Housing Plan Dropped Amid Parking Dispute

A Hamilton Street parking lot will remain a Hamilton Street parking lot for the time being, now that a local landlord has withdrawn a housing application in the face of several neighbors’ car concerns.

City Plan Director Laura Brown confirmed for the Independent that, on Wednesday, Wooster Lofts LLC withdrew its application to the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for zoning relief of a quarter-acre surface parking lot at 63 Hamilton St.

The application sought a use variance to permit residential use in a​“Light Industrial” zone and a special exception to allow for 0 loading spaces where 1 is required at 63 Hamilton St.

If approved, it would have allowed the lot’s owner — a company controlled by landlord Yoon Lee — to build up to 64 new apartments and as few as 0 new parking spaces there. Five percent of those new apartments would have had to be set aside at below market rents, per the terms of the city’s Inclusionary Zoning ordinance, which also waives parking minimums for compliant developments.

Local zoners won’t get a chance to vote up or down on that Hamilton Street housing-permission proposal at their next meeting this upcoming Tuesday, however, because Lee’s company has dropped its housing-permission request. For now.

“Construction already has a lot of unknown variables,” Lee told the Independent on Thursday. ​“We decided that upon hearing from Rob Greenberg’s group, that we ought to withdraw the application to manage our legal fees, and engage the community. I wish we could build housing here, but that will depend on the community conversations.”

Lee was referring in that comment to pushback that his company’s housing request had received from several existing Hamilton Street neighbors over how his tentative apartment plan might impact existing on-street parking.

The neighbors — including Rob Greenberg of the Lost in New Haven museum, Pastor James Roundtree of Church on the Rock, and Jay Lawrence of the HVAC supply company Sid Harvey — cautioned that their and other existing Hamilton Street businesses would be hurt by too many new apartments filled with too many new residents looking to park too many cars on the street. Attorney Marjorie Shansky had also written a letter to the City Plan Commission on behalf of Lost in New Haven and the owners of an adjacent Hamilton Street property, urging the commissioners to turn down Lee’s company’s request. (The City Plan Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the request.)

Lee, meanwhile, told the Independent that, if he won the requested zoning relief, he’d actually build fewer than the maximum allowed number of apartments — and would include some off-street parking as part of the development.

For now, that question of what would or could have been is moot, given Lee’s dropping of the BZA application.

Lee — whose company also owns the adjacent 23-unit apartment building at 441 Chapel — said that he decided to withdraw the application in part out of a concern of potentially hefty legal bills if he were to get into a prolonged zoning dispute with neighbors.

“I’ve learned that the city has a lot of great intentions,” and is generally ​“pro-housing supply,” Lee said about this 63 Hamilton St. episode. But ​“I’ve also learned that parts of the zoning code and zoning map should be reviewed.”

He said he and his friends and their families would be risking a lot of their own money if he moved forward with this housing plan. ​“The process works much more efficiently if the zoning ordinance overall is more clear and can be streamlined,” he argued.

Will he continue to try to build housing on this 63 Hamilton St. site? Lee said he’s not sure, depends on how conversations with neighbors go.

Greenberg declined to comment for this story.