E. Rock Warehouse Might Become High-End Gym

by Aliyya Swaby | Nov 12, 2014 2:17 pm

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Posted to: Business/ Economic Development, East Rock, True Vote

Bright lights beam through the neighborhood before dawn. Hundreds of cars beep at once in a parking lot. Power bar wrappers scatter on the streets. That was one of the visions presented to the zoning board on the risks of allowing a proposed high-end fitness center and health club to open in a warehouse storage unit in East Rock. The Board of Zoning Appeals heard two sides of the argument at a meeting Monday night. The owners agreed to return to the board next month with more definite arrangements for parking. Owner Pablo Perez asked for a variance to allow an 18,000 square-foot fitness center in a light industrial district. He also requested a special exception to allow 15 instead of 43 parking spaces. A Bristol-based company called Narang New Haven Co, LLC, owns the five-building, 190,000 square-foot warehouse and factory at 285 Nicoll St. Currently the property is used to store industrial machinery and stage the Alexion Pharmaceutical construction project downtown. The lot across the street from the proposed gym has 50 total parking spaces, according to the application. Though the gym would be allotted just 15, the landlord has indicated it can use the other 35 spaces when necessary. Three nearby public lots on Mitchell Drive would receive any parking overflow. Gym-goers will likely use public transportation, ride bicycles or walk to the gym, said the landlord’s lawyer, James Segaloff. He noted that East Rock has a lot of cyclists. Michael Bradford (pictured), who owns a house directly adjacent to the property’s parking lot on Canner Street, spoke out against the project Monday night. He read a list of the potential negative impacts of the fitness center on its East Rock neighbors. He said people would drive to the gym more often during the winter, on “cold, snowy days,” and then park on Canner, Nicoll and Foster streets. Increased traffic into East Rock would lead to more noise and litter in the neighborhood, he said. Perez has agreed to put a wall along the side of the lot on Canner Street to prevent lights from shining into people’s houses. Bradford said the wall would not protect neighbors from the lights of cars entering and exiting the lot on Canner Street. “The lights in the parking lot could shine onto my house. I like it dark. It’s night. People want to sleep,” he said. The center would be open from 4:30 a.m. until 10 p.m., said Perez (at center in photo, before the zoning board), who has been a gym owner for nine years. He said his East Rock gym would be high-end, not high-volume, at $60 monthly for a membership, meaning he expects about 1,000 members and 5,000 workouts per month. Bradford said he believes those numbers will lead to a lot of traffic and a lot of noise. “When people lock their car doors ... it causes a beep. That’s 190 cars beeping at 4:30 in the morning on their way to the gym,” he said. The gym’s maximum capacity is around 190 people. Perez said he expects people to come in for closer to 167 workouts spread out throughout each day. Bradford said he worries that the center would not last, leaving the neighborhood to deal with the aftermath. “It sounds like a wonderful facility, but what if goes under?” he said. Hundreds more machines will be left forgotten in the space, he said. Segaloff said the area is primarily industrial, not residential. “We will do what we can to accommodate the neighbors,” he said, but if the center doesn’t open, another business could sign an agreement to “park 20 trucks” in the lot. That would be a worse option for the neighborhood, he argued. Burch Valldejuli, another partner in the project, has been at the Yale School of Public Health for seven years. She said the center would provide at least one activity free for people in New Haven, to encourage healthy habits in the city. East Rock Alder Anna Festa submitted a letter saying that she had spoken to many neighbors who are excited that the building will finally be occupied, according to zoning board secretary Gaylord Bourne. Kevin McCarthy, vice president of the East Rock management team, also spoke out in favor of the project Monday night. Perez and Valldejuli decided to put off the Board of Zoning Appeals’ vote until next month, taking more time to solidify agreements to use three public lots along Mitchell Drive.

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posted by: DingDong on November 12, 2014 3:00pm It’s amazing: every time someone tries to do something in this City, there’s always some cranky neighbor willing to show up with complaints about parking and a desire to keep everything the way it is. I really wonder if we need all this community input into zoning applications; does it ever do any good?

posted by: mr bill on November 12, 2014 4:05pm Let’s see. There’s Wilbur Cross High at one end of the block with a large athletic complex, East Rock Elementary at the other, a convenience/gas store up the road, and a dumply looking warehouse at 285 Nicoll. A high end anything would be an upgrade.

posted by: robn on November 12, 2014 6:24pm I sympathize about the idea of headlights in windows but its nothing drapery can’t cure. Ultimately, the good outweighs the bad even if you live across the street; visitors coming and going will make this neighborhood profoundly more safe for people that live there.

posted by: quinnipiacave on November 12, 2014 6:50pm Bradford is somehow simultaneously worried that the gym will be successful (noise, lights, parking) and that it won’t be successful? You couldn’t ask for a better example of blatant NIMBY-ism.

posted by: Edward Francis on November 12, 2014 6:59pm Here we go again….285 Nicoll Street is located in the heart of “Goatville”...Goatville is located in the shadows of East Rock. It is the original neighborhood name from way back that has been changed by the real estate barons and developers to coincide with the expanding Yale community. Nuff said.

posted by: Ralcal on November 12, 2014 7:19pm I think a high-end gym would be an excellent addition to our East Rock neighborhood - new energy and ideas and probably even bringing more day-time traffic to the cafes on Orange Street.

posted by: Ravenclaw on November 12, 2014 9:51pm This sounds like one of those projects you’d rather not have across the street, but you know would be a net gain for the community. With due sympathy to the immediate neighbors, it’s hard to be very negative about this. Consider the alternatives: an abandoned toxic site (as now) or some other way of using that large space. A new factory? A large apartment complex? A rehab center? Which would not potentially annoy a homeowner across the street?

posted by: Eva G on November 12, 2014 10:13pm I’ve centered my life on this block of Nicoll Street since 2001. The number of times I’ve watched bad things happen in front of this abandoned looking building—I cannot count. This would change for the better if there was some kind of actual, legitimate, activity happening in this building.

I cannot fathom why anyone would be against someone starting a business here. I am the last person in the world to go, “yay! a GYM!” Fitness is not a major interest of mine, to put it mildly. But quality of life on Nicoll Street IS. I think a few garbage cans can handle the Power Bar wrappers, and that stupid food wrappers are preferable to broken glass and drug baggies.

I remember when part of the building where IRIS is now was being used as a school: talk about TRASH EVERYWHERE on Nicoll Street. The kids would buy crap to eat at the Shell station and just dump the wrappers. But it was foot traffic of a fundamentally positive type, and I was sorry when the school left.

The neighborhood IS primarily residential, Mr. Segaloff: that one block is not, but the block of Nicoll that faces the old wire company was rezoned residential, from light industrial, not long ago, to allow for the Lehman Bros. building to be converted into residences. So there’s a line to walk, here. But it CAN be walked. And I ardently hope it will be; I am only sorry that I wasn’t able to attend the meeting on Monday night in person.

posted by: rat2013 on November 12, 2014 10:25pm I live in this neighborhood and am completely pro-gym. Sure, there will be increased traffic - but if there are more people walking to and from cars we might need and get some traffic calming measures (especially to cross to the lots at Mitchell - people routinely speed and ignore crosswalk markings there). And what’s the alternative - another factory, making who knows what (luckily, probably won’t happen in this economy)? Empty warehouse, empty parking lots, no foot traffic? This is the perfect solution. It uses the space without tearing down a building and is useful to people in the neighborhood. The only thing I would disagree with is Mr. Segaloff’s characterization of the neighborhood as “primarily industrial.” Nope, it’s not - we have some abandoned warehouses and factories, but even some of those are being converted into housing. Maybe this was true in years past, but I think this neighborhood is solidly shifting to commercial and residential, and there are lots of close customers nearby who walk or bike everywhere.

posted by: Gretchen Pritchard on November 13, 2014 11:18am The article gives a lot of space to a negative reaction from one citizen, and makes it sound as if the whole meeting consisted of Mr. Bradford, solo, coming up with reasons why the facility should not be built. Besides the neighbors who registered their approval with Alder Festa and were cited in the letter she brought in, did anybody else at all (pro or con) turn out for the hearing?

posted by: prs35 on November 13, 2014 12:00pm I think a gym in East Rock would be awesome, but why does it have to be ‘luxury’? We don’t need diamond-studded treadmills and sweat towels made of the finest Egyptian cotton. You shouldn’t have to be rich to be healthy. We need a gym that is accessible to members of the community. Why not price it comparably to the Yale gym, so that they can draw from their member base? I know East Rock real estate is insanely expensive and they need to make enough to be profitable, but I just don’t see who is going to be willing to drop $60 a month when you could drive 10 minutes to Hamden and pay $10 a month at the Edge or Planet Fitness.

posted by: rat2013 on November 13, 2014 12:12pm Gretchen, I did not know about this meeting until I read about it in the Independent (and I live on Nicoll). I don’t know how I should have found out about this…but I didn’t know. I would have shown up to show my support if I had known.

posted by: BetweenTwoRocks The hilarious part is that this isn’t even right in the heart of the neighborhood. Across the street is a parking lot. Not really sure how this is going to make a huge dent vs. any of the other buildings, the gas station, or the high school right there.