By MAYA MCFADDEN | New Haven Independent
A dozen Hill neighborhood leaders and residents pressed for more time — and more affordable housing — in a last-ditch effort to stall a 194-unit apartment complex planned for Davenport and Congress Avenues.
The Hill neighbors issued that slow-down call on Tuesday afternoon during a press conference held at the site of the proposed new complex at 354 Davenport Ave.
Led by the leadership of the Hill North Community Management Team, the presser took place one day before the City Plan Commission is slated to review and potentially vote on the project’s site plan as submitted by the California-based developer Catalina Buffalo Holdings.
That plan would see the developer knock down a handful of half-filled industrial and office buildings as well as two occupied multi-family residential buildings at 859, 865, and 879 Congress Ave. and 326, 354, 370, 380, 384, and 348 Davenport Ave., and construct in their stead a new five-story, 194-unit apartment complex.
Thanks to the city’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, 5 percent of those apartments — or 10 units in total — would be set aside at below-market rents. The remaining units would rent out at market rates, with the developer estimating that one-bedroom apartments could cost around $2,000 to $2,300 per month.
Many of the attendees at Tuesday’s press conference had also turned out to a recent community meeting with the developer about the project at John C. Daniels School. And many of the concerns raised at that prior meeting — around gentrification, high rents, and current Hill residents getting pushed out of the neighborhood — again took center stage at Tuesday’s event.
Time and again on Tuesday, the press conference’s organizers called on the developer to increase the plan’s percentage of affordable apartments. They also called on the City Plan Commission to delay its site plan vote vote past Wednesday — and to open up the site plan review hearing to public input.
“When you look at other development that’s taken place here in New Haven, they’ve given 15, 20, 30, and even have some that’s given 40 percent affordability,” Sandra’s Next Generation restaurant owner Miguel Pittman said on Tuesday. “But this particular developer feels that they can come into our community and want us to accept only 5 percent.”
In an email response sent to the Independent Tuesday, the developer’s director of investment and operations, John Lockhart, said that his family-owned company has heard the concerns of Hill neighbors and has tried to incorporate that feedback into its apartment plan. However, he said the company could not include any more affordable apartments in the plan, and he declined to commit to moving the site plan review back further than it’s already been pushed. (See below for more on Lockhart’s comments, and read them in full here.)