Thomas Breen photos
Shovels in the air ...
... for the new West Ridge Apartments on Stone St.
Sixty-five more apartments are on the rise in Beaver Hills — at a new complex where most rentals will be set aside for seniors and for residents making under half of the area median income.
That complex, called the West Ridge Apartments, is currently being built at 7 – 17 Stone St., in the shadow of West Rock.
The complex’s lead developers are Giordano, a Branford-based construction company, and the New Haven housing authority’s Glendower Group.
On Monday morning, Mayor Justin Elicker, Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven President Shenae Draughn, Beaver Hills Alder Brian Wingate, and develepors Sarah and Vincent Giordano III gathered under a tent on the grassy lawn across the street from the construction site to celebrate the new housing project. After a speaking lineup, they moved across the street for a celebratory groundbreaking.
Vincent Giordano III said the apartments — a new seven-story, 64-unit apartment building and an existing, empty single-family house that has been relocated down the block — should be finished and should welcome their new residents by the fall of 2026. The total development cost for the publicly and privately funded 65-unit project is $34.3 million.
Fifty-two of the new apartments will be reserved for renters making no more than 50 percent of the area median income (AMI), which currently translates to $45,500 for a family of two. Thirty-six of those units will be subsidized with project-based Section 8 vouchers from the housing authority, and 16 of the affordable units will be set aside as “supportive housing” with the help of the state Department of Developmental Services. The remaining 13 units will be rented out at market rates.
Giordano said that all of the apartments will be reserved for people aged 62 and older, except for the 16 supportive-housing units for people with disabilities, for which that age minimum does not apply.
“This has been quite a journey [across] many years,” Sarah Giordano said at the top of the presser. Plans for this new 65-unit complex date back to 2012. The Board of Alders approved a 17-year tax break deal for the project in January 2023. The City Plan Commission approved the project in February 2023. The new apartments will stand next to 160 existing affordable rentals for seniors and people with disabilities as part of the Giordano-owned Park Ridge apartments, the first of which dates back to 1979.
With Monday’s press conference taking place two weeks after the opening of the Curtis Cofield II Estates and the week after the state’s announcement of a major new transit-oriented development near Union Station, this complex is an example of New Haven embracing a “build build build” approach to housing, Elicker said.
“We say YIMBY,” Elicker continued. “Yes In My Back Yard. We want people to live in our community.” The state needs 100,000 new units of housing, he said. He said New Haven has brought online 1,000 new units in the past year, and has 7,000 more in the pipeline. “We are leaning in to this challenge.”
Draughn said that this project underscores just how important the federal Housing Choice Voucher program is. “The voucher program helps to leverage the additional [private] dollars” needed to make new affordable housing like this possible, she said.
Wingate said that this project has long been a “no brainer” for him to support. He put this in the context of the broader priorities of the Board of Alders. The local legislature is all in support of affordable housing, he said. “We stand by that. We live by that.”
Alder Wingate and Mayor Elicker.
Housing authority director Shenae Draughn.
