Wallace St. Rehabs Eye Renters, Strippers

Twenty-five apartments in a rehabbed historic carriage factory. A ​“Planet Venus” strip club with liquor service in a 1960s-era concrete warehouse.

Both are planned for within a half-mile of one another on the same post-industrial stretch of Wooster Square.

Welcome to the new Wallace Street?

Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) commissioners have unanimously approved local developer Peter Chapman’s variance application to convert the 30,500 square-foot former M. Armstrong & Co. carriage manufacturing company building at 433 Chapel St. and 56 Wallace St. into 25 apartments.

The board has also granted a 65-day public-hearing-period extension to the owners of the Scores strip club for their special exception and variance applications that would allow them to set up a new ​“adult cabaret” in a 6,000 square-foot concrete warehouse at 203 Wallace St.

Wallace Street sits on the industrial eastern edge of Wooster Square. Not quite a mile long in its discontinuous stretch from Chapel Street up to Jocelyn Square Park, the street’s 17 addresses (according to the city assessor’s database) are almost all warehouses and vacant land, plus a few duplexes and the local teamsters union office.

Local attorney Miguel Almodovar, representing Chapman’s holding company La Saraghina LLC, convinced the commissioners that the manufacturing-to-residential conversion of the four-and-a-half-story former carriage factory at 433 Chapel St. and 56 Wallace St. is exactly the type of development the city is hoping to see in the area. Chapman had applied for a variance to permit residential conversion in an existing building with a gross floor area of 30,500 square feet where a minimum existing size of 50,000 square-foot gross floor area is required.

“This conversion will be in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood,” Almodovar said at the zoning meeting, which took place this past Tuesday in the basement meeting room of 200 Orange St. He was referencing the 130-unit Clock Shop Lofts development on Hamilton Street and the redevelopment of the Farnam Courts / Mill River Crossing complex on Grand Avenue.

“This entire area is really trending residential,” Almodovar said. ​“And that is the intent the city is looking for in the area.”

Chapman has owned the former manufacturing building since 2002, when he bought the property from the city with the intention of converting the dilapidated building into 14 apartments and a commercial space. Years of delayed development and political trouble stymied his initial attempts to convert the building. Eventually, after transferring the property to a holding company, he secured a variance from the BZA to convert the space into 22 apartments.

Almodovar explained to the board that that 22-unit variance had expired, and that Chapman now wanted to turn the building into 25 units.

Local architect Fernando Pastor explained that his new design for the former carriage factory saves space by not throwing a corridor through the center of the building, as the previous designers had suggested, thus allowing for the developer to comfortably build 25, rather than 22, one- and two-bedroom apartments.

“It’s not a made up number,” Almodovar said about the 25-unit request. ​“It’s really what works in the building’s layout.”

He added that, if the zoning commissioners approved the 25-unit request, the developers would be able to make six one-bedroom apartments in the complex ​“affordable” at 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) for 18 years. That would mean reserving those apartments for tenants earning $70,480 out of an $88,100 benchmark for a family of four.

Acting City Plan Director Michael Piscitelli cautioned the zoning commissioners on approving the 25-unit conversion variance before the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI) finalizes its Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) with the developer, thereby locking in the affordable housing commitment.

But the commissioners proceeded with the vote anyway, unanimously approving the variance at the 25 units requested.

“It’s really going to be an asset to the neighborhood,” Almodovar said.

Orbiting Planet Venus

Also on the BZA’s agenda on Tuesday night was Samuel Gardner’s application for a special exception to permit an adult cabaret with liquor service operating between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. at 203 Wallace St, as well as for a variance to locate an adult cabaret 1,100 feet from an existing adult cabaret where a minimum distance of 1,500 feet is required. According to the zoning application, Gardner’s partner on the project is Peter Forchetti, the owner of the Scores strip club, recently evicted from its former home down the block at 85 Saint John St.

At the applicant’s request, the commissioners extended the public hearing on the application for 65 days.

A review of the documents submitted to the city shows that Gardner and Forchetti plan on moving Scores a few blocks north to the Wallace Street warehouse. The applicants also plan on naming this new strip club ​“Planet Venus.”

“The proposed use will include,” the application’s narrative reads, ​“as allowed by right, a restaurant, bar, adult entertainment as well as other entertainment such as DJ’s, comedians, and similar forms of live entertainment. The proposed project would replace the existing, Scores, adult cabaret at the corner of Hamilton and St. John’s.”

Unlike Almodovar’s pitch for the residential development on the southern end of Wallace Street, the strip club applicants underscore the commercial / industrial nature of north Wallace Street.

“The site is an IL Zone,” the application reads, referring to an ​“industrial light” zoning district. ​“Adult businesses are only allowed in heavily commercial or industrial areas. Therefore the use of the site for an adult cabaret will not affect the future development of the area which [is] dominated by warehouses, manufacturing, and automotive use.”

The applicants argue that the zoning commissioners should waive the requirement that strip clubs be 1,500 feet away from one another. eCatwalk, located at 325 East St., would be 1,100 feet away.

“The intended use will not result in clustering,” the applicants argued.

The site would also be just a couple hundred feet away from Jocelyn Square Park.

On Nov. 30, 2018, former Deputy Zoning Director Tom Talbot wrote a letter to Almodovar, who is also representing this application, that the strip club developers had failed to submit a coastal site plan and that they hadn’t provided enough information on parking.

Even though the in-person public hearing has yet to begin before the zoning commissioners, the strip club proposal has already garnered at least one critic.

Doug Coffin, the owner of Big Green Truck Pizza and the co-owner of the Next Door restaurant at Humphrey and East Street, sent a letter to the board on Feb. 7 opposing the application.

“I think that location (203 Wallace) is a bad one for an adult cabaret,” Coffin wrote. ​“Unlike Hamilton Street or East Street, which are poorly trafficked, poorly lit streets with lots of vacant lots all of which combine to make it a great location for the illicit activities that one might expect to accompany an adult cabaret. The adjacent park has been improving lately as a result of increased community activity, improved policing and the change in the club at the corner of East and Humphrey. It would be a shame to see that course reversed. In addition, the clients at the soup kitchen and methadone clinic nearby do not need more bad stuff in their lives.

“I have no objection to adult oriented clubs in the Hamilton/ East Street area. There are some already here and I can see the zoning board wanting to keep that kind of club away from other areas in the city. I just think that particular part of the street is a bad location — there are better options on the other side of Grand Ave.”

Correction: The Independent incorrectly identified local attorney Ben Trachten as the author of a letter in opposition to the Planet Venus proposal. The letter was actually written by Doug Coffin, the owner of the Big Green Truck Pizza and the co-owner of the Next Door Restaurant. Coffin’s letter was addressed to Trachten, a former chair of the BZA. The author of this article apologizes for the mistake.