Roughly 160 apartments once stood on the property.
The Ansonia Housing Authority is in the midst of a project to redevelop up to 54 new units on the site, where the city also plans to put a new police station.
Background
The Riverside Apartments on Olson Drive were built in 1962.
The property represents bygone thinking about providing affordable housing — a cluster of poverty in a poorly-designed complex that became conducive to crime.
By 2000, 50 percent of the city’s serious crime was occurring there. The crime rate was brought down significantly over the next decade.
Meanwhile, the aging, stigmatized complex fell further into disrepair.
The city began tearing the buildings down in September 2009.
More Demolition
In 2012, the Ansonia Housing Authority signed an agreement with HUD to demolish several apartment buildings and to redevelop the site with at least 48 low-income units.
A second tear-down phase started in October 2013.
The final phase began Thursday.
The work is being performed by Standard Demolition of Bridgeport at a cost of $1,024,350, according to Housing Authority July meeting minutes.
The contract calls for demolition of the remaining four buildings to be done by next February.
The money is coming from a $5 million referendum approved by residents in 2007 for demolition of the Riverside Apartments and to reimburse security deposits and moving costs for residents were living there.
Click the play button on the video above to see some of the work that started Thursday.
Mayor David Cassetti said the city’s housing authority is still finalizing design and lining up financing for its redevelopment plans, which he ballparked at $20 million.
Though the city during the administration of Cassetti’s predecessor sought and received approval from voters to borrow $330,000 with a view to purchasing the property and leaving it as open space, they were shut down by federal housing officials — and faced a federal housing discrimination complaint — who said the city had to keep promises to redevelop housing on Olson Drive.
The Valley Indy left a message Thursday with the Housing Authority’s executive director, Robert Henderson.
New Cop Shop
Meanwhile, the city took a step closer to building a new police station on Olson Drive after voters on Tuesday approved borrowing up to $12 million to fund design and construction.
Relocating the police department from its cramped quarters on Elm Street has been an idea of Cassetti’s for more than a decade, since his time serving on the city’s Board of Police Commissioners.
Click here for a 2004 story from the New Haven Register, when Cassetti first brought up the idea.
While campaigning for mayor in 2013, Cassetti sparred with then-Mayor James Della Volpe over plans to perform some work at the current police station on Elm Street, saying the city should instead build a new police station on Howard Avenue.
Cassetti defeated Della Volpe to take the mayor’s post in 2013. His administration soon negotiated a settlement to the discrimination complaint.
He said that around that time he also realized the property would be an ideal location for a new police station.
“I think Olson Drive would be a better site because that was a bad area for years and we want to bring it back,” Cassetti said.
In May 2014, he unveiled a proposal to put a new police station on Olson Drive as a “pillar of law and authority.”
On Tuesday (Nov. 8) voters overwhelmingly approved borrowing up to $12 million to fund the construction of the new police department in the form of a low-interest federal loan.
The city, housing authority, and federal housing officials are still working out all of the details.
A building committee made up of residents and officials will oversee the project directly. Mayor David Cassetti said that he hopes to see construction begin within a year.
The city’s economic development director and grant writer, Sheila O’Malley, said federal officials are reviewing an application from the city but hopes to have it ironed out within a month or two.
Police thanked voters via a Facebook post Wednesday.
Cassetti also thanked voters in a guest column, saying a new police station on Olson Drive will “bring a pillar of safety and security into the heart of our downtown.”
