Allan Appel Photo
The YMCA constructed the building in the early 1900s to house workers from the adjacent railroad.
A burned-out former home for itinerant railroad workers has been reborn as modern apartments renting for $1,550 to $2,100 a month (for the one-bedrooms).
The team responsible for the gut-rehab reclamation of the brick 1929 YMCA railroad building — the fast-growing Ocean Management real estate company — cut the ribbon on the new 21-unit complex at 1435 State St. Tuesday evening. It brings new life to an abandoned, rundown stretch of Cedar Hill, a compact neighborhood near the Hamden border that historically has struggled with crime and blight.
Property manager Paris (at right in photo) with the architect Brooks Fischer of Newman Architects by the backyard railroad tie beds.
Property manager Mendy Paris said the company bought the solid brick rectangle last year in a private transaction for $550,000. It invested another $3.5 million in a gut rehab that retained the original long corrdidors, the facade, and 1920s doors as well as utilized high ceilings and odd corners to create apartments with a range of shapes and views; if you’re a railroad afficianado, you might want to have a look.
The building sits on the east side of State, across from the back of East Rock, just above Rock Street.
Ocean Management — owned by Shmuel Aizenberg and run day to day by Mendy Katz — manages about 750 apartments throughout New Haven. Katz said 1435 State is the company’s maiden voyage as a developer.
The long “railroad” apartment on the first floor.
The new complex on display Tuesday evening has a washer and dryer in every apartment, a gym room, a security fence, fob keys, a flower or vegetable planter box for each apartment, and marble tiles in the bathrooms. A spacious “concourse” akin to what you might find in a railroad station stretches out in a communal backyard and adjacent to the railroad tracks, where gas grills for those outdoor barbecues, will soon be installed.
“We see [Randy] Salvatore and the other big developers, and we see a still strong demand” in New Haven for studios, one, and two-bedroom apartments renting at lower prices than comparable downtown units, said Katz.
The “concourse” and planters, adjacent to tracks.
“It’s nice to take something that was dilapidated and turn it into something fresh. It’s good for us, and good for New Haven,” Katz added.
Paris said that nine of the 21 units, mostly the studios, have already been rented, with many people on a list to tour the apartments.
Of those renters, who have been in the building for month, one is a graduate student. The rest are what Paris termed members of the middle income workforce, the building’s target population of potential tenants.
The building’s 21 units vary in size and price. The studio monthly rents range from $1,000 to $1,600, the one-bedrooms from $1,550 to $2,100, and the two-bedrooms from $1,950 to one long unit at $2,700.
Paris makes a model martini in one of the model apartments.
“If we had the Yale shuttle, we’d do better,” said Paris, but his colleague Ocean Management partner Katz said he is confident the building will be filled up in a month or two.
So confident in fact that the company has purchased the adjoining property to the north, a long vacant commercial warehouse. It plans to convert that in the months ahead into additional rentals similar to those at 1435 State.
“We’ve put a lot of money into security and electronic access to make a little secure community on the edge of East Rock,” Paris added.
The new development includes a spacious backyard area, a long rectangle that parallels the adjacent railroad tracks. It has been conceived by architect Brooks Fisher as a kind of concourse, similar to that along which you would walk to board your train at a large terminal.
To tie in with that motif, the planter beds, one for each of the apartments, use a railroad tie motif. Barbecue grills are coming, along with an electronically gated security fence.
A more official opening is in the works with the mayor, economic development officials, and the Cedar Hill management and block watch teams.
It would be great to see a small train station built in this area, served by Shoreline East and the new Hartford-New Haven Line.
Workers could board frequent trains to get to their jobs in Hartford, Fairfield County, or even just a job in downtown New Haven.
Probably makes more sense than building the new stations that are planned for North Haven, Hamden, and Orange.