Allan Appel Photo
Looking east on Grand at Franklin.
There’s a lot of hammering going on on Grand Avenue these days around Franklin Street.
That’s because the fifth floor and roof of the reconfigured Farnam Townhouses on Grand Avenue at Franklin are just being framed in, and the project remains on schedule and on budget for a Spring, 2018 ribbon-cutting.
That’s the word from the Glendower Group. Glendower is the development arm of the Housing Authority of New Haven, which through this project is hoping to transform what had been a troubled and isolated public housing complex into one with some mixed income, retail on the street, and more mellifluous connections with both Wooster Square and downtown.
Glendower is in the first phase of the tear-down of the 70-year-old 244 unit Farnam Townhouses.
About 120 townhouse units at the front, facing Grand Avenue, have been torn down and are being replaced with a new configuration of mid-size apartment buildings, with some wrap-around at the corners and street-level commercial space.
In a phase two, the remaining buildings running north towards Jocelyn Park will also be torn down and replaced by new units surrounding a park, according to the plans.
Glendower Senior Vice President Shenae Draughn reported Thursday that the project is on schedule.
The cost for this phase is $26 million, funded by the City of New Haven, private debt, low-income housing tax credits, and the housing authority.
Phase 1 includes 94 rental units, of which eight are market rate. Tenants who were relocated from Farnam will have priority to move back to the redeveloped Farnam.
The cost of the onsite second phase of the redevelopment will run to more than $42 million and includes costs for new roads and other non-redevelopment infrastructure such as streetscaping.
The off-site phase, which involves adding new units to the Eastview Terrace complex and on the site of the old Cott soda factory on Chatham street, is projected to cost about $30 million, according to information provided by the housing authority. That money pays for replacement apartments at two these two locations.
Twenty-eight families have elected to relocate back to Farnam, Draughn reported.
The remaining units will be offered to families on the housing authority’s wait list. The market rate units will be advertised to the public, she reported.
Draughn said that marketing of the retail space, which faces Ferraro’s Market, has already begun. “We have prospects, nothing confirmed as yet. We’d met with the community and residents during the planning phase of Farnam around uses for the retail space, and the constant sentiment was [also for] communal space.”
Farnam Courts is the latest public-housing development to be rebuilt, following in the wake of reborn complexes in West Rock, in Dixwell, and in Fair Haven.