RJ DEVELOPMENT & ADVISORS RENDERING
A planned new 176-unit apt. complex at Ashmun & Canal.
Plans for over 470 new apartments in the Hill, Science Park, and downtown won final approvals — as developers rushed to get five new-housing projects in before an “inclusionary zoning” start date later this week.
That was the outcome of Wednesday night’s latest regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.
Over the course of the four-hour-plus meeting, local land-use commissioners OK’d applications for five different projects that will bring a total of 474 new apartments to the city.
The projects range from one new apartment planned for a long-vacant groundfloor retail space on State Street in Cedar Hill, to 150 new apartments planned for the site of a soon-to-be-demolished former factory building on Liberty Street in the Hill, to 176 new apartments planned for an empty, fenced-in lot next to the Farmington Canal Trail at Canal and Ashmun Streets in Science Park.
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Wednesday night's City Plan Commission meeting.
The night’s rush of new housing approvals exemplified the city’s years-long building boom of mostly market-rate apartments.
It also demonstrated the continued interest among developers and landlords in converting empty and hard-to-lease commercial and office space into in-demand housing.
And, at least for three of these projects, it showed how eager developers were to submit their market-rate-apartment projects to the city before New Haven’s new “inclusionary zoning” (IZ) law takes effect Friday.
That law will require developers to set aside a certain percentage of units in new and significantly rehabbed apartment complexes for low-income renters. (Click here to read about the law as it currently stands, and here to read about a likely future amendment.)
The IZ law will not apply to existing apartment complexes. It will also not apply to any development projects for which plans are submitted to the city prior to Feb. 18.
So. Which new-housing projects won final approvals Wednesday night? Those include:
Site of the planned new 176-unit apt. complex at Canal & Ashmun.
• RJ Development & Advisors LLC’s plans to build a new five-story, 176-unit apartment complex at 291 and 309 Ashmun St. and 176 – 186 Canal St. The fenced-in 1.7 acre site bounded by Henry Street, Canal Street, and Ashmun Street is currently owned by the city. The Board of Alders voted in December 2020 to sell it to local developer Yves Joseph for $500,000. The project will also include 97 on-site parking spaces for cars and 38 parking spots for bikes.
Joseph said Wednesday night that the project has been in the works since 2016, when his company first responded to a city request for proposals (RFP) to buy and develop the publicly owned lot into a new mixed-use, mixed-income housing project.
As part of the Development and Land Disposition Agreement (DLDA) and tax break deal approved by the alders in 2020, the new apartment complex must set aside 33 percent of its units at deed-restricted below-market rents over the course of the 15-year accord. (See here for more details.)
This was the one large new apartment project approved Wednesday night that would not have been affected by the IZ law set to take effect Friday, because it already had a separate alder-approved affordability agreement in place.
Joseph told commissioners Wednesday night that the design and ground floor amenity spaces of this project are meant to inspire “activity, energy, and use of what I think is a remarkable and quite possibly underutilized amenity of our City of New Haven” — that is, the adjacent Farmington Canal trail. He said the ground floor of the building will include both bike storage and a “bike maintenance shop” to further that goal.
150 planned new apts. on Liberty St.
• Vesta Liberty Street LLC’s plans to build a new five-story, 150-unit apartment complex at 10 Liberty St. Local attorney Carolyn Kone and local developer duo Susan Birke Fiedler and Tanya Segel said they plan to knock down “four very dilapidated” factory buildings that currently stand on that site bounded by Liberty, Putnam, and Spring Streets. In their place, they plan to build a new 150-unit, market-rate apartment complex with 136 on-site parking spaces for cars and 45 bike racks.
“We had a tenant that left abruptly at the end of 2020 after 18 months of a 10-year lease,” Segel said. “So we had to scramble and figure out what we could do with the property and the building.” After bringing several brokers through the site, she said, “we were told basically the building was obsolete, the tenancy we could possibly tap would not be able to cover our operating expenses, and the building was in a fairly significant state of disrepair.” The costs of making changes to preserve the existing building were “prohibitive,” she said, so the owners decided instead to knock down the current structure and build new housing.
• CSD Mall LLC’s plans to convert existing office space at 900 Chapel St. into 87 new apartments. Local attorney Chris McKeon explained that the landlord, a holding company controlled by the Philadelphia-based developer PMC Property Group, plans to convert the second, sixth, 11th, 12th, and “penthouse” floors (“They don’t call it the 13th floor”) of the former Chapel Square mall building from office space into market-rate apartments.
Thanks to previous office-to-residential conversions at that site, as well as ongoing development of new apartments at the back of the building, 900 Chapel St. would have a total of 272 apartments by the time the final conversion work is done.
McKeon said that he is in charge of leasing the existing office space for this site. He told the commissioners Wednesday that “the efforts to lease office space has been incredibly challenging over the past couple of years, to say the least.” He said the office portions of the building currently have “significant vacancies,” while virtually all of the apartments on site are full.
City Plan Commissioner and Westville Alder Adam Marchand said that this project offers a clarifying look at a slice of New Haven’s economy right now. “How much office space do we need nowadays? I don’t think we know the answer to that definitely,” he said. “But the market shows us what’s really in demand right now is residential space.”
Four new stories-worth of apartments to be stacked atop 142 Temple.
• Olympia Building LLC’s plans to construct a new four-story, 60-unit apartment building on top of an existing three-story commercial building at 142 Temple St.
Local attorney Ben Trachten and architect Ken Boroson said that the landlord, a holding company controlled by Dennis Nicotra, plans to build 60 new apartments atop an existing office and retail building. The apartments will start on a new fourth floor and extend through a new seventh floor. They will include 12 studios, 44 one-bedrooms, and four two-bedrooms.
How will you fasten the four new stories to the existing three-story building? City Plan Commissioner Ernest Pagan asked.
“I’m curious, too,” Boroson replied. “We don’t have that figured out yet. Basically, they’re going to thread the structure through the building to make sure it’s supported.” The existing roof will get removed, and floors will be put in its place. The developer will have to “brace the structure” to cover the weight of the new four stories, he said. “We’ll get into that once we get the structural engineer involved and do an assessment of the building. Obviously, we have to work that out to meet the building code.”
A new groundfloor apartment planned for State St.
• 1384 State Management LLC’s plans to convert an existing groundfloor vacant retail space into one new apartment at 1384 State St. Attorney Trachten and New York-based developer Nitsan Ben-Horin said that that Cedar Hill storefront has been vacant for a long time, and would be put to better use as a place to live.
Although he ultimately voted in support, Marchand expressed concern that that stretch of State Street in Cedar Hill may be too busy and car-congested of a strip to comfortably accommodate a ground-floor apartment. Is the zoning for that area perhaps correct in encouraging groundfloor retail rather than groundfloor apartments? he asked.
“The market will decide whether people will rent it out or not,” City Plan Commissioner Edwin Martinez responded. “The space right now is empty, and we would like to see it filled.”
One year after Inclusionary Zoning takes effect, it will be very interesting to compare that years rate of development permitting vs prior years. If it falls flat as predicted, will the BOA rescind it?