Will Bridgeport's law department nix Testo's apartment complex? – CTPost

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BRIDGEPORT — Developer Hugh Scott does not have a personal financial stake in whether the 177 units of market-rate housing proposed for the former Testo’s restaurant site in the North End get built. It is not his project.
But as the owner of the vacant Stop & Shop supermarket under a mile away, Scott is keenly watching whether Democratic Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration, under political pressure to stop the previously permitted Testo’s apartment complex from breaking ground, finds a legal reason to do so.
“It’s very concerning to me,” Scott said this week. “Given that to finance a project you need to have your approvals in place, if now we’re in a situation going forward where any approvals that have been given are doubtful because the city overturned the Testo’s approval, that could severely jeopardize any financing for projects going forward.”
How City Hall intends to proceed should be known in a few days. Over two months after Ganim in early May asked the municipal law department to scrutinize the zoning department’s OK of the Testo’s project, which is opposed by some neighbors, activists and City Council members, head city attorney Mark Anastasi is on the cusp of issuing that highly anticipated opinion.
The mayor’s office had previously stated the law department was “on track” to render its decision in late June.
“Our priority commitment is to provide sound legal advice and guidance to all relevant city officials,” Anastasi said this week in a statement. “Obviously our legal review, which remains ongoing, is taking longer than initially anticipated. Our revised timetable for release has shifted to early the week of July 17th.”
And, according to the mayor’s office, Anastasi has also consulted with unidentified outside counsel.
The consequences of the final decision could be significant.
Beyond Scott’s concerns about what blocking the Testo’s plan might mean for other developers like himself seeking to do business in Bridgeport, there are political implications. Ganim is running for a third consecutive four-year-term and one of his rivals, fellow Democrat John Gomes, three weeks ago participated in a protest of the apartments and posted the photos on social media.
Meanwhile John Guedes, the local contractor who designed and will be building the complex for private out-of-town developer Amit Lakhotia, has repeatedly claimed everything was done by the book. Guedes has warned that should the city, having authorized the construction, now reverse course, “There will be a multi-million dollar lawsuit against them.”
In April Lakhotia closed on the purchase of Testo’s, the well-known Italian restaurant and catering facility on Madison Avenue, from owners Mario Testa, a close Ganim ally and long-time head of Bridgeport’s Democratic party, and Testa’s nephew, Ralph Giacobbe. The pending sale had been announced last November.
And the $3.5 million sale price was, according to Guedes, who has been acting as Lakhotia’s spokesperson, contingent upon Lakhotia’s ability to construct a four-story, 177-unit apartment building there with underground parking. 
“It was based on the number of units that had been approved,” Guedes reiterated this week.
Early last year Hearst Connecticut Media reported that Testa and Giacobbe at the end of 2021, before new city-wide zoning regulations took effect Jan. 1, 2022, submitted the plans for the 177-unit housing complex for zoning approval. They had gotten the lot’s zoning changed in 2013 and wanted to grandfather or lock in the ability of any potential future buyers to erect such a large apartment building there. That was because as of January 2022 any residential development proposals submitted thereafter for Testo’s would, according to the zoning department, be limited to three stories with the ground floor set aside for commercial use.
William Coleman, Bridgeport’s deputy economic development director, in a January 2022 email indicated there was nothing unusual about what Testa and Giacobbe did. 
“Since the new zoning code took effect January 1, 2022, all proposals submitted after this date are being reviewed under the new code,” Coleman wrote. “Proposals submitted prior to this date are being reviewed under the previous code. As was expected, a number of property owners submitted proposals prior to the new code’s effective date.”
But North End residents and elected officials had seemingly not known or understood that until early this past May. After fencing and a sign advertising the coming apartments were installed at the old restaurant, Hearst reported that the 177-unit project was determined by the Ganim administration to have met the land-use rules and did not require a public hearing and subsequent vote by the zoning commission.
“The project was submitted to the zoning office toward the end of 2021,” Ganim’s office had stated. “It was submitted under the old zoning code in effect at that time. As it was in full compliance with the requirements of that code as pertained to that site, it was approved.”
The statement noted, “All of the regulatory departments of the city — building, zoning, engineering, Water Pollution Control Authority, fire — will have to review the construction plans to ensure compliance with what has been submitted.”
But a couple days later, as public frustration with that situation and with the new building’s size grew, Ganim announced that he too had concerns with the approved structure’s height and density and would have the law department look into the matter further. 
Guedes, who is known for his projects in Shelton and has some other significant housing developments underway in downtown Bridgeport, this week echoed previous comments made on the topic that he does not foresee what Anastasi and his staff could possibly come up with to stop the Testo’s redevelopment.
“What’s the law department going to say? All they have to do is follow the record. There were no improprieties,” Guedes said. “I’ve been in this city in business for over 40 years. (And) we’ve never been involved in anything that was not appropriate. Whether here or in Shelton or any other areas we concentrated on. There’s nine family members here within my organization. We take pride in our name.”
Guedes continued, “In this particular case, yeah, it’s a controversy. One of the (former Testo’s) owners has been head of the Democratic Party forever. But at the end, the fact is that the project was designed for this site, it complied with all the regulations.”
Testa has never returned requests for comment and Giacobbe this week declined to do so.
Raymond Rizio is one of the city’s most prominent land-use attorneys and handled Testa’s and Giacobbe’s zoning application in late 2021. He said this week that his practice “did everything we needed to to get approval from the city at that time.”
But Rizio added, “What transpired between our getting the approval and acknowledgment (the application) was consistent with the former (pre-2022) zoning regulations and today is not something we’ve handled.”
Councilwoman Jeanette Herron and her council partner, Aikeem Boyd, are Democrats who represent the section of the North End in question and both have come out against the Testo’s apartments as too big for that neighborhood. Like Ganim they are also both facing re-election and under pressure to intervene and somehow block or downsize the redevelopment.
Herron said she has been phoning the law department regularly asking for the status of the legal opinion and this week was told “it’ll be done any day now” and “they’re making sure the legal wording is correct.”
She said she had no inside knowledge of what it will conclude, but added, “I am very optimistic that a solution is at hand. They’re not really telling me much, but I’m feeling very positive.”
Omar and Jilian Genao bought a house near Testo’s in 2021 and have been helping to lead the opposition against the apartments.
“Right now we’re not commenting on anything until they actually release the legal opinion,” Omar Genao said this week. “We’re just waiting on them to see what happens. We haven’t heard anything.” 
Former Superior Court Judge Carmen Lopez, a city activist, has also been a vocal critic of the 177-unit apartments and the lack of a public hearing. 
Lopez has over the years successfully fought the city over a variety of issues and is known as a thorough researcher. For example, over a year ago she raised procedural questions about the zoning department’s approval of a two-year college for Jewett Avenue in the North End. Shortly afterward in April 2022 Ganim’s office announced that the law department had found reasons to reverse that zoning authorization and the partners behind the college  —  the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport and Fairfield University  —  found another location in a different part of town.
Lopez this week said she has no doubt given it is an election year the Ganim administration will come up with something to at least temporarily silence critics of the Testo’s project. But she is not optimistic that it will be a lasting solution.
“I don’t know what the city attorney’s office is going to find. I went through everything (all the zoning documentation). But I believe they will find something,” Lopez said. “This will slow down the developer. The developer will go to court. He will win. But it slowed it down and it got us past the election. That’s what I think.” 
Scott is focused on the message the added scrutiny and possible halting of the Testo’s project by the Ganim administration would send to the wider development community.
He is no stranger to the mix of politics and land-use decisions. Scott for months had sought a special zoning permit to turn the former North End Stop & Shop, also on Madison Avenue, which he purchased two years ago, into a self-storage facility. Some of the same critics who are against the apartments at Testo’s rallied to fight Scott’s plan, Ganim included. The difference is Scott’s self-storage application required a public hearing and, after that was held May 30 and a few dozen opponents attended, his project was rejected by the zoning commission.
Scott filed a legal appeal of that decision this week.
He said that if Bridgeport’s law department tosses out the zoning authorization for the Testo’s apartments after the fact, “It sets a precedent that an approval is not an approval.”
“That’s hogwash,” responded former state Rep. Christopher Caruso, who both fought Scott’s self-storage facility and for weeks has been demanding the city hold a zoning public hearing for the apartments. He said the Testo’s case is a unique one in which a high-density housing development is being forced on a mostly single-family home neighborhood and any suggestion that the additional scrutiny of it has broader ramifications for the local economy is just fear-mongering.
“‘Oh my God. It’s the end of development in the city.’ It’s ridiculous,” Caruso said. “This has to be foisted on the neighborhood and the neighbors are just supposed to sit back and accept it? Life doesn’t work that way.”
Dan Onofrio is head of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council. On the one hand, Onofrio said, if the community is “adamantly against” the Testo’s project “it’s the city’s right to take a closer look at it and make sure it is appropriate.”
The law department’s involvement aside, private meetings were held between Lakhotia, Guedes, economic development staff, Herron and Boyd in an unsuccessful effort to convince Guedes and Lakhotia to change the design. 
But, Onofrio continued, developers like fair and consistent municipal processes.
“If there’s a lot of hoops to jump through, that’s a deterrent for a lot of developers,” he said. “They sit on the sidelines or overlook a particular community. We should just be mindful it should be consistent across all projects and not pick and choose which ones we’re going to scrutinize or not.”

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