Markeshia Ricks Photo
New apartments and a G Café are planned here.
Melissa Bailey Photo
If developer Juan Salas-Romer has his way, people in the Dixwell neighborhood will have a cozy place to enjoy fresh baked bread and coffee just as people downtown do, amid newly built housing.
Salas-Romer (pictured), one of New Haven’s busiest builders, has purchased a trio of properties at the intersection of Henry, Ashmun and Munson streets. He plans to build eight apartments there along with a ground-floor home for a new outlet of G Café bakery and coffee shop, in the space that was home to what used to be the Red Café Ultra Lounge (previously known as Cardinals Café).
The apartments, which will be connected to parking on Munson Street, will be known as “The W Residence.” They will feature two, two-bedroom apartments and six, three-bedroom apartments. Salas-Romer said rents for the two-bedrooms will start at about $1,600. Salas-Romer plans to renovate existing buildings rather than tear them down and build anew.
The properties are a block away from the Farmington Canal Trail, Science Park and the 200,000 square-foot Winchester Lofts, which are all part of efforts to revitalize the eastern crossroads of the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods.
Paul Bass Photo
Salas-Romer , who hails from Venezuela, has been growing his New Haven-based real estate empire; he owns hundreds of apartments in close to four dozen buildings around town. He is perhaps best known for snatching up a storied downtown property, the Palladium Building, at 139 Orange St, where he rents the former Bru Cafe space in Pitkin Plaza to local German bakery Whole G. Whole G bakes bread daily from a Wooster Square factory and ships it to, among other retailers, its own coffee shops at 139 Orange (pictured) and in Branford.
Salas-Romer is finalizing the purchase of one-third of the adjoining Dixwell properties, the vacant former Pentecostal Apostolic Faith Assemblies church at 27 – 29 Henry St. The two-story building is owned by the city. He submitted a winning bid of $50,500, at auction. It was the only bid submitted, according to Frank D’Amore, LCI deputy director of property services. The land disposition agreement for the Henry Street building is now in the hands of the LCI board of directors, and if approved should be before the Board of Alders by that body’s second meeting in February.
Given that Salas-Romer had already purchased the former Red Café Ultra and the lot behind through a private deal, D’Amore said Salas-Romer’s request to buy 27 – 29 Henry made sense to the city. “He has a good track record,” D’Amore said. “That property has been inactive for some time, and what he plans to do will put it back on the city tax rolls.”
According to a City Plan staff report, the Henry Street building is “an existing non-conforming structure.” That means Salas-Romer will have to jump through a few more hoops before he can build apartments there.
Salas-Romer seeks to put two of the complex’s apartments at that spot. He will have to receive a zoning relief for the parking. If the variance isn’t granted, he’ll be able to put only one apartment there. Salas-Romer said he hopes to have his plans ready to go before the Board of Zoning in February.
The public did once come to this same property for food — a century ago. According to local historian Colin M. Caplan’s A Guide To Historic New Haven, Connecticut, a man named Joseph Sheldon originally built a “Victorian Gothic-style” house at 27 – 29 Henry in 1884; it was subsequently “altered and enlarged for Damon Holmes’s restaurant.”
27-29 is a very charming little building. Will it be restored or razed?
[Ed: Restored. The whole project involves restoration, not demolitoin.]