Science Park Sprouts ​“Winchester Green”

Developers won permission to build 287 new apartments, two new privately owned streets, and a new public plaza — continuing the transformation of the former Winchester Arms factory complex into a research, residential, and shopping hub.

That permission was granted at Wednesday night’s latest regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission. The four-hour-long virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

Local land-use commissioners voted overwhelmingly in support of a host of applications submitted by holding companies affiliated with the Science Park Development Corporation, the New York City-based Twining Properties, and the Larchmont, N.Y.-based L&M Development Partners. 

The submissions included a site plan and detailed plans for a new mixed-use development to be built on a portion of 315 Winchester Ave., also known as Parcel L; minor modifications to the general plans for Science Park Planned Development District (PDD) #49; and a change in professional team for PDD 49 and Parcels L, C and B.

What does all of that mean?

In her presentation to the commissioners Wednesday night and in a 662-page document submitted to the commission in advance, attorney Carolyn Kone explained the big-picture plans behind this specific set of now-approved applications, which taken as a whole are dubbed the ​“Winchester Green Project.”

Those include:

• The construction of a new five-story, 287-unit mixed-use building atop a surface parking lot at 315 Winchester Ave. That lot currently sits just to to the north of the upscale Winchester Lofts apartments and the Winchester Works research and office complex. The new building will have a mix of studios, one‑, two‑, and three-bedroom apartments, 20 percent of which will be set aside at below-market rents for tenants earning an average of 50 percent of the area median income (AMI). The new building will also have roughly 12,000 square feet of new groundfloor retail space along Winchester Avenue. Project architect Seelan Pather said that the apartments will be ​“all electric” and powered by heat pumps.

• The demolition of two vacant and contaminated former Winchesters Arms factory buildings at 270 Mansfield St., and the establishment in their stead of a new 196-space surface parking lot. (While none of Wednesday’s approvals pertained specifically to the demolition of the two Mansfield Street buildings, they did clear the way for the knocking down of those structures by removing a key administrative hurdle and by permitting the creation of the new surface parking lot in that same location.)

• The creation of two new privately owned, publicly accessible streets: one to be called Mason Street, which will run east-west from Mansfield Street to Winchester Avenue; the other to be called Sheffield Avenue Extension, which will run north-south from Mason Street to Division Street. ​“These streets are intended to break up the superblock” bounded by Munson, Winchester, Division, and Mansfield, Kone said, and to make that area less of a ​“walled-off development.”

• And the creation of a new public plaza to be called Mason Place, and to be located just to the south of the new 287-unit apartment building at Winchester Avenue and Mason Street. Kone said this park will be open to the public and could be used for farmers markets, arts events, and just general relaxation.

The Board of Alders set up PDD #49 back in 1983, Kone said, ​“when Winchester and its successor, Olin, were leaving this area. The idea was to try to create more modern uses, biotech and research and office uses to replace the heavy manufacturing that had gone on this area historically for so many years.” The PDD is roughly 58 acres large, she said, and is comprised of 11 different parcels of land.

This latest proposed and now-approved stage of redevelopment should further that goal of bringing new life to a former factory complex that for much of the last century served as the sprawling industrial and economic anchor of the Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods.

“In sum,” Kone wrote in the narrative section of the redevelopers’ City Plan Commission application, ​“the Winchester Green Project is anticipated to create both temporary and permanent jobs, generate building permit revenues, significantly increase real estate and personal property taxes, furnish a public recreational space, provide high quality housing, including affordable housing, to many citizens of New Haven, and reconnect Science Park with the neighborhood by creating new connecting private streets.”

Click here to read a previous Independent article about the Science Park redevelopers’ overall ​“Winchester Center” vision, as presented at an April 2021 community meeting. And click here to read Wednesday night’s ​“Winchester Green” application in full.

In addition to building out this phase of the Winchester Avenue redevelopment, Twining’s company also already owns the Novella upscale apartment complex on Chapel Street.

"Minor" Demolition Plans?

As part of Wednesday’s set of applications, Kone said, the redevelopers were seeking three ​“minor modifications” to the general plans for PDD #49, which were last amended by the Board of Alders in 2010. 

The newly sought ​“minor modifications” included adding the two new privately owned, publicly accessible roads to the site; removing a requirement that the redevelopers get approval from the National Parks Service and the State Historic Preservation Officer before demolishing the two derelict former factory buildings at 270 Mansfield St.; and changing up certain previously required traffic improvements at the site, including adding curb extensions, striped crosswalks, and ​“stop bars” instead of a roundabout at the intersection of Munson, Hillside, and Mansfield Streets.

“We feel that they’re minor modifications because they’re enhancing what’s already been approved by the Board” of Alders, Kone said in defense of this part of the application. ​“They’re enhancing all of the residential and commercial uses that have been approved by the Board.“

Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand asked Kone to go into greater detail as to why these proposed modifications qualified as ​“minor.” Why shouldn’t they be classified as major, and therefore have to go back to the full Board of Alders, and not just the City Plan Commission, for review?

Kone said that, over the decades, the City Plan Commission has signed off on modifications to PDD #49 at least 16 times, even when those modifications have included changes to the sizes of buildings and the uses of certain parcels of land. 

“When it really serves the purposes of the underlying PDD to create a vibrant, successful replacement for the manufacturing jobs that were there, modification by the City Plan Commission” — as opposed to an amendment by the Board of Alders — ​“is appropriate,” she said.

Kone further argued that removing the requirement that the National Parks Service and the State Historic Preservation Officer sign off before the two buildings at 270 Mansfield St. can be demolished is indeed ​“minor” because, well, there is no other possible future for those structures other than demolition.

“After studying this for two and a half years, it turns out that the eastern courtyard buildings have these really toxic fumes” that simply cannot be remedied, she said. ​“Those buildings cannot ever be renovated. Therefore, there’s not going to be any involvement of the NPS and SHPO” because the redevelopers are not going to be applying for historic tax credits from those agencies to help fund their demolition.

Those agencies can’t be asked to provide approval for something they won’t be involved with, Kone concluded. ​“So we need to remove that permission from the general plans, because it cannot be fulfilled.”

Kone included in the redevelopers’ application to the commission a copy of a Feb. 17, 2021 letter from the state Department of Public Health describing all of the contaminants in those to-be-demolished buildings. That report concludes that ​“contamination levels off-gassing from the contaminated concrete slabs could pose an exposure concern for any future human occupancy, even brief exposure frequencies and durations. And for this reason, we cannot conclude that future use of the Tract A Buildings for human occupancy would be safe.”

After reading through the DPH report, Marchand recognized that the ​“two buildings that will be demolished are soaked with contamination.”

Before knocking down these buildings, co-developer Alex Twining said on Wednesday night, ​“we have to submit a new remedial action plan that specifies exactly how we clean this up. It is a very complex situation. Those are massive concrete buildings. It has to be done correctly and carted away.”

He said his company has undertaken demolition projects like this before. ​“We’d have to follow all of the standards of DEEP,” the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Marchand said that, if the developers don’t have to come back to the commission to receive a separate set of approvals to actually carry out the demolitions, then they should at least keep city staff up to date about that building knock-down process.

Kone added that, while the redevelopment team sought only ​“minor modifications” to the PDD this time around, they do plan on going to the full Board of Alders for a full amendment for a future stage of construction. ​“The phase that’s going to come after this phase” should require an amendment to the PDD, she said.

Ultimately, all of the commissioners except for Joshua Van Hoesen voted in support of the minor modifications to the PDD. (After the meeting, Van Hoesen told the Independent that he voted no on that particular application because he thought that adding two new streets to the PDD qualified as ​“major” changes, not ​“minor” ones.) 

All of the commissioners, including Van Hoesen, then voted unanimously in support of the three other Winchester Green Project applications — related to site plan, detailed plan, and professional team change — that were submitted by the Science Park redevelopers Wednesday night.

Neighborhood Inclusion?

Before taking those final votes, Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe pressed the redevelopers on their commitments to making this project truly open to the surrounding Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods.

First, she asked, what does it mean that Mason Street and Sheffield Avenue Extension will be privately owned but open to the public. ​“How does that work?” 

“That means that the private developer constructs the streets and maintains it,” Kone said. ​“It does not become a city obligation, but the streets are open to the public. it’s not walled off. There’s no gates.”

But couldn’t the private owners at some point close off these streets to the public? Radcliffe asked.

“I don’t think so,” Kone replied, ​“because our zoning approval is based on their being publicly accessible. If we did [close those off], they’d be in violation of our zoning approval.”

How exactly will the new Mason Street connect this site to the surrounding communities? Radcliffe asked. Right now, she said, it looks like it will provide ​“vehicular access, for parking, for moving in, for shopping, but I don’t see that as really connecting to the neighborhood.”

Jake Pine of L&M Development Partners noted that, right now, the area in question is a ​“closed off surface parking lot.” Putting a street there, and adding 12,000 square feet of new groundfloor retail space, should make that area much more inviting than it currently is. ​“It is a way to pull people into the development and pull people into Science Park.”

What kinds of retail are you envisioning for that space? Radcliffe asked. Will it be retail that caters primarily to Winchester Lofts and the new residential development? Or will it be retail that appeals to surrounding neighbors, as well? She said she’s concerned that, at the end of the day, this will be a separate residential building isolated and removed from surrounding neighborhoods.

Pine and Twining said they plan on providing a host of support and de facto subsidies for small businesses looking to set up shop in these new Winchester Avenue retail spots.

Those enticements include ​“providing an outsized tenant improvement allowance,” Pine said, ​“doing buildouts for tenants,” and setting up a ​“percentage rent” agreement ​“where you actually share in the upside and the risk for the tenants.”

That ​“percentage rent” idea means that ​“we lower the base rent so that we can provide a cheaper rent” for retail tenants, Twining said, ​“and then, if the tenant does well and has a thriving business, we both share in that. We lower the barriers to entry. That broadens the spectrum of tenants that can afford to be there.”

“We don’t want dead banks and cellphone stores,” Twining continued. ​“They’re not going to make it exciting here. The residents who live here, they all want more food, more shops. They probably want smaller shops. That’s our objective.”

Twining and Pine also said that their ​“curated” approach to attracting and supporting small retail on Winchester Avenue should lead to their retail spaces filling up in the way that the Yale-owned storefronts across the street have struggled to do. The worst kind of retail, Pine said, is the one that’s vacant.

What about new jobs? Commissioner Ernest Pagan asked. ​“Ever since the factory left, Dixwell and Winchester have been grossly unemployed. How many permanent jobs will your development bring to the community?”

Since this phase of redevelopment is primarily residential, Pine said, there will likely only be six to 10 permanent jobs resulting from this new 287-unit building. Those jobs would include a general manager and porters.

This project will, however, result in hundreds of temporary construction jobs, he said.

Twining added that there are currently around 1,600 full-time jobs at Science Park. But the time that all stages of redevelopment have been built out, he said, that number should jump to 3,500 full-time jobs and roughly 2,000 temporary construction jobs.