Seniors living in an aged and cramped public-housing tower on Howard Avenue could get a new home as soon as 2011 under a proposal coming before lawmakers Wednesday night.
The building is the 35-year-old William T. Rowe apartment tower (pictured) on Howard Avenue. It’s owned by the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH), which hopes to team up with the city and a private developer to build a replacement project next door to the existing building, which will be demolished.
On Wednesday the Board of Aldermen’s Community Development Committee will consider a proposal which would allow the city to enter the three-party agreement. Plans include a land-swap with Yale-New Haven Hospital. Meanwhile, at least one current resident is looking on with apprehension.
The private development company involved in the project is Trinity Financial, the Boston company which worked with the city and the housing authority to create the new Quinnipiac Terrace housing development.
Housing authority Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton said the design of the William T. Rowe building is no longer appropriate for the elderly and disabled residents who live there. Also, “it’s a very environmentally non-friendly building,” she said. It has inefficient electric heat and very small “zero-bedroom” studio apartments.
Attorney Carolyn Kone, who has been working on the project, said the existing tower clearly needs to be replaced. “The building that these people live in now is a completely non-functioning building,” she said. The walls are uninsulated pre-cast concrete, there’s no air-conditioning, and the apartments are quite small, she explained. “There’s no way to make this a good building.”
That conclusion was also reached by Trinity Financial, explained project manager Kenan Bigby, interviewed by phone from Boston. His company responded to a request for proposals in 2008 from the housing authority, which “wasn’t receiving enough money from [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] to maintain the building.”
“It was falling into disrepair,” Bigby said, and the housing authority was looking for solutions from private investors.
Hill Alderwoman Jackie James-Evans, in whose ward the building stands, said that she favors the plan to build a new Rowe, “in concept.”
The building desperately needs to be replaced, she said. “To allow people to live in those conditions is bad for the city.” The top three floors of the building are “uninhabitable,” there are mold problems throughout, and the elevator works only intermittently, she said.
But there needs to be better communication between the developers and the neighborhood, James-Evans said. “They haven’t talked to the neighbors,” she said. The last time the developers held a community meeting was in late spring, she said.
James-Evans, who is on the aldermanic Community Development Committee, said that she had not decided if she would vote to approve the project. “I need to go and listen,” she said.
Re-doing the existing building would have been prohibitively expensive, so Trinity came up with the idea of land swap, Trinity’s Bigby explained. Trinity negotiated with Yale-New Haven Hospital, which owns a vacant lot (pictured) right next to the building. The two parties reached an agreement, which has not yet been finalized, that the housing authority will build a new William T. Rowe building on the vacant lot, move its tenants over, then demolish the old building, and give the land to the hospital.
This plan would allow for new construction without “an extensive relocation project,” Bigby said. “The tenants could move just once into their new houses.”
The hospital has not yet announced plans for what it would do with the property it would receive in the deal, next to the new Smilow Cancer Center.
If all the approvals come through, the project should break ground in the first quarter of 2010, Bigby said. The building (pictured) will take 16 or 18 months to complete. It will have 104 apartments, fewer than the 175 in the existing building, which is only one-third occupied. The new project will include 25 percent market-rate units. The rest will be different types of affordable housing.
As part of project preparation, Trinity has been seeking input from the people currently living in William T. Rowe. Trinity established a working group of six to ten residents who went over “everything from A to Z” about the new building, “down to carpet or no carpet,” according to Bigby.
Tenants wanted to make sure the apartments in the new building are a good size, with bathtubs in the bathrooms, he said. The apartments in the existing tower are as small as 400 square feet, with showers only.
“There’s going to be skepticism and nervousness on the part of the residents,” he said. “It’s understandably worrisome to them.”
A visit to William T. Rowe on Monday found one nervous tenant. A 74-year-old man, who declined to give his name, said many people in the building are concerned because they don’t know what’s going to happen.
“We’re still in limbo. We don’t know,” said the man, who was sitting on a bench on the building’s ground floor. “People are nervous.”
“We don’t know whether they’re going to build or not,” he said. “Tell us!”
The man acknowledged that his building has its problems, but said residents are attached to it nonetheless. “It’s old. It’s uninsulated. But it’s home,” he said. “It’s not a case of whether I like it or not. It’s what I got.”
Seniors comprise the majority of Rowe residents, he said. They’re worried the new building won’t be built and they’ll “ship us out somewhere else,” he said.
The man said he was anxious to see the plans for the new building. “Just let us know what you’re going to do!” he said.
DuBois-Walton said the housing authority has had a number of meetings with Rowe residents to keep them posted on the project. She acknowledged it is “probably time to go back and have another meeting.”
Only in America would a 35 year old building be considered old. In Europe there are 350 year old buildings still in use.