nothin Oyster Farm Expansion Proposed | New Haven Independent

Oyster Farm Expansion Proposed

Patriquin Architects Photo

People in the Heights generally love the oyster farm that for decades has been harvesting, shucking, and shipping the bivalves from the banks of the Quinnipiac River just below the Grand Avenue Bridge.

Norm Bloom & Sons keeps alive the local oystering industry and the working waterfront that are part of the area’s history and appeal.

Now the company proposes to build two large new structures that potentially are out of scale with the surrounding residential buildings —and to relocate two historic ones — in order to expand the business. Will the positive relationship continue, or will it become only love on the half shell?

That question was engaged last week at the monthly meeting of the Historic District Commission (HDC) at City Hall. The Norm Bloom family and Karin Patriquin and Paolo Campos of Patriquin Architects presented the first take there on the planned expansion.

Patriquin Architects Photo

The proposed oyster house, L-shaped, two story structure at the northern end of property.

The improvements, all within the current footprint, include an 87-foot long, two-story Oyster House, with its mechanicals on the roof due to flood plain concerns. It would be located at the northern property line. There harvested oysters would be unloaded, sorted, sized, and shipped. The building would also contain administrative offices and storage.

The second new proposed large structure is a three-level Hatchery building near the river’s edge, a little south of the center of the oyster campus. A kind of marine lab to create the mollusks, it features two levels where oyster larvae would be nursed along to attach to a smooth surface, like old, dried, and cleaned oyster shells. (Hence the pyramid of shells usually viewed drying in the center of the farm.)

When the larvae have accomplished that feat, they are called spat.” The spat would be nursed along both in the Hatchery and in dozens of outside tanks near the Hatchery and along the southern end of the property. The third floor or attic of the Hatchery building would be an algae farm” where the green stuff drops down, as it were, to feed the developing larvae and spat.

The three-level, 105-foot long Hatchery seen from the river.

The other main feature of the proposal is the relocation of two small historical buildings at the northern end of the property, mainly through lifting them up and planting them on a plinth or platform near the Oyster House.

In a more than hour’s conversation at the meeting this past Wednesday night, a tale of four building emerged. Neighbors generally approved the plan but worried about the mass of the two new buildings, while preservationists on the HDC targeted their concern on the wisdom of lifting and relocating historic buildings. That is a preservation sin because it pulls structures out of context.

In concept, I love this project,” said Fair Haven activist Chris Ozyck, whose Victorian home sits directly across Quinnipiac Avenue from the farm.

I appreciate the orientation of the buildings, but maybe consider breaking apart the massing across the property,” Ozyck suggested.

Ultimately the operation would lead to up to 60 people working there. Done right it could well become the spoke and hub for the neighborhood,” Ozyck said.

Ozyck, left, speaking with co-owner Jimmy Bloom

The other concern is the absence of transition from the residences immediately to the north of the farm as you approach down the avenue, and then the sudden appearance of the tall, large proposed Oyster House.

We appreciate everything the Blooms are doing,” Ozyck said, but he made a plea for better massing as well as transition scaling.

Love, mixed with concern about the size of the Oyster House, was shared by Patrick McCaughey, who lives in the house immediately adjacent to the farm at the northern end of the property.

I echo Chris. We have had the most cordial relationship” with the Blooms, McCaughey told the HDC. My concern is the extraordinary mass of the new Oyster House. Its mass is skillfully masked from Quinnipiac Avenue, but not from the river.”

McCaughey, an Australian art historian, added of the eastern riverfront, In certain light, it looks like a Dutch 17th-century cityscape. This large Oyster House isn’t part of it.”

The farm today, seen from the western bank of the river.

The New Haven Preservation Trust’s Elizabeth Holt gave her group’s formal blessing to the general drift of the plan and the renderings, calling the plan an appropriate complement to the area.” She added that it is advisable to explore spreading the mass of the Hatchery building over other areas of the property.

Holt called the room’s attention, however, to the fact that the farm is a working site, whose requirements need to be balanced with aesthetics and preservation requirements.

Chief among the commissioners’ concerns was the moving of the two small wooden frame buildings just below the entry driveway at the northern end of the property. The plan also calls for a new driveway at the southern end.

In general moving historic structures is a no-no,” said Commissioner Doug Royalty. He understands the need to elevate, due to the requirements of structures and mechanicals in the flood plain, Royalty said. But elevating historic buildings in a flood plain any more than three or four feet is a problem.”

Architects Campos and Patriquin take in feedback.

Royalty called the proposed plan a picking up and plopping them on a plinth” such that they become ornaments rather than what they were.” He urged architects Campos and Patriquin to retain those buildings in their place and still solve some of your problems.”

Everyone acknowledged that these plans are a first step before many more required appearances before the Board of Zoning Appeals and the City Plan Commission for site plan and coastal reviews.

A consensus emerged to continue to refine the plan and to consider the new version at the HDC’s next meeting, in January.

Jimmy Bloom, one of the principals in the company, pronounced the evening very positive.” He said, if everything continues to move apace, there might be a shovel in the ground, or a spat on a shell, by the end of next year or the beginning of 2020.

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