Epimoni design
Rendering of the proposed new Fair Street “greenway,” to be included alongside 185 new apartments.
Thomas Breen photo
A view of Fair Street, in August.
The City Plan Commission unanimously approved plans to build a new seven-story, 185-unit apartment complex on Fair Street — paving the way for a reopened public connection between Union Street and Olive Street, and piling on to the residential-development blitz currently taking place on the downtown edge of Wooster Square.
Local land-use commissioners took that vote Wednesday night during the latest regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The four-hour-long virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.
The commissioners voted unanimously in support of a detailed plan review for the construction of a new seven-story mixed-use development within an approved Planned Development Unit (PDU) at 20 – 34 Fair St.
The 1.21-acre parcel on the south side of Fair Street is currently home to two service garages and a surface parking lot.
Zoom
Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting.
The New York City-based developer Epimoni — which is also the group behind the new 299-unit Olive & Wooster market-rate apartment complex right across the street at 87 Union St. —plans to purchase the Fair Street parcels from current owner Stephen Ahern, and build them up into 185 new studio, one‑, two‑, three‑, and four-bedroom apartments.
The development is also slated to include nearly 1,100 square feet of ground-floor commercial space.
Thomas Breen file photo
Attorney Muccilli (right).
The developer also plans to reopen a long-shuttered stretch of Fair Street to public access, in the form of a pedestrian-only “greenway” complete with trees, planters, trash cans, and places to sit.
“The current buildings located at the site are underutilized, in disrepair and are unsightly for a residential neighborhood,” local attorney Gregory Muccilli write in City Plan Commission’s detailed plan review application for the project.
They’re all the more out of character with the rapidly developing stretch of Olive Street right next door, he said Wednesday night.
In addition to Epimoni’s 299 new apartments that are nearly complete at 87 Union St., he said, the Houston-based developer Hines is in the process of building 232 new apartments at 630 and 670 Chapel St. across two new buildings less than a block away.
“Olive Street is in the process of a significant transformation,” Muccilli wrote in the detailed plan application. “The proposed development will further the infill development of Olive Street.”
Epimoni designs
Views of the planned new Fair Street apartment complex (pictured at left).
The City Plan Commission’s final approval of the project comes more than two months after the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) granted a suite of zoning relief for the site—which included increasing the Fair Street parcels’ allowable floor-area ratio (FAR) from 2.0 to 3.0, reducing the site’s minimum gross floor area per dwelling unit from 1,000 to 850 square feet, and reducing the required number of off-street parking spaces from 186 to 61.
Click here and here for previous articles about the proposed development, and here for more on a debate between the developer and Wooster Square neighbors about how the rush of market-rate residential development might affect the neighborhood.
According to the developer’s detailed plan application for 20 – 34 Fair St., the new apartment complex will include 85 studio units, 65 one-bedroom units, 15 two-bedroom units, 10 three-bedroom units, and 10 four-bedroom units. It will include 72 on-site parking spaces to be included in a single-level garage, two loading spaces, and indoor storage space for at least 42 bicycles.
Project designed Haley DeNardo said on Wednesday night that the developer will build “a mix of retail, amenity and lobby space” on the apartment building’s ground floor to look out on the new Fair Street “greenway.”
And just to be clear, that reopened stretch of Fair Street will be open to the public all the way from Union Street to Olive Street? City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe asked.
Thomas Breen file photo
Developer Darren Seid (right).
That’s right, said Muccilli, DeNardo and Epimoni developer Darren Seid.
“This is going to have an easement in favor of the City of New Haven, in perpetuity,” Seid said about the planned new public walkway.
Muccilli confirmed that planned arrangement with the city in the project’s application to the City Plan Commission.
“Applicant intends to negotiate and enter into an easement in favor of the City allowing public access to the Fair Street Greenway, with the owner — and not the City — being responsible for the maintenance of the Fair Street Greenway in perpetuity,” the attorney wrote. “This easement will serve to re-introduce the public to the Fair Street and Olive Street intersection that had long been privately held.”
Yale just grew its endowment by $11 billion, and has been raising about $8 billion on top of that, mostly for science facilities.
Two more very large, Yale-driven science towers (one on College Street, one on Science Hill) will employ another thousand or so scientists within the next few years. On top of that, you have some of the 10 million or so workers in NYC moving outwards into the New Haven area.
So, if New Haven wants to remain affordable it needs to build about 20 or 30 more buildings like this each year. Currently New Haven is nowhere close to that goal.
To head off an even greater housing crisis, the city should immediately eliminate all parking requirements and upzone the entire city to allow high-rises and dense developments like these. The state should provide a subsidy so the land around Union Station can be repurposed and built up as a kind of mini-Manhattan. The suburbs aren't going to be upzoning anytime soon, so New Haven and Governor Lamont need to take action.