Gregg Weis & Gardner Architects
Aerial view of the plan.
One of the developers remaking Crown Street unveiled details of a plan to put 78 apartments in five new buildings plus a “mews” on a block that until recently housed squatters, one of whose severed torso was found there.
The developer, Robert Smith of Metro Properties, included those details in a submission to the city this week about the proposed 37,750 square-foot, .86-acre project starting mid-block on Crown Street and flowing down to George between College and High. He calls the project “Metro 301.”
The submission requests the city grant him relief to build taller and denser than allowed under current zoning rules, in the form of a new “planned development unit,” or PDU.
The plan is scheduled to come before the zoning board on Oct. 13 for a hearing. Click here to view 18 pages of architectural drawings included in the submission.
In the submission to the city, Metro’s attorney, James Segaloff, argues that the block has changed since zoning rules considered the block a location for automotive operations, to an urban residential area deserving of the PDU.
Propelled by a hot rental market for professionals, students and empty nesters, that block is in the midst of a market-rate housing transformation: Developer Robert Landino is is finishing up a $50 million, 160 luxury-unit “Centerplan” complex at the corner of College and Crown. Pike International bought and restored a building on the block at 250 Crown, which it rents to Yale’s Baker’s Dozen singing group. Smith’s Metro Star is building 12 studios and lofts above a mid-block garage next to Bar restaurant as well as 24 apartments (including a top floor being added on Tuesday) plus ground-floor retail in a conversion of a former garage at the block’s western corner.
Meanwhile, the heart of the transforming block has remained rotten: a Crown Street storefront, two brick buildings behind it, and a surface lot fronting George, all abandoned by the Salvation Army, which used to operate a thrift store, a warehouse, and an adult rehabilitation center there for struggling addicts. The city this summer learned that squatters were living there instead after discovering the dismembered torso of Roy Roberson inside.
Diana Stricker Photo
Smith.
Metro Star has signed an agreement to buy the contiguous properties (301 – 5 George and 274 Crown) from Salvation Army pending zoning approval. Its filing this week included that agreement, with the purchase price scratched out.
According to the filing, Metro Star plans to demolish the Crown storefront and the brick former warehouse and adult rehab center. It would construct four new buildings: A six-story metal-sided modernist “Podium Building” fronting George Street with 55 of the 78 apartments next door to Regency Towers (a separate apartment building Smith has already purchased and plans to renovate). And three connected three-story “Mews Buildings” fronting Crown with a connected “skylight perforated roofline” and “terrace spaces and exterior staircases.”
And Metro Star would renovate a fifth, existing building: a circa-1868 brick and brownstone Victorian Gothic chapel in the center of the block, with a “complementary four-story” addition connected by a “glass facade annex.” Henry Austin originally designed the chapel, one of two buildings “listed as contributing structures in the inventory of the Chapel Street Historic District,” according to the filing. Metro Star would raze the other of those two buildings, the former adult rehab center, which the filing described as “the less historically significant.” Metro Star’s addition to the chapel would “extend from the east side of the Chapel building and will have a brick first floor facade with metal panel and EIFS siding.”
The apartments are expected to rent for market rates. The developer promises “not less than 54 parkings spaces,” with 26 below ground “accessed via an easement” from the Regency. A new “screened parking structure” at the Podium would accommodate 28 spaces. at the Podium Building.
The proposal states that the project will include “not less than 19,5000 square feet of open space” including lawns, walkways and terraces. The figure includes a roof terrace on the Podium Building. A 12-foot pedestrian walkway (or “mews”) would connect the Crown Street and George Street buildings. A second “paved walkway will connect from the George Street parcel and through to the mews and out to Crown Street.”
In a recent interview, city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson applauded Smith’s approach as a “very interesting, sophisticated” way to return that block to its “former glory.” Click here to read about that as well as Smith’s promise that his project will “reflect the existing historic and architecturally rich environment that New Haven possesses.”
The Case For A PDU
Gregg Weis & Gardner Architects
View from George Street, with the chapel set back in the middle.
PDUs have proved controversial in town. Some preservationists and neighborhood groups have argued that they constitute “spot zoning,” piecemeal deviations from broader planning that can destroy neighborhood fabric.
In making the case for a PDU, Metro Star’s filing notes that the block of Crown Street in question had “formerly garage and automotive uses dating back to the 1920s when the area was a significant automotive sales and service area. Remnants of these former uses are visible in the architecture of a number of the buildings facing Crown Street: the BAR building at 250 Crown Street with its roll-up ‘garage door’ facade; 260 Crown Street a former automobile dealer and warehouse; and 280 Crown Street a 1920-era parking garage. The George Street properties are a mix of warehouse uses (305 George), car rental uses (323 George) and former Church uses (301 George).”
“[T]he PDU Development is the latest in a number of projects which are transforming the Development Block into a lively mixed use environment with dense residential development, and ground floor retail and restaurant space; all with an effort to preserve, adapt and restore historic architecture,” the project states.
Metro Star argues that its project fits into a vision for the area described in the 2003 city Comprehensive Plan of Development, which targeted it for “more intense” “mixed-use” projects bridging downtown and the growing medical/biomedical center closer to Yale’s medical school.
The proposal details how that has all changes, with rehabilitation of the old properties in the BAR nightclub, restaurants, and apartments, apartments, and apartments.
In seeking the PDU designation, the developer seeks the following zoning relief:
• To allow a 2.7 maximum floor area ratio for the lot, above the maximum 2.0; and a maximum lot area of 58 percent, rather than 50 percent.
• To allow the Podium Building to front right on George Street (like the Regency next door) and to allow the Mews buildings to front right on Crown, rather than the required five feet of front yard.
• To allow for 10, 14 and 15-foot rear yards rather than the required 20 feet, as well as smaller side yards.
• To allow for building up to 40 feet in some spots where no building is allowed, and to build up to 85 and 50 feet where 20 would be allowed.
Neither Downtown Alder Abby Roth and Downtown Special Services District Executive Director Win Davis had yet reviewed the plan Thursday.
“It’s terrific to be having more residential development there and activity and enlivening the streets at night. That helps more retail and the restaurants. I’m definitely supportive of developing housing downtown,” Roth said. She reserved comment on the specific density and height requests until she can examine the proposal.
Davis echoed Roth’s comments: “It would be premature for me to make a comment on the development. But generally we want more residents downtown. Housing is what makes retail go. Just look at the most dense mixed-use areas — Brooklyn is the most extreme example — you have retail supported by people living above it. New Haven has a growing retail base downtown. We need more residents to support our local retail economy.”