Alders Approve Giving Land Bank 5 City Lots

by Thomas Breen The New Haven independent

The city’s new quasi-public land bank is set to acquire its first tranche of properties, after the alders approved selling five vacant publicly owned lots to the nonprofit for $1 apiece.

Local legislators took that unanimous vote on Monday, Oct. 6, during the most recent full Board of Alders meeting at City Hall.

The alders voted to dispose of the vacant city-owned lots at 27 County St., 107 Farren Ave., 21 Kimberly Ave., 16 Waverly St., and 18 Waverly St. to New Haven Land Bank LLC for $1 each.

New Haven Land Bank Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo told the Independent Tuesday that these are the first properties that the nonprofit will be acquiring since the Board of Alders formerly created the land bank in September 2023.

“It’s been a long-time coming since the board voted to put the land bank in place,” Neal-Sanjurjo said. “We’re excited about moving forward. … We hope to get [these properties] on the market as owner-occupied affordable housing units,” and, on Kimberly, a potential new mixed-use building, given the commercial nature of that Hill corridor.

Neal-Sanjurjo, a former Livable City Initiative (LCI) director, was tapped as the land bank’s inaugural director in July 2024. Though technically a nonprofit that exists separately from city government, the agency’s board consists of public officials like Mayor Justin Elicker, Board of Alders Majority Leader Richard Furlow, and City Plan Director Laura Brown. The land bank received an initial $5 million in funding thanks to a state Urban Act grant.

Neal-Sanjurjo said on Tuesday that the land bank became an official, 501(c)3 nonprofit in June of this year.

The Elicker administration has pitched the land bank as an avenue for the city to create more affordable homeownership opportunities for residents. While the city’s LCI already works on developing owner-occupant housing in place of vacant lots or dilapidated buildings, the land bank will have the power to purchase and sell land more quickly — without the same degree of legislative oversight required for a city department.

On Tuesday, Neal-Sanjurjo said that the land bank — which has a staff of four, and is based out of 4 Science Park — is partnering with the Yale School of Architecture, the Yale School of Management, and a Yale Law School Clinic on trying to build up these five properties, likely into two-family homes. “The goal of the land bank is not to own anything” for the long term, she said, but instead to get “them back on the market.”

She said that the land bank is currently working with the city corporation counsel’s office to finalize all the paperwork required to formally transfer ownership of these five lots from the city to the land bank nonprofit. Her hope is that the land bank will take ownership of these properties this week or next week.

Included in the package of documents submitted to the alders as part of this now-approved property transfer are minutes from a December 2023 meeting of the city’s Property Acquisition and Disposition (PAD) committee.

Those minutes show that the committee voted unanimously in support of transferring these lots to the land bank for $1 apiece after hearing from city economic development staffer Dean Mack about how the land bank “will work in parallel with the City to achieve goals of home ownership, affordable housing, and community development.” Then-city Property Acquisition and Disposition Coordinator Evan Trachten also told the committed that, while LCI “will continue to buy and sell properties,” the land bank will complement that work “in the open market and will be able to purchase properties much faster than the City’s acquisition process.”