Lawsuit Stalls 112 New Apartments

(Updated) A lawsuit by a pair of Wooster Square neighbors concerned about backyard shade is jeopardizing plans to transform a series of abandoned Grand Avenue commercial buildings into 112 new places to live.

The legal challenge crystallizes two widely-held and competing visions for how city planning in New Haven should work.

Is it better to build as many new homes as possible in an effort to address a housing shortage and affordability crisis — or to pursue smaller-scale developments that prioritize the aesthetic preferences of current neighbors? And who should have the final say when it comes to the future of a neighborhood?

In late 2022, developer Joel Strulovich spent $3.1 million buying 873, 887, and 897 Grand Ave: a string of vacant commercial buildings, including the former home of Unger’s Flooring. Strulovich drew up plans to replace the existing structures with a six-story residential building.

He envisioned a garage on the ground floor and a total of 112 apartments on the next five stories. Of those units, 15 percent would be affordable to people making 50 percent of the Area Median Income (for example, a 2‑person family making $46,450 per year in 2024), Strulovich said.

The City Plan Commission approved Strulovich’s site plan in November 2023 — a decision that a pair of nearby residents are challenging in court.

Those Lyon Street residents, Linda Reeder and Richard Tortora, filed the lawsuit with the help of local attorney Marjorie Shansky last December. The case is still making its way through state court, with Judge Robin Lynn Wilson setting a new scheduling order as recently as Tuesday for the filing of briefs by both sides.

Due to the lawsuit, which names both the commission and an LLC affiliated with Strulovich as defendants, Strulovich said he’s lost funding for the project and has not been able to start construction. He said he’s currently weighing whether to search for new funding sources or simply sell the property.

In the meantime, according to a nearby business owner, several unhoused people sleep by the unused buildings at night. Graffiti artists have made the vacant buildings their canvas. Pedestrians have dumped piles of litter. And birds take baths in the property’s massive puddles after it rains.

Height, Shadow Concerns Prompt Suit

The plaintiffs are two Lyon Street residents, Linda Reeder and Richard Tortora, whose homes border the back edge of the Grand Avenue properties in question.

In the legal complaint, they took issue with the extent to which residents’ written testimony and a 110-signature petition against the project were addressed at the City Plan Commission’s public hearing.

Their lawyer wrote that the commission’s site plan approval was ​“illegal, arbitrary, capricious, and in abuse of its discretion, and in violation of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance and applicable state law.” In an answer, the city wrote that this assertion was false. The project did not require any zoning variances or special exceptions.

When asked for a comment, Reeder referred to her written testimony sent to the commission, in which she criticized the proposed building’s height of 72 feet.

A building this tall would ​“dwarf” nearby two and three-story homes like her own.

“Many residents of Lyon and Olive Street properties will be without sunlight in winter,” she wrote. ​“In addition to the negative impact this will have on quality of life and landscape plantings, solar arrays will no longer generate energy.”

Asked for comment on the lawsuit, Strulovich said that he had met with neighbors of the property several times before going to the City Plan Commission, and that he’d made adjustments — including removing one story from the proposed building — as a result.

“I understand that everybody has their rights,” he said of the lawsuit. ​“The community should know that they delayed a project that would have made the streets nicer. They just delayed it because they can.”

Strulovich said that part of his goal was to ​“bring in a very affordable project — nothing too fancy. We weren’t planning to be top of the market.” The lawsuit may end up making the rents less affordable, he said, because it has cost him funding and legal fees.

“I want people in the community to understand… when you do this to your neighbor, understand the other side a little bit,” he added. ​“Nobody’s here to hurt the community. I know I’m not from there, but I want to build something. I’m trying to make it look better, not worse. And I didn’t ask for anything that’s not as-of-right.”

Update: City spokesperson Lenny Speiller provided the Independent with an email comment Wednesday afternoon in which he lamented the lawsuit’s impact on the proposed development, which would be compliant with the city’s Inclusionary Zoning ordinance. ​“The project was carefully reviewed by the City Plan Commission prior to site plan approval on November 8, 2023,” he wrote. He added, ​“It’s unfortunate that this lawsuit is slowing down the process and delaying these much-needed new apartments from coming online.”

Housing Progress Or "Low Quality Project"?

At the November 2023 hearing, City Plan Commissioner and Westville Alder Adam Marchand explained that he was voting to approve the site plan because there was no legal basis for them to deny it.

“It’s not going to be a harmonious, seamless fit in the neighborhood,” he acknowledged. But he argued that more residents would support local businesses and ​“the vitality” of the neighborhood.

Housing, he added, is ​“not one of these ​‘nice things to have.’ We actually have a crisis here around affordability and around enough supply in our community.”

The number of vacant housing units in New Haven dropped severely after the start of the pandemic — with rents rising in tandem. A 2023 report from Elm City Communities concluded that New Haven needs to build 8,400 new housing units by 2030 to address the housing shortage on a local level. The state, meanwhile, estimated in 2023 that over 92,500 deeply affordable units are needed across Connecticut.

Local historic preservation advocate Anstress Farwell said that the city should add new housing units with more intention.

“I don’t think it helps the city in any way to build a low-quality project and have that project harm the property values of everything around it,” she said.

She dismissed arguments that increasing the number of housing units available would help make rents more affordable.

When asked about the proposed 15 percent of apartments in the building that would be rented below-market, Farwell said that the benefits of that added housing would not outweigh the downsides.

“Who says that’s a common good,” she said, referring to affordable apartments, ​“if you’re in an ugly building in an overdeveloped thing, the units are minute, you go home to a place that you just can’t feel any pride in?”

“It’s like building a city on empty calories rather than creating things that nurture people’s humanity,” she added.

Property Blight Continues

Patel Alpesh, an employee at Hollywood Package Store across the street from 897 Grand Ave., said that people who cannot afford housing in the city have been using the vacant property as a place to sleep. He estimated that two to three people fall asleep there each night.

The properties are located on a segment of Grand Avenue increasingly characterized by empty storefronts — alongside a number of social service organizations working to help unhoused people find a home in a harsh housing market.

Alpesh said that ​“everyone throws garbage” at the vacant properties across the street, and that at night, a variety of people urinate, deal drugs, and sometimes start fights there.

Farwell framed arguments that an apartment building would be better than empty, dilapidated commercial buildings as short-term thinking.

“It’s never right to say, ​’It’s a mess, so just dump a different kind of problem on the neighborhood,’” she said.

She noted that it’s the city’s job to hold property owners accountable for blight, whether or not buildings are currently being utilized.

Alpesh, meanwhile, sees the very addition of more people to the neighborhood as an asset. If the apartment complex does come together, he said, he would be ​“happy for my business.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Anstress Farwell is a Wooster Square resident.