Laura Glesby Photo
Carlota Clark at Wednesday evening's open house at Science Park.
A rendering from Pine's presentation: Apartments up to $4,500 a month on Winchester Ave.
As Science Park developers presented renderings of a housing complex soon to rise on Winchester Ave., Carlota Clark wondered if one of the 283 apartments would someday be hers.
Neighbors at the open house.
Clark moved from Brooklyn into an aging Newhallville house several years ago. Since then, upscale apartment complexes have started to rise up along the border of the historically Black Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods.
Neighborhood residents have pressed the Science Park builders to ensure that people already living in the area will have a chance to move into at least some of the new units. Clark hopes to be one of those people.
“I’m looking to move into something more modern,” she said. “Here would be excellent.”
Clark was one of 50 people to gather Wednesday evening inside one of the reborn former Winchester rifle factory buildings within Science Park — “Winchester Works” — for an update from the team building another new complex next door.
The developers announced that they have cemented the financing required to build “Winchester Green” in place of the abandoned factory building adjacent to the Winchester Lofts apartments at 315 Winchester Ave. Investors range from the local public housing affiliate Glendower Group to investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.
The building will include about 12,500 square footage of commercial space on the ground floor, topped by 283 apartments, with 199 associated parking spots. While it’s difficult to know what the market-rate rent price will be when the apartments are ready to be moved into, developers are approximating $1,950 to $4,500 per month, depending on unit size.
Fifty-seven of the housing units, or 20 percent, will be reserved at below-market rents affordable to families making 30 percent, 50 percent, and 60 percent of the area median income.
Those income limits would accommodate a family of four, for instance, earning between $34,400 and $68,820 annually. The estimated rent price for affordable units is $600 to $1,790 per month, depending on changes to the area median income and unit size.
In 2017, DataHaven estimated the average income of Dixwell and Newhallville households to be $36,768, and the proportion of rent-burdened households to be 60 percent.
The developers plan to install a handful of traffic-calming measures on the surrounding streets, including a speed table at the Munson-Mansfield intersection. (“It’s a pretty hot corner,” said L+M Development Partners’ Jake Pine.) They are also planning to build a small park.
Construction is expected to take a little over two years. “All of the asbestos and other toxins will be removed” from the existing structure “prior to demolition,” said InnoConn Construction Management’s Sam Walker.
Housing advocate Myra Smith pressed the developers Wednesday evening to add more affordability.
“I am not satisfied with 20 percent of the units being sort of affordable,” she said, emphasizing the severity of the affordable housing crisis.
“We will absolutely listen” to advocates about this issue, Pine said, but “we have closed on the financing,” meaning that the number of below-market apartments is final.
“I’m concerned about the parking,” Sam Fawcett said, arguing that 199 spaces would not be enough for each household to have one car, let alone two.
“We believe we are providing enough spaces for the demand,” Pine said.
After the dialogue concluded, Clark filled out a paper survey indicating her support for a supermarket to fill the ground floor retail space. She reflected on the meeting’s back and forth, and said she doesn’t think every renter household in the new building would have a car.
She imagined that many of the tenants would include “technology folks,” perhaps working at nearby biotech companies, more likely than the average New Haven resident to walk or bike.
“I’m home a little more than they are,” she said, pondering what it would be like to have lots of biotech-employed neighbors. “I happen to like it … I like the peace and tranquility.”
Though retired, Clark is far from a homebody. In addition to participating in Newhallville civic life as a management team executive board member and frequent volunteer, she likes to attend jazz concerts downtown and dine at Encore by Goodfellas.
The Winchester Green developments, though still in Newhallville, would be closer to the nightlife she enjoys.
“I don’t party like it’s 1999,” she said, but “I don’t have to be a Yale student to want to live downtown” — or close by.
A map from Pine's presentation.
L+M's Jake Pine and Science Park Development Corporation's David Silverstone meet the neighbors.
This is a very contaminated site I would like to see construction contractors make sure these workers are offered legitimate health care