Crosskey Architects
Rendering of the planned renovation.
A developer is seeking a 15-year tax break and $400,000 in city environmental clean-up help to transform a long-vacant clock factory complex on Hamilton Street into 130 low- and moderate-income apartments for artists.
The developer, the Portland, Oregon-based Reed Realty Group, has “99 percent” of its needed financing in place to undertake the $40 million project, according to a filing with the Board of Alders by city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson. (Reed has formed a Connecticut limited liability corporation, Taom Heritage New Haven, in conjunction with a Bay Area investment firm called Silfra 100M to undertake this project.)
Reed has an agreement to purchase the property for $1.7 million. (Click here to read the details of that agreement. Click here to view the site plan.)
The city had been trying for years to find someone to renovate the historic 130,000-square-foot factory complex just on the east side of I‑91 in Wooster Square. It has been empty for more than three decades.
The developers plan to undertake the renovation of the “Clock Shop Lofts” with a mix of private financing, low-income historic tax credits obtained through the Housing Authority of New Haven, and other federal and state tax credits. The property, a block from where the Housing Authority of New Haven is rebuilding the Farnam Court development, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The development company projects that the site needs a $6.5 million environmental clean-up. The Harp administration is asking the alders to approve a $400,000 grant from the city’s Economic Development Capital Projects bonds fund toward that effort. The state is expected to put in around $4 million toward the effort under its brownfields loan program.
The Harp administration is also seeking approval of a tax abatement agreement for the project, under guidelines in a state affordable housing law, freezing taxes at the current rate for 15 years after construction ends. The complex currently pays $46,000 a year in taxes to the city.
The developer will “work with the community” to select tenants for the complex, Nemerson wrote, seeking “artists who come from and represent the community as well as … from outside of New Haven’s borders to enhance arts activities within New Haven.”
The proposed abatement order and grant approval were submitted in advance of Tuesday’s night’s full meeting of the Board of Alders.
Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg said he supports the abatement and clean-up grant.
“The project will bring the beautiful and historic clock factory back to life,” he said.
“I’m especially excited that the units will offer an affordable place to live for New Haven’s creative community.”
More than 1,500 workers once turned out more than three million clocks a year at the site, originally called the Jerome Manufacturing Company complex, before it closed in 1959. Since then it has been rotting. Founder Chauncey Jerome was considered an innovator in mass production techniques for clocks.
Previous dreams for reviving the property failed to come to fruition. City economic development staffer Helen Rosenberg, who is quarterbacking the current project, was working on the same property back in 2000 when the city won $1.5 million in federal grants and loan guarantees to tear down part of the complex to enable Palmieri Food Products to expand its spaghetti-sauce business. But the New Haven Preservation Trust opposed the demolition, and the city ended up not accepting the money. Since then some demolition has “happened anyway by deterioration,” Rosenberg noted.
130 Apartments, 100 Designs
Crosskey Architects
Reed Realty, which has been in business around a decade, specializes in historic rehabs, including a recently completed renovation of an old hotel into the 20-story mixed-use Jefferson Memorial Tower in Birmingham, Alabama, according to Joshua Blevins, the company’s director of historic redevelopment and governmental affairs.
Part of the challenge of renovating it, in addition to the environmental clean-up, lies in the fact that the complex’s 12 buildings were gradually constructed between 1866 and and 1936.
That means designing new apartments there is more complicated, according to Blevins.
He said the company is about to begin an historic rehab of an old wool factory in Lawrence, Mass.. That complex has over 500,000 square feet. But because it is laid out in a basic horizontal design, it required only four different architectural designs for the apartments, Blevins said.
By contrast, the architects on the New Haven project, Crosskey, needed to come up with 100 different designs for the 130 apartments because of the different floor layouts. “You don’t have the same efficiency in running a water line, a drain line” as in a building that was constructed all at once in block style, Blevins said. “From the outside the [clock] building looks to have been built in one or two phases. From the inside you might have a different floor height. This column is here. The next column is two feet off of center because it’s actually in a building that was built 20 years earlier. You can’t just have a big column in the middle of a bedroom or two feet in front your dishwasher.”
The apartments will mostly be one and two bedrooms, Blevins said.
Some one-bedrooms will be as large as 1,000 square feet, leaving room for artists to work as well as live in them. He said rents will qualify as “affordable,” targeted to lower and moderate-income artist and “maker” renters. (He didn’t have details on the rental prices.)
“Great cities generally have great art. They have a great creative class of people. We don’t want those people to be priced out of being able to stay in New Haven,” he said. “Keep it vibrant and funky.”
“We feel like these buildings deserve to have some new life breathed back into them so they can have a second go at things and give something back to the community,” Blevins added. “We’re pretty optimistic about the building. We think it’s got a tremendous amount of character. It has a proud industrial heritage.”
Daniel Fizmaurice, who runs the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, praised the proposed project, saying it follows a path forged by the late local powerbroker and arts patron C. Newton Schenck.
Newt Schenck participated in early versions of planning for the clock factory to become arts-related housing, Fitzmaurice said. “Fifteen years later, the need for affordable artist housing locally has only grown. However, it will also make New Haven a destination for artists, and eventually audiences, from throughout the tristate area.