“Super Block” Revival Ready

A developer is just about ready to put shovels in the ground to start construction on 269 new market-rate apartments that will replace a four-acre surface parking lot on a ​“super block” at Audubon and Orange — and to help the city add a traffic-calming ​“speed table” there.

Matthew Edvardsen of South Nowarlk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners offered that update at Tuesday night’s monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) on the second floor of City Hall.

Edvardsen told neighbors that his firm should have all necessary building permits, construction funding and subcontractor agreements in place by the end of the year for the new ​“Audubon Square” mixed-use development.

He said that the firm hopes to begin construction in late January. It hopes to phase in the market-rate rental units in groups of 25 to 30 apartments, as they are finished, throughout 2019.

First presented by Spinnaker almost exactly one year ago, Audubon Square is to consist of a seven-story apartment building, 4,000 square feet of stores, a 715-car garage, and a pool and rooftop deck, all located on a 285,000 square-foot ​“super block” bordered by Audubon, State, Grove and Orange Streets. (The nickname refers to the fact that the block used to consist of smaller streets that were combined to create a more attractive tract for developers to build on.)

Spinnaker bought the surface lot last year from Frontier Communications, and has committed 525 of the new garage’s parking spaces to Frontier’s employees. The block used to house the New Haven Register building, since razed; it has for decades remained one of the last undeveloped pieces of the downtown development and Audubon revival puzzle.

Spinnaker’s plan has moved ahead more quickly, with less public opposition, than some other developments.

In February of this year, Spinnaker received site plan approval from the City Plan Department to start building the first $75 million phase of the $160 million project. Over the past nine months, Edvardsen said that they have been coordinating with the city, utility companies, subcontractors and financiers in preparation for the project.

“The plans are in to the building department for building permits,” Edvardsen told the 30 attendees at the management team meeting. ​“We hope to have that as well as our financing and everything settled and all in place by the end of this year, and to start construction early next year. The plans are out to bid with subcontractors, so we’re working through constructability and phasing and deliveries and traffic and all that, which, as we organize the schedule, we’ll coordinate with you guys as well.”

Intersection Improvements for Audubon and Orange

Along with new market-rate apartments, storefronts, and a parking garage, the Audubon Square development will help usher in a new traffic-calming project that Spinnaker has agreed partially to fund.

City transit chief Doug Hausladen and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn followed Edvardsen’s brief remarks on Tuesday night with a detailed explanation of a city initiative to build a raised ​“speed table” at the intersection of Orange and Audubon Streets.

The table will elevate the full length and width of the intersection by roughly six inches to bring the street to the same level as the sidewalk, ostensibly turning the intersection into a 12-foot-long speed bump.

“What we wanted to do at a high level was bring the treatments up there at Audubon and Whitney over to the Audubon and Orange intersection,” Hausladen said, referring to a similar traffic calming measure already in place at the other end of Audubon Street.

“We’re trying to bring a characteristic that is being made whole in the neighborhood and really focus on the Audubon and Orange intersection as a big walking thoroughfare for East Rock, Wooster Square, and Downtown. A lot of neighbors coalesce in that intersection.”

Pointing at a new Engineering Department design for the updated intersection, Hausladen and Zinn showed how thermoplastic crosswalks, tactical warning pads, protective bollards and rectangular rapid flashing beacons would contribute to a more protected intersection for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists.

They also said that mountable thermoplastic islands will be located on the north and south sides of the intersection so as to create one-way entrances and one-way exits into the pedestrian crossing.

“One thing that we’re doing that I think will help cyclists as well as pedestrians and drivers,” Hausladen said, ​“is that this is a safety-focused project, and normalizing the condition of going into the intersection, you have one lane going in and one lane going out, the sideswiping effect is going to go down tremendously.”

Hausladen and Zinn estimated that the project would cost roughly $100,000 to complete, though it has not yet been put out to bid. Spinnaker has committed to funding $65,000 worth of the intersection upgrades, as part of its agreement with the city on the Audubon Square development as a whole.

Hausladen and Zinn said that the intersection would likely be completed in the late summer or early fall of 2018. Edvardsen said that timeline coincides with when Spinnaker hopes to have the Audubon Square parking garage complete and operational.

Longtime East Rock resident and prospective Wooster Square developer Peter Chapman praised the city for investing in the raised speed table.

He said that he was familiar with the conditions of the Whitney-Audubon intersection before and after the city applied traffic calming measures there, and that the improvements have made a big difference for pedestrian safety.

“Although the aesthetics can be hotly debated,” he said, ​“the physical effects have been miraculous. I couldn’t say enough about how effective these things are when well-designed at mitigating a lot of threats to pedestrians.”

On The Other Hand …

Before Edvardsen spoke Tuesday night, city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson updated the management team on Spinnaker’s long-delayed attempts to develop the old Comcast building at 630 Chapel St. into a luxury housing development with 200 apartments and ground-level storefronts.

That plan hasn’t sped ahead the way Audubon Square has.

Nemerson explained that the project is still tied up in a lawsuit based on stormwater runoff concerns that the Philadelphia-based owner of the Strouse-Adler apartments, which are right across the street from the proposed Spinnaker development, has filed against the city.

Nemerson said that the city is waiting for the Philadelphia-based developer’s latest appeal to wind its way through New Haven’s Superior Court, which could take months. PMC has lost several rounds in its attempts to prevent Spinnaker and a separate developer to build competing apartments across the street from Strouse-Adler, but has succeeded in slowing down the projects by years.

Nemerson said that Spinnaker as a company is still very much committed to building in New Haven, as evidenced by Audubon Square project as well as its recent acquisition of the old Webster Bank building and lot at Orange and Elm streets.

“They’re a great company,” he said, ​“with access to a lot of capital and good engineering.”