Next Generation Returns To Newhallville

Sixty years after his grandfather moved from North Carolina to Newhallville for a job at Winchester Arms, second-generation restauranteur Miguel Pittman Jr. is putting down roots in the neighborhood once again — this time with the help of a city-built affordable home.

Pittman Jr., 27, is under contract to purchase a new two-family house at 539 Winchester Ave.

That’s one of nine new-construction residences built atop formerly vacant lots by the city’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) and local developer Concrete Creations LLC as part of the Winchester-Thompson project. The largely state-funded effort to build intergenerational wealth in the historically working-class Black neighborhood is selling new homes at below-market prices to low-to-moderate-income, owner-occupants.

With a trucker and a carpenter slated to be two of his new neighbors on the block, Pittman — a manager at his parents’ popular Hill soul food restaurant Sandra’s Next Generation — visited 539 Winchester Ave. on Monday to take an up-close look at the house his young family will soon call home.

“I’m really excited. I feel good here,” he said from the backyard under an overcast sky while standing alongside his father Miguel Pittman Sr., his son Miguel Pittman III, his girlfriend Tahirah Armstrong, and his loan officer Jeannette Lucky. ​“I love this community. This is my home.”

Pittman does not live at 539 Winchester Ave. quite yet; he and Lucky said he has a loan lined up from Bank of America, and hopes to close on purchasing the property from the city later this month. He said his sense of belonging in Newhallville stretches two generations back.

His grandfather, James Moore, moved from North Carolina to Newhallville in 1962 for a factory job at the now-shuttered Winchester Repeating Arms complex. Moore worked in the factory’s wood department from 1962 to 1976 making handles and custom-made pieces for customers, Pittman Jr. said. ​“He made custom pieces for famous cowboys like Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry.”

Pittman Sr. said his Southern-transplant family lived on Winchester Avenue just a block north of where his son will soon live. They were one of many North Carolina families to move north to New Haven in the mid-20th century for reliable, industrial employment — helping turn the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods into anchors of the Black, working and middle class.

Pittman Sr. recalled growing up in a civically and politically engaged neighborhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ​“It was as high as 93 percent of residents would vote,” he said. ​“People were very much involved in this community.”

In the 1970s, he said, the neighborhood started changing. Veterans returning from the Vietnam War came home with PTSD and, sometimes, heroin addictions they’d developed overseas. Pittman Sr. said Newhallville struggled with crime, drug dealing, and blight in the subsequent decades, as well as from neglect from City Hall.

“It didn’t have the resources to lift it up,” he said. ​“I feel like the city turned a blind eye.”

From his vantage point living and working in the Hill, Pittman Sr. said, Newhallville is changing dramatically yet again.

While the factory jobs are long gone, ​“now we’re talking about biotech” at Science Park. ​“A new type of generation is coming in,” he said. That includes his son and his young family.

Pittman Jr. grew up on Orchard Street in the Hill, where he still lives with his family. He said he found out about the new city-built home on Winchester Avenue from his realtor, Herb Jackson.

He applied to the city to purchase the deed-restricted 539 Winchester Ave. home — which is limited to families making no more than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), as are all of the other WInchester-Thompson houses. He said he was the only eligible applicant who applied for that particular house, and was subsequently picked by the city to be able to buy it.

Pittman Jr. said he welcomes the new planned ​“Winchester Center” redevelopment project, which aims to bring hundreds of new, mostly market-rate apartments to current surface parking lots and dilapidated buildings near the old factory complex.

“I believe it’s good for New Haven. It brings all kinds of different people to the neighborhood.”

Pointing south towards Division Street, which marks the boundary between Science Park and Newhallville, he said, ​“I don’t want Division Street to actually divide us.”

Pittman Jr. also praised current Newhallville community activists, like management team Chair Kim Harris, for making the neighborhood a desirable, engaged, and community-oriented place to live.

Armstrong, who grew up on Newhall Street, praised Newhallville as a ​“family-oriented” part of town. She said she’s most eager to start growing fresh vegetables in a garden she plans to build in the backyard of their new house.

And Pittman Jr. and Lucky also praised the government-subsidized below-market price for this house — which Pittman Jr. will be buying from the city for $215,000 — as a key enticement for a first-time homebuyer like himself.

“This same property would sell for $350,000” on the open market, Lucky said. Thanks to the Winchester-Thompson project pricing, Pittman Jr. is able to buy it at a fraction of that price.

Pittman Jr. said he, Armstrong, and their son plan on living on the second floor of the house, while his sister — who works as a city firefighter — will rent the ground floor apartment.

“I’m going to be here for a long time,” Pittman Jr. predicted. Buying this new home, he said, is just the start of what he hopes to be another generation’s worth of community involvement.

Puzzling Through Puddling Problem

As Pittman prepares to purchase and move into 539 Winchester, he and his family have also been pushing the city to resolve what they see as a potential pitfall of the newly built-up property.

That is: water leaking down the hill behind their house, into their backyard, and potentially up to their home itself.

On Monday afternoon, a construction crew from Concrete Creations worked on building up a berm just north of the home’s backyard to try to divert and water that might spill towards the soon-to-be Pittman residence.

Pittman Jr. sent along a number of emails he, his loan officer, and an engineer consultant have sent to the city about this very concern.

“The grading of the rear yard to the east and northeast of the house has resulted in significant erosion and scouring of the area,” Guilford-based engineer Robert Sonnichsen wrote in a March 21 letter to Pittman Jr. after evaluating the backyard. ​“Stormwater runoff flows toward the back of the house and there is evidence of significant ponding for extended periods of time in the vicinity of the cellar bulkhead door.

“Observation of the conditions that exist in the area immediately east of the house indicated that little vegetation is present in the area. In our opinion, installation of sedimentation control in the area upgradient of the house would have limited the scour of the slope up gradient of the house and the ponding of water along the back of the house. … In my professional opinion this condition should be mitigated by the City of New Haven by redirecting the water that flows onto 539 Winchester Ave. from adjacent city property away from the back of the house.”

In an April 20 email response passed along to the Independent by Pittman Jr., LCI Deputy Director Cathy Schroeter thanked him for passing along the engineer’s letter and concerns about puddling in the yard of 539 Winchester Ave.

She wrote that the city has installed swales as part of construction to redirect water away from the structure. It’s also installed subsurface rear drainage that goes 20 feet deep. And, in response to Pittman Jr.‘s concerns and Sonnichsen’s letter in particular, the city is building out a berm four feet wide and 1.5 feet high and sodding that berm to further re-direct water that would otherwise puddle in the yard.

“The City of New Haven has provided all the recommended options as advised by your Engineer,” Schroeter wrote. ​“Not just one or the other. All of them. 

“Also, the Home Inspection Report as provided by your realtor did not show any issues in or around the property with water penetrating the property now or prior to the inspection.

“The City of New Haven as the seller has provided a corrective action that will address your concern with the puddling in your yard. However, If the corrective action for the replanting of vegetation via a berm and sod does not meet with your satisfaction, then as a Purchaser you have the right to terminate the contract with the City of New Haven.”