This story by Tommy Gardner was first published by the News & Citizen on July 27.
The owners of a new 24-unit affordable housing complex in the heart of Morrisville have been fined by the town for letting tenants move in before the town could give permission, and both sides are at loggerheads, with each saying the other hasn’t held up their end of the bargain in the permitting process.
Morristown zoning administrator Todd Thomas last week fined the owners of the Village Center Apartments $500, arguing that occupation of the Hutchins Street building violates the town’s land use permit.
The biggest sticking point is a required reconfiguration of the nearby municipal parking lot — bordering Pleasant and Hutchins streets — to add enough overnight spots to accommodate the new apartments. The town hasn’t made the necessary fixes, despite agreeing to do so three and a half years ago.
However, Thomas offered the owners an alternative solution: pay the town $35,000 and forget about the parking requirements or figure out a different place for 16 off-street parking spots.
That didn’t go over well with Jim Lovinsky, executive director of Lamoille Housing Partnership, which co-owns the building with Evernorth.
“That’s extortion, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like bribery,” Lovinsky said, adding he doesn’t feel Thomas has the authority to demand payment for a project that hasn’t been done.
Thomas said that $35,000 is a good deal for the developers, since when the town estimated the cost of the parking lot fixes three years ago, it rang in around $75,000 and now is likely to top six figures. He said the contractor hired to do the parking lot reconfiguration, Pike Industries, has a backlog of projects only made longer with this month’s statewide flooding, and he doubts the municipal lot work will be done before the winter, when the overnight on-street parking ban goes into effect.
“The $35,000 is already giving the taxpayers the short end of the stick,” Thomas said on the phone Tuesday.
However, Lovinsky said the agreed-upon improvements to create parking spaces for the apartment building’s tenants remain the town’s responsibility, and the town hasn’t made those fixes, despite agreeing to in January 2020.
“The town agreed to complete the redesign and construction of the parking lot in the next 30 months. It has been 43 months since this agreement was signed,” Lovinsky wrote Tuesday in an “alternative parking plan” proposed to Thomas. “The town is now in default of this agreement. It is my opinion that the town needs to 1) complete the parking lot construction this season, or 2) provide Village Center Apartments with an alternative parking plan to provide for 16 overnight winter parking spaces, as agreed, prior to winter parking bans taking effect.”
‘Zero wiggle room’
Although the parking lot impasse remains the biggest hurdle to Village Center Apartments receiving its occupancy permit, Thomas pointed out other unfinished business — exterior lighting and crosswalk striping — most or all of which has been addressed in the past week.
He said the sidewalk in front of the new building is incomplete. Lovinsky said that came as a surprise, but agreed to make the additions, and Thomas said he will accept a site plan as satisfying the permit conditions.
Thomas also warned the building’s owners that the commercial space on the ground level — a condition forced upon the apartment owners by the development review board — must be rented by a “bona fide business,” although there’s no current zoning violation.
“My DRB members are watching this space very closely and I have zero wiggle room here,” Thomas wrote.
Review board chair Gary Nolan did not comment.
Lovinsky said filling the commercial space is not as high a priority as filling the apartments.
“We’re not doing anything with the commercial space at this time. When we’re ready, we will,” he said.
Thomas in his email also accused the developers of removing the barriers from either end of Hutchins Street last week to let the first tenants move in, calling it “very surprising and a bit disturbing.”
Also not true, Lovinsky said. He said it was the town road crews who opened it up and Thomas got mad and closed it back up.
Police chief Jason Luneau, who is also the interim town administrator, decreed the road opened on Monday, now one-way only. He said he’s working with both sides to smooth things over, saying there are bigger issues at stake.
“The town is working diligently with LHP to come to a resolution. The last thing I want is for folks who need housing to not be able to occupy the building,” Luneau said.
The Village Center Apartments add 24 units of affordable housing to a town and state desperately in need of it. Lovinsky said Lamoille Housing Partnership has a waiting list of more than 500 people seeking homes and rent on the building’s mix of studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments, which will run between $680 and $1,200 a month, is far less than regular market-rate apartments in the area.
Six of the apartments are set aside for people or families who are experiencing homelessness.
Lovinsky said he has no intention of telling tenants they cannot move in, and he plans to fill more apartments later this week and continue doing so.
“I don’t see anything where Todd has the authority to not allow us to move people in and ticket us,” he said.
Thomas said he would not comment on whether he intends to issue more tickets.
Thomas said on the phone Tuesday that he’s just doing his job, adding the taxpayers of Morristown “are doing all the work for a developer, regardless of who the developer is, for free right now.”
“I’m aware people need housing, but there are rules to be followed as well,” he said.
