Thomas MacMIllan Photo
With a 19th-century house floating above ground to their right, city officials lifted shovels of dirt to salute the 21st century building underway below ground to their left.
That was the scene Thursday afternoon at a press conference at the corner of Chapel and Howe streets, where the mayor joined with city lawmakers, local officials, and developer Randy Salvatore to celebrate the construction of a new mixed-use apartment building (rendering pictured below).
Construction has already commenced at the site. Workers are setting the foundation for the five-story building, which will have 132 market-rate rental apartments and 4,326 square feet of retail space on the first floor.
Just yards away, a historic home has been jacked up and rests on piers, awaiting a 50-foot move. The 1890s house is being preserved and shifted just a small distance west on Chapel Street, to make way for the apartment building. The house will be the new home of the Lincoln Society, one of Yale’s “secret” senior clubs.
The historic preservation is part of a development plan coming to fruition two years after developer Salvatore decided to purchase the lot for what he thought would be a simple construction investment.
Salvatore said his brother first showed him the opportunity. He considered the market: a city with the nation’s lowest vacancy rate, a one-acre lot on the edge of Yale University.
“I quickly and casually decided to move forward,” Salvatore said. It soon became clear that it would be anything but “quick and casual,” Salvatore said. In the two following years, Salvatore attended “countless meetings” to discuss things like parking, and the fate of the historic home on the lot. In the end, he agreed to move the house.
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Salvatore said he now values all the input, which shows how passionate New Haveners are about their city. He said he has a couple of other projects planned in the city, the details of which he declined to discuss.
Salvatore’s new building was hailed Thursday by economic development chief Matthew Nemerson, Mayor Toni Harp, Dwight Alder Frank Douglass, and Brian McGrath, former city traffic tsar, now second in command at the Chapel West Special Services District. He predicted that the building’s construction will be the beginning of a snowball of development in the area. It will be like the 9th Square, where the first investment took years, and then it took off, McGrath said.
Salvatore said he does not have tenants for the commercial spaces on the first floor but is in talks with potential tenants. He said he’d like to see a restaurant in at least one of the spaces.
The house will be sold to developer Joel Schiavone, who said he plans to renovate the structure to serve as a new home for Yale’s Lincoln Society, one of the universities “secret societies.”
Schiavone said the house will have two apartments upstairs, the rest of the building will be a clubhouse. He said the building will have a new roof, new siding, and a new porch, among other improvements. He said he hopes to have the work done by the middle of August.
“It will be an interesting rose among a lot of thorns down there,” he said.
The new building is out of harmony with the surroundings, and appears cheaply built.
Selling the retail space is questionable as evidenced by the empty Yale structure across Howe St.
It's a thorn among a lot of roses.