty building has become a magnet for crime, prostitution, dumping, and blight for at least five years. They’re hoping a pending foreclosure could open an opportunity. Fernando Pastor told city development chief Kelly Murphty (pictured with him above) and others at the meeting that he’d like to transform the site into new housing, new stores, and maybe even a plaza.

“I was excited with this going to foreclosure,” said Eric Neubauer, who helped spark the effort to rescue the building. Neubauer lives nearby and is the founder of an area non-profit, Compassion Corps, which runs a food pantry and recruits volunteers to work on local problems such as prostitution.

He had posted complaints on SeeClickFix and contacted Fair Haven Alderman Joe Rodriguez, who convened the Tuesday night meeting.

Joining Murphy at the meeting were Andy Rizzo of the Buildings Department and Frank D’Amore, deputy director of the Livable City Initiative, and several members of the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association.

The building was once owned by Cott Beverage Company. It was grandfathered into the larger residential neighborhood and small-business zone as a non-conforming use.

Pastor is a longtime architect with New Haven firms such as Caesar Pelli. With Svigals Partners, he was head of the design team that built, among other projects, the new Columbus Family Academy.

He has a new company development company called SeedNH (for Seed New Haven). The company specializes in the reclamation of undervalued buildings. (It’s too young to have a web site.) He said the firm has its eye on the Chatham property.

He is precisely the kind of local developer, with an interest in neighborhood traditions and local scale that Neubauer, Rodriguez, and the city hope to attract. Theyexpressed exasperation with conditions that have persisted on the property for five years, the product of absentee landlords.

“I refuse to wait another five years,” said Rodriguez.

But first Pastor had to acquire the property.

The city is in the process of foreclosing on the property for $100,000 in unpaid taxes over the last two years, D’Amore reported. Also party to the foreclosure is Manhattan-based Park Avenue Bank, from whom the owners of record Chatham Partners, LLC, took out a $1 million loan in November 2006.

Chatham Partners, which lists its address as Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, has not been able to sell the building, nor has it taken much care of it. it bought the building for $795,000 in 2006. It initially tried to sell the property for $2 million, then dropped the price to 1.6 million 1.2 million, then 900,000.

Per the city’s property maintenance ordinance, more than 800 foreclosed-upon properties owned by absentee lenders have been registered, along with a local contact for each, he reported.

A foreclosure sale for the defunct factory was to have taken place on Saturday, Feb. 6, with an appraisal-based starting price of $800,000, D’Amore said.

Pastor reported he attended a court hearing Tuesday, and the foreclosure sale was delayed until April 10 while an insurance dispute is resolved.

“That’s good for us,” he said. That gives him time to do more research and to prepare a bid.

He said his vision for the old factory building includes ​“retail, market rate and affordable housing, loft spaces, including possibly a communal center, and private courtyards.”

Pastor declined to disclosed SeeNH’s financial resources at this point but it includes a combination of federal and state grants. His company is new; he’s learning the ropes.

But Kelly Murphy and the others in attendance Tuesday night already liked what they heard. Chatham Square Neighborhood Association asked Pastor to make a presentation when his plans are more worked out.

Murphy and Pastor exchanged electronic business info. Some funding from the $3.2 million of New Haven’s neighborhood stabilization monies, stimulus funds funneled through the State’s department of economic development, to anchor neighborhoods, she said, still might be available.

All this was music to Neubauer’s ears, and Rodriguez’s. (They’re pictured here.)

Short term, they asked LCI to monitor the property more carefully and zero in on Chatham Parnters, the current owners, for maintenance at least through the foreclosure sale. D’Amore agreed.

Longer term, they asked, could the city exert pressure so that a new owner would not be industrial or absentee?

“Being that it’s private property, there’s only so much we can do,” responded Murphy.

“It’s my client’s intention to pay off the taxes before the sale date, and thereby canceling the sale,” Walt Spader, the current owner’s attorney (from the Marcus Law Firm), said Wednesday. ​“They want to protect their investment in New Haven.”

If the April 15 foreclosure sale proceeds, and if the bank takes ownership, officials said, they will press for registration of the property with the city, including a local contact, now required of out-of-town owners pursuant to the property maintenance ordinance. Rodriguez was one of the aldermen who helped to legislate that eight months ago.

However, if the new owner turns out to be Fernando Pastor and SeedNH, that would be a long-awaited game-changer for the corner of Chatham and Ferry, and the surrounding neighborhood.

Pastor said he’d like to incorporate the three stores now on Ferry between Chatham and Lombard into his new development. His plan includes some demolition. That would ​“open up” the grand Victorian building they now conceal set back from the street. A kind of plaza might thereby be created, he added.

Pastor’s partner in SeedNH Joe Banks described it as a for-profit company ​“interested in the neighborhoods and architectural heritage of New Haven and making them economically viable.”

Neubaurer and Rodriguez were very pleased with the meeting. ​“I’d love him to acquire the building. It’s a long journey to embark on,” said the alderman.