Miller Re-Ups

Jimmy Miller’s insists that his week and a half’s worth of beard had absolutely nothing to do with his new three-year contract with the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH).

Results like bringing home $22 million in federal stimulus money, not superstition, persuaded HANH’s Board of Commissioners to renew Miller’s contract and extend it a year as deputy executive director for special projects.

At the regular board meeting Tuesday evening, commissioners voted unanimously to give Miller $141,750 for the first year, and to negotiate salary for years two and three based on performance. The contract will run through 2013.

Between 2005 and 2007 Miller was the executive director of HANH. For the last two years, with the title of deputy director, Miller has been the financial architect of HANH’s often complex development efforts.

HANH’s current Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton said that in addition to the stimulus money, Miller’s expertise over the last two years has also ​“leveraged many tax dollars, moving along projects, in many cases, long stalled.”

Final financing arrangements for two of those projects were also announced at Tuesday’s board meeting: $15 million for the Quinnipiac Terrace phase three, and $36 million for the William T. Rowe houses. The former represents 33 rental units 17 for public housing residents, and 16 for federal Section 8 voucher holders.

On Howard Avenue, near the new Smilow Cancer Center, Rowe is a development that involved an unusual land swap with Yale. With 26 market rate units of the total of 104 for the elderly and others, DuBois-Walton said work will begin on Rowe in about two weeks and take 15 months to complete.

Q Terrace phase three down on Front Street has also begun and will be built in 13 months, Miller added.

Miller said he’d like to bring to fruition in the next three years seven more phases of the West Rock projects, which include Brookside and Rockview.

Miller said the HANH board has given him freedom to be creative in the financial deals he has put together, such as the land swap with Yale University involving Rowe.

That was a first for him.

Miller also said that he’s proud of the growing expertise of HANH to function as its own developer. When HANH is the developer of record, it is able to collect consulting fees as opposed to pay monies to outside consultants to help put the deals together.

The $45-million Eastview Terrace was self-developed and reaped $2.9 million in fees for HANH. And the upcoming development on Wilmot Road in West Rock, a complex for the elderly, along with commercial development, is another example.

Congratulating Miller after the meeting was Yul Watley (pictured), the principal in a resident-owned business that is currently HANH’s biggest contractor to re-hab the authority’s apartments.

“The man is no-nonsense,” said Watley.

Miller said he was also particularly pleased that over his tenure people like Watley have made so much progress to self-sufficiency. Watley moved from selling hot dogs to creating a company poised to bid on rehabbing 20 apartments in an upcoming phase of West Rock’s redevelopment, Miller said.

“I have a vision, like a picture on a box, of Q Terrace or a William T. Rowe [or how residents can own more businesses of their own] and my job is maximize energies” and to orchestrate its becoming a reality.

The Former Dwight Co-op Homes Advance, But…

In other business, the City of New Haven asked to cancel its Interim Development Agreement with HANH and a controversial Bridgeport developer to rehab the former Dwight Co-ops on Edgewood Avenue.

Commissioners voted to cancel that agreement and authorize the city to join in a ​“cooperative agreement” instead.

Miller said the change is merely technical. The city is not a developer with an ownership interest with Dwight as is HANH; it is rather cooperating and expediting the project. Nothing substantive will change, including the city’s contribution of $1 million toward the project.

Asked if the city’s technical change had anything to do with reports of various legal actions against the Dwight project’s Bridgeport-based new owner, Garfield Spencer and his First National Development Company, Miller responded: ​“I did the due diligence and if we weren’t satisfied with them, we wouldn’t enter into an agreement.”

The cooperative agreement goes before the Board of Alderman for approval in September.

As to the future of the beard, Miller said he took a poll of HANH staffers. They said the facial hair made him look older. His goal was to look distinguished but not older, Miller said. ​“I’m shaving tomorrow.”