Blight Battle Continues On Dixwell Block

Nina Lentini looks out the window of her newly built home in a reviving stretch of Dixwell and sees a long-stalled construction site.

Around the corner on both sides, she sees rebuilding and renewal.

Lentini and her husband moved four years ago into a newly built home (designed by architect Colin Caplan) on Tilton Street, one house down a stretch of Winchester Avenue undergoing a transformation.

Two blocks south on Winchester stand Yale’s new residential colleges. One block north looms Science Park, with its rebuilt factories, high-tech labs, and luxury apartments.

In between, thanks to a hot housing market, builders have renovated neglected older houses or built new homes in vacant lots.

At one corner of Tilton and Winchester, for instance, architect/builder Shawn Mohovich has rescued a decaying former church called the Upper Room Prayer Mission and constructed another multi-family building next door.

Next door to that, TomKim’s Home Improvement crew is hard at work on a gut rehab of another almost-lost gem.

Meanwhile, book-ending all that renewal stands the above property, the grave of a former 12-unit apartment building that has been a public-safety hazard for 15 years …

… and, at the other side of Tilton and Winchester, next door to Lentini, the beauty of the block, this 12-unit apartment building.

Both are owned by local developer Kenny Hill, a former NFL cornerback and Yale football star who has continued to butt heads with the city over those two properties in one of New Haven’s longest-lasting housing standoffs. He has blamed the city for the lack of progress on the properties; in turn inspectors have failed him on inspections and cited him for public hazards.

At least 201 Winchester could be the beauty of the block. A fire ravaged it in April 2012. Hill has ever since sought to rebuild it in stops and starts.

“Look at this mess!” Lentini, a writer who works from home, exclaimed Thursday as she pointed to port-a-potty, exposed walls and piles of dirt at the stalled construction site next door at 201 Winchester.

Lentini has watched crews begin work, then disappear again, on and off again for the four years she has lived there. She and other neighbors, along with Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, have pushed the city to pressure Hill to work faster.

Masons and carpenters and HVAC workers were on the job last winter.

An inspector then showed up on March 9. Two days later city Building Official Jim Turcio on March 11 wrote Hill a letter formally revoking five permits for the property: for structural repairs; ​“rough-in & complete 20 bathroom, 12 kitchens”; ​“12 gas furnaces & A/C systems”; ​“complete rewire [of] building”; and ​“installation of fire sprinkler.” Turcio wrote that the inspection ​“revealed that the authorized work has been suspended or abandoned for a period of six (6) months after the permit was issued. Furthermore, there have been no calls for inspections for more than two (2) years.”

It took months for Hill to obtain new work permits. Then he had to get contractors, who generally have other commitments as well, back on the job.

Pressed by neighbors at a community meeting, Turcio and economic development chief Mike PIscitelli threatened not to renew Hill’s work permits if he didn’t get more done by New Year’s Day. Several were to expire by that date.

Lentini watched through the summer and fall as sometimes workers came on the job next door to her home, then for stretches no one would appear. Some electrical and plumbing work got done. Before Hill could proceed to insulation and sheetrocking inside the building, he needed a sprinkler system put in. On Nov,. 2, another inspection took place; the inspector failed the project, concluding that Hill’s contractor had failed to pull the necessary fire suppression permit to tap into a water main.

Hill did obtain a new fire suppression permit on Dec. 22. But no one has been seen returning since then to finish the job. The building department showed up again on Jan. 7 to inspect the work, and found no one there.

Meanwhile, the Jan. 1 deadline the city promised the neighborhood passed. But because of Covid-19, officials couldn’t act on it. Piscitelli told the Independent, Executive Order 7JJ, one of a slew issued by Gov. Ned Lamont in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, prevents the city from allowing any building permits to lapse during the state of emergency.

“I am mad as hell!” Alder Morrison told the Independent. ​“I’m all for development. I’m all for Black people — because he’s a Black man — putting themselves in the position to help communities to develop. But he’s not doing nothing! The city needs to go back to the governor and let him know that there are situations where you have to give some room for the municipalities to do something: to address blight.”

Hill (pictured) ultimately declined to discuss the situation for this article on the record after lengthy, passionate off-the-record discussions over the past week. He agreed first to review quotations for the story, then agreed several days ago to write out and share his version of events, but so far has not followed through.

For past articles, he has spoken on the record about how he felt the city illegally dug the hole for him by forcing him in the mid-2000s to hire the asbestos remover who couldn’t do the job, then wouldn’t let him fire the person; and subsequently piled fines on him and harassed him on inspections until this day. He argued that the city is singling him out and making the job harder than it need be. He has cycled through waves of officials at city departments trying to negotiate deals. At times he has threatened to file a civil-rights lawsuit.

So on Winchester Avenue, the standoff continues.

Hill pays his taxes, Turcio said. So, at least at 201 Winchester, it’s not so clear that the city could easily take back the building. Or that it would necessarily want to. Hill, after all, has been trying to fix the properties. He’s based in New Haven. He has other properties he renovates and manages.

Hill, meanwhile, theoretically could sell both 201 and 235 Winchester and perhaps recoup the millions of dollars he has invested in both properties. Even though the properties have rotted since he bought them, sale prices have risen in New Haven.

However, it might make more sense from Hill’s perspective to hold onto the properties and forge ahead with trying to get the work done. Because the properties hold far more value as long-term assets than quick-sale opportunities. Hill has lost a good $1.5 million in rents he could have collected on 235 Winchester’s apartments in the 15-plus years it has stayed vacant, by a conservative estimate that doesn’t take into account rising rents. The two multi-family properties could generate millions more per decade if Hill and his heirs hold onto them.

But there’s another factor: Whether Hill will have the cash to finish the renovation and rebuilding jobs. Officials were confident that he could, after he obtained a $950,000 construction mortgage in 2018 using the two Winchester properties as collateral. But that was a short-term loan; it comes due this May 1. And the two properties are a long way from producing rental income. Which would mean he’d have to be able to pull off obtaining another mortgage, perhaps on other assets.

At the time he obtained the 2018 construction mortgage, Hill told the Independent he expected to have a new 18-unit apartment building up at 235 Winchester by early to mid-2019. He put in a foundation.

In January 2021, 235 Winchester remains a hole in the ground with the remnant of a front entrance. It’s also a safety hazard: a child could easily wander onto the property and fall into the concrete pit and crack a skull.

After the Independent reported about that last August, Hill did respond to an order from the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), to secure the front entrance so that kids could no longer just walk through it into the pit. A notice of unsafe structure, based on a June 17, 2020, inspection, directed Hill ​“immediately” to secure all accessible openings with ​“opaque material of adequate strength and durability to prevent the entrance of all trespassers”; and ​“to maintain the property in this secured condition.”

But late last week, a fence had been pried from the side of the entrance …

… and anyone could still walk right to the edge of the abyss.

Previous coverage since 2005 of the ongoing city-Kenny Hill standoff at 235 and 201 Winchester:

• The Lot The Boom Forgot
• Blight Battle Breakthrough
• Rebuilding Plans Set For Orphan Block
• A Decade Later, Much Changes, Not Everything
• In Science Park’s Shadow, City Tackles Blight
• City: Eyesore Coming Down
• Here’s What $150,000 Got Us
• From The NFL To Wooster Square