Svigals + Partners
The last unclaimed corner of downtown’s most rapidly changing block has attracted yet another builder buying up chunks of the city.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
The corner of High and George streets.
In this case the builder is MOD Equities, a partnership of New York-based brothers Josef and Jacob Feldman. They have a contract to purchase the current home of Avis/Budget car and truck rental at the corner of High and George streets
The contract also includes this house and the parking garage on High Street.
MOD Equities, which has an office at 129 Church St., started buying properties in downtown New Haven and in East Rock and Wooster Square around four years ago. The company owns about a dozen buildings with some 90 apartments altogether. One of its properties, 101 Orange, includes the Central Steakhouse, and it has plans to transform the former Harold’s bridal shop into a five-story apartment building, and they’re looking to add another apartment complex to their downtown portfolio.
Their latest proposed venture would fill in the the last piece of the landscape of a block where four other separate upscale apartment projects are either completed or in the works, the latest of which aims to transform the former Salvation Army properties, where the severed torso of a homeless man was found this summer, into an upscale residential community running from Goerge to Crown streets. A 160-unit luxury-apartment building opened at the other end of the block at College and Crown, on Oct. 29. Two former garages along Crown are in the process of becoming apartment buildings.
The Feldmans said they seek to fill void in the marketplace with their project: 115 fully furnished apartments that offer short-term leases, above a storefront space. Josef Feldman said the plan is not to seek zoning relief. City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg said her staff is in discussions with the Feldmans about whether they’ll need zoning relief; she said extended-stay apartments, unlike the other apartments being built on the block, would qualify as a hotel and therefore have different zoning requirements.
Stephanie Addenbrooke Photo
The Feldmans unveiled their plans last Wednesday evening at a Downtown/Wooster Square Community Management team meeting at City Hall. Jacob Feldman (pictured at right in the photo) said that the apartments would be aimed at serving the needs of people who come to the city for short-term employment at nearby biotech firms like Alexion or short-term visits tot Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital.
“We got this opportunity to get a contract on this corner property on George and High, which was very, very exciting location for us,” Jacob Feldman said. “A big issue in this particular area is that a lot of tenants are transitional. They’re coming in for one of the bio-tech companies, they’re coming in for the hospital, to the school and they’re there for a semester or they’re there for short period of time for whatever reason that they might be and their options are very limited in New Haven if you need a three month stay, a six month stay, a year stay, a week stay to stay.”
Feldman called extended hotel stays cost prohibitive. So New Haven often loses those potential short-term residents to the suburbs because the city doesn’t have many other short-term housing options.
“We wanted to create this furnished apartment where a person could have all the amenities somebody would need whether you’re there for a day or a year and not feel like it is a long-term, sort of sterile options that seem to be out there in the neighboring communities,” he said. “We wanted to make something really warm, so that whether you’re there for a short amount of time or a long amount of time, you’re in a homey apartment feel.”
Architect Jay Brotman of Svigals + Partners said the project is designed to enliven the George Street end of High Street. The design calls for a lot of glass on the first floor for commercial space. He said the glass would allow pedestrians to see the activity happening in the space while acting as a lantern for what is now a fairly dead corner. Brotman said that the home that is part of the project will be kept, and renovated on the inside.
“It’s a nice little gem,” he said of the house. “It has a garage in back that will come down, but it will allow us to create [a] lovely patio area.”
Because the project is aimed at short-term tenants, the 115 units will be studio-style apartments. The developers anticipate that while there will be some parking they won’t need much of it because most people will be walking or biking to nearby jobs. They plan to include a bike storage area for up to 40 bicycles in addition to a business center, library, lounge, game room, executive kitchen and roof-top terrace.
Erin Gustafson (pictured), an immigration adviser for Yale, applauded the idea at the meeting.
“The moment I heard that, I was relieved,” she said of the furnished short-term apartments. “We have, from around the world, over 2,000 short-term scholars a year coming in, and they’re looking for full furnished apartments.”
Gustafson said the scholars stay anywhere from three months to 24 months, and the majority of them don’t want to buy furniture or be locked into a long-term lease because they plan to go home after their stint at Yale.