The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Allingtown leaps forward
Officials, residents hope The Atwood is start of a renaissance
WEST HAVEN » Allingtown, long the city’s working-class, neglected stepchild, is about to leap forward and become the poster child for what the struggling city needs to do to turn itself around — although its transformation is not without worries for those who live and pay taxes here.
Five years from now, the commercial center of Allingtown, along Route 1 just down the hill from University of New Haven in the north end of town, is likely to look and feel much different than it does now.
For that matter, things will change dramatically later this summer.
That’s when people — university graduate students and some upperclassmen — and businesses will start moving into The Atwood, a 67-unit, four-story, 90,150-square-foot mixeduse apartment and commercial building on the former site of Carroll Cut Rate Furniture, which officials say is already 100 percent leased by the university.
The building is on the Boston Post Road between Taft Avenue and Atwood Place, just east of the major intersection of Route 1, Campbell Avenue and Forest Road. And the developer behind The Atwood — an affiliate of former Starter
Corp. CEO David Beckerman’s Acorn Group — is hoping to later build two similar buildings across the Post Road and Cellini Place on the site of what eons ago was Park Theatre, which still stands, and at the Post Road and Forest Road on the former site of Allingtown’s once-beloved, demolished Forest Theater.
The Acorn website refers to them collectively as “University Commons.”
Together, the developments would add up to 240,000 total square feet of development, including 50,000 square feet of retail space and 179 apartments — with an estimated total of 300-400 new residents between them, according to Acorn’s website, local officials and University of New Haven officials.
That’s a good thing for a cash-strapped city that continues to wait for progress on the even larger proposed The Haven upscale outlet mall project, even if tax revenue from The Atwood will be phased in over seven years before the owner pays the full assessment.
Annual tax revenue from The Atwood, which at the time it was approved had an estimated construction value of $18 million, would rise from an initial $101,776 a year to $370,279 annually, according to estimates from when the City Council approved the tax deferral agreement.
But while virtually everyone recognizes that Allingtown is long overdue for an overhaul, some Allingtown stakeholders wonder whether the improvements, for which the developer is looking to buy a portion of the Louis Piantino Allingtown Branch Library parking lot just north on Forest Road, might leave them behind.
Some people worry that the developments are part of some grand plan to expand the nearby university campus — and several speakers at a recent City Council meeting wondered whether buying the parking lot south of the library, which will be on the Monday’s council agenda, might be a prelude to building on the library property, itself.
What’s in front of the council would involve the city selling a little over 9,000 square feet of parking lot — containing 24 spaces — to Acorn, officials said.
Mayor Ed O’Brien, who is banking on The Atwood and what might follow to help stabilize a city that for a number of years now has fallen deeper in debt with each passing audit — now $16.8 million in the red — says residents and taxpayers need not worry.
“I think it’s transformational for Allingtown,” O’Brien said of The Atwood and the other potential developments, which others close to the process said are modeled on the mixed-use Storrs Center development in Mansfield, near the University of Connecticut campus. “It changes that whole gateway” and “it brings the critical mass you need to survive.
“It will bring revenue for the city and the” City of West Haven Fire Department - Allingtown, he said. “I think it’s good for the city as a whole.”
O’Brien said the library itself is not at risk, there is additional nearby parking available for the library — including some that Acorn will make available for at least two years on the Forest Theater site — and “we were very, very mindful of the residents, as far as the parking is concerned.”
Beckerman declined to be interviewed on the record for this story.
But a source that is familiar with Acorn’s plans and has seen the not-yet-filed plans, said the project the company will bring to the Planning and Zoning Commission does not “at this time” include any future building on the library property.
While The Atwood is fully leased by the University of New Haven, the future buildings may not be, and Acorn has had inquiries from a number of area professionals, including doctors and nurses at the VA Connecticut Healthcare System medical center in West Haven and Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, among others, the source said.
The source said the prospective development would be “a haven for population, both student and non-student ... that will be the bridge between the university and the entire Allingtown community.”
The only announced commercial tenant so far in The Atwood is Eblens athletic shoes and apparel, although several people close to the development said that a fastcasual hamburger restaurant also appears as if it will be a tenant.
“The Park View” would be built opposite the Allingtown Green along what now is Cellini Place. In a rendering on the Acorn website, Cellini Place looks as if it would be abandoned and paved over. “The Forest” would be built on the former site of the Forest Theater at the main intersection of the Boston Post Road, Campbell Avenue and Forest Road.
Marketing information on the Acorn website, entitled “Be Part of The Birth of a College Town,” also was posted earlier this month on the city’s website, along with a short narrative. It shows The Park View as offering 62 apartments and 18,000 square feet of retail space and The Forest with 50 apartments and 16,000 square feet of retail space.
Library Director Colleen Bailie said she and other library officials have been briefed on the various developments and “we have been assured that the library is going to be a part of the discussion, as far as what’s going on in the area.
“The library is not going anywhere,” Bailie said. “That’s a very strong area and it’s an area that definitely needs a library. With this, even more so,” she said, referring to the hundreds of additional library patrons who could be living in close proximity if all three buildings go up.
“I think any time you’re looking to expand an area and help an area, it’s a good thing,” Bailie said. Still, others are worried. “What I don’t want to see happen is after the seven years, than all of a sudden UNH owns the things,” said City Councilwoman Robbin Watt Hamilton, D-5, whose district adjoins the area, which actually is in the city’s 6th District. “Then Allingtown has to foot the bill again. We can’t afford it! I just hope that that’s not the plan.”
But aside from those worries, “It’s very appealing,” Hamilton said, adding that she hopes it will mean a turnaround for Allingtown.
“If it brings business in and if it wakes Allingtown up,” that would be a good thing, Hamilton said.
West Haven Black Coalition President Carroll E. Brown, whose coalition offices have been in the library building for the last couple of years since the Allingtown Senior Center was consolidated with the West Haven Adult Day Center, said “the mayor has talked to me and said that we will not be thrown out ... He kind of assured me that we would not have to leave.” But still, she worries. In West Haven, “they closed all the schools in the north end of town except Carrigan and Forest,” said Brown, who has been a supporter of the mayor. “The barber shops and beauty shops are almost all we had at one point.”
She remembers when Allingtown had both its own movie theater and an active drive-in theater.
“I don’t think anyone wants to turn the clock back,” Brown said. But she called the library building, which was once the old Forest School, “historic” and said the city should continue to develop it, with her help, into a full-blown community center.
“It would be a wonderful place if organized properly,” said Brown, whose son, Shawn, was one of the people who questioned whether buying part of the library parking lot might not be a prelude to buying the library building itself at a recent council meeting.
For some of the business owners in Allingtown Center who have stuck it out through years of decline and more recent construction, the development’s opening, which is expected to be by September, is a reason for hope.
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Donato Cappetta, whose family’s business, Cappetta’s Italian Imports & Pizza and Route 1 and Taft Place, stands to gain about 100 new customers just steps away when The Atwood opens. “We’re staying. I think that the changes are definitely an awesome idea.
“I am tired of seeing empty buildings” and “I like to see people walking around,” Cappetta said. “Once they put the other two buildings up, people will be walking down here ... It’s pretty much a winwin situation for everybody. You’ve got old, dilapidated buildings coming down, new buildings going up, new businesses coming into the area.
“It’s going attract revenue,” said Cappetta, who runs the business, started nearly 28 years ago by his father, Aniello Cappetta and late mother Palma Cappetta, with his brother, Luigi. “It’s going to look a lot better.”
He also thinks that University of New Haven is a good neighbor.
“I think UNH, as much as they are taking over, they do want to work with the community,” Cappetta said. “This is their community, as well ... and I think they do a very good job of staying in touch with the people and keeping in touch with the businesses.”
Across the Post Road at the family-owned Allingtown Mini Market, Euelises Hilario said she and her family are hoping that The Atwood’s opening will reverse what has been declining business during the construction. And they’re ready. Hilario said her family is ready to add product, if need be, and also stay open later some nights should there be demand from their new neighbors.
Around the corner on Admiral Street, Victor Amodei of Vic’s “Old School” Barber Shop — who has cut hair and shined shoes in Allingtown since 1954 — said he thinks the opening of The Atwood “should help” by making the area more of “a hub.”
Amodei, 76, who used to own the shop and now works there, said he thinks the new development will bring new people and new business, and “you’re going to have more upstanding people” and “a lot less juveniles and drugs.”
He’s thinking that in the future, “maybe we should have some outdoor cafes or something.”
City Commissioner of Development Joe Riccio called The Atwood “a significant investment by a local developer who has a great vision for the area, and is picking up on the trend that you see at a lot of colleges and universities where you have offcampus development for students and graduate students and folks who work at the university.”
Beckerman “certainly has a vision for the area and has certainly shared that with us,” said Riccio. “We’re trying to help him as much as we can, in terms of things that the city can do.”
Riccio said that people concerned about the future of the library “jumped the gun” and assumed a threat that’s doesn’t exist — at least not at this point in time.
“In the future there could be a possible reuse of that building, but the mayor has said that there will always be a library in Allingtown,” Riccio said.
Assuming the city sells the parking spaces to Acorn, the deal would allow the library to continue using them until January 2018, he said.
University of New Haven Vice President for Finance and Administration George Synodi confirmed that the university has leased the entire residential portion of The Atwood, which is predominantly one-bedroom units that are likely to mostly be graduate students living on their own.
The few two-bedroom units are more likely to house juniors and seniors living together, Synodi said.
He said the university currently only has a lease in place with The Atwood “and I think we would evaluate it and then decide” about any future developments.
“Will we get to a third project? Will we get to a second project? I don’t know,” Synodi said. “It depends on how things work out with the first project.”
He said that past surveys have shown that students would like to have more retail, coffee and sandwich options close to campus, within walking distance.
“We’ve got a large, captive audience of students right now who get in their cars and drive up the Post Road and probably out of town,” Synodi said.