The developer who wants to turn a dilapidated 88,000-square-foot building in downtown Ansonia into a mixed-use apartment and retail complex has until next week to fence off the property to prevent squatters from entering.
Beyond that, the developer, Moustapha Diakhate, must fix a laundry list of “blight conditions” at the building by Jan. 31 or face fines totaling more than $1 million.
Diakhate and city officials agreed to the remediation plan Wednesday (Dec. 10) at a hearing held before Keith Murray, a local attorney who serves part-time as a blight hearing officer for the city.
After the hearing, Diakhate again said he will soon be submitting plans for the property to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission calling for a 100-unit apartment development with retail on the building’s first two floors.
Background
The property — 501 E. Main St., the Farrel Corp.‘s former “Process Lab” — is one of several buildings that sit on more than 10 acres of downtown land, formerly part of the Farrel Corp.‘s sprawling downtown campus, that Diakhate bought in early 2013 for $1.9 million.
The city’s Anti-Blight Officer, David Blackwell Sr., slapped Diakhate with a blight citation Nov. 12 threatening fines totaling $20,700 per day if he didn’t fix more than 200 broken or missing windows, graffiti, overgrown vegetation, crumbling cement, and exposed rebar on the property.
The move was part of a concerted strategy by city officials to prompt action at the property, a prominent eyesore in the heart of Ansonia that they say hurts development efforts elsewhere.
Diakhate appealed the citation about two weeks later, and submitted a plan to fix up the blight by Feb. 1, 2015, triggering Wednesday’s hearing.
Blight hearings, which have become far more common since Aldermen passed a beefed-up blight law earlier his year, give residents cited for “blight conditions” the chance to dispute the fines, show that their properties have been fixed up, or lay out a plan to do so.
The hearing officer acts as a judge, essentially.
Let’s Make A Deal
The hearing began with Blackwell, the anti-blight officer, going through a sheaf of pictures stacked in front of him detailing the blight and the city’s efforts to fix possible dangers.
“There’s numerous, numerous broken windows. Graffiti. I closed off the alleyway between the buildings that the city owns … the windows on the top look like they’re ready to fall out and I didn’t want to have anybody hurt,” Blackwell said.
Another part of the building had squatters living in it, he said, so he boarded up an entrance off an alleyway.
After quizzing Blackwell with follow-up questions and going over procedure, Murray did what most judges do — asked the two sides to make a deal.
“What I would like to do, given the significance of this building and the significance of the blighted aspects … (is) ask the parties to go outside briefly, see if you guys can work something out before I have to do any kind of ruling on it,” Murray said.
He then recessed the hearing as Diakhate and city officials — Blackwell and Corporation Counsel John Marini — went into another room to hash out terms.
They emerged about 15 minutes later, and Marini outlined a deal which calls for Diakhate to:
- Fence the property completely by Dec. 17 to prevent squatters from gaining access;
- Give Blackwell a key to the fence to check on the building;
- And fix the rest of the blight conditions by Jan. 31.
Marini said the deal calls for a stiff penalty should that deadline come and go without the work done.
“The city will allow him to have that time to remediate with the agreement that, if the remediation is not completed by that time, that Moustapha would accept the full lien in the amount of $20,000 per day from the date of this hearing until Jan. 31 and also stipulate to that lien on that property and waive all defenses to that lien.”
After the meeting, Marini said he meant to say $20,700 per day, the fine threatened in Blackwell’s original citation letter.
At that amount, the lien would total $1,097,100.
Diakhate also agreed to continue the hearing to next Thursday (Dec. 18) at 5:30 p.m., by which time the fence should be in place, to “evaluate the written agreement that would stipulate to everything we’ve discussed,” Marini said.
Developer Promises Action
After the hearing, Diakhate said redeveloping 501 E. Main St. was the top priority for his company — Hamden-based Washington Management LLC, in which he is a senior member.
He said plans to redevelop the building into a 100-apartment mixed-use development with retail on its ground floors were being finished Wednesday.
He’s expecting the plans to be on the Planning and Zoning Commission’s January agenda, he said.
“In the meantime, we’ll fix things and pull permits and fix the windows and so on,” he said.
Diakhate said he wants to create a development that will spur growth downtown with about 57 one-bedroom apartments and the rest two-bedroom apartments and retail on its lower floors that will bring jobs.
But doing so properly requires time, he said.
“It’s just not easy to go and fix one window. You’ve got to customize them, you’ve got to fix them up, you’ve got to start with the roof and go down. Most people don’t understand, this is going to be a big project.”
Diakhate also said his company’s lawyers were taking care of resolving a foreclosure notice filed on the property in City Hall in November.
He’s in the process of refinancing, he said.
He said he’d be looking to begin construction as soon as possible, for a grand opening by the end of next summer — conditioned on a myriad of factors, ranging approvals from the city to the weather.
Diakhate declined to give an estimate of the development’s cost, but said it would transform the property, and, he hopes, spur more growth around downtown.
“My goal is to create businesses, really attract people to come here and create businesses ourselves and have local residents ready for us,” he said. “The key is to have something at night, to have night life here that when I drive by I don’t see.”
