An illustration of the upcoming Stone Street senior housing.
A Branford-based developer won permission to replace four single-family homes with 65 new apartments in Beaver Hills, following site plan approval for a project seeking to bring more income-restricted housing for the area’s elderly.
The City Plan Commission voted unanimously during its latest online meeting Wednesday night to support a plan put forward by the Queach Corporation, a development firm run by Michael Giordano, to construct a new seven-story apartment building along 7 – 17 Stone St.
That new complex, to be called the West Ridge Apartments, will create 65 apartments ranging in rents set in accordance with 30 percent to 120 percent of the area median income (AMI). Eighty percent of those apartments, or 52 units in total, will be priced at below-market rents.
The future development site is immediately adjacent to the current Park Ridge apartment buildings, which include 160 subsidized housing units for seniors and people with disabilities.
Read more about the development here.
The City Plan Commission’s approval comes soon after the Board of Alders signed off on a 17-year tax abatement which will freeze the new Stone Street development’s taxes at $350 per unit per year for each of the 52 below-market-rent units.
Some of the Stone Street single-family homes slated for demolition or relocation.
The project site plan.
The construction is contingent on the demolition of four single-family homes and the relocation of a fifth historic home to the right of the property. That preserved house will be converted into a three-bedroom rental as part of the broader complex. The remaining 64 apartments will be primarily one-bedrooms, with just two apartments reserved as two-bedrooms.
The developers will replace the sidewalks along the front of the property, bring in two bike racks, and build three patio areas around the complex. A parking lot with 34 spaces will also be paved on the property.
According to the developers’ site plan application, demolition is expected to begin in June 2023 and conclude in August. Construction should take about 14 months.
On Wednesday, commissioners primarily sought clarity on how that demolition and increase in impervious surfacing would impact the adjacent wetlands and nearby West River.
Matthew Bruton, the project engineer, explained that run-off from the property is currently discharged directly into the wetlands located across from Stone Street. A retaining wall currently exists between Stone Street and the wetlands and West River. The developers will build two curbside bioswales on the street-facing corners of the property. The developers will also install a pipe underneath the left side of the property that will carry run-off to a catch basin before it’s ultimately discharged into the wetlands.
While increasing parking and paving throughout the property, Bruton also highlighted incoming green space — including newly planted trees and shrubs around the borders of the complex — on the site plan depicted below.
The proposed green space on site, as highlighted by Project Engineer Matthew Bruton.
Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe applauded the project as an impressive undertaking that will “provide housing for a population we don’t always hear about.”
“There’s a lot to be said to be in your latter days and go live in a nice place, you know… with the birds, the trees, looking outside and seeing the flora and fauna and the deer and all that.
“It’s a good thing,” she said. “I’m getting mushy and sentimental, but that’s my right as chair.”
Wednesday's Zoom attendees.
Commissioner Carl Goldfield also spoke in favor of the project, recalling his time as alder overseeing the area home to the Park Ridge apartments, also developed and managed by the Giordanos.
As alder, “one of your major functions is to receive complaints, and elderly people really know how to complain,” Goldfield said.
“But in all those years I never heard any complaints about living in those complexes. People just had great things to say about them. And my observation was that the Giordanos were just wonderful landlords and you’d be lucky as an elderly person with modest means to be able to live in one of their buildings.
“I feel strongly, that apart and aside from site plan considerations, that this is a really good development,” Goldfield concluded.
The city should require traffic calming on Stone Street as part of this. It's a street where lots of kids play, and some drivers go way too fast on it, even though it's a side street. A raised crosswalk or two would be nice.