Construction workers Raul Roldom (above) and Yisrael Mantar (below) ready retail space for fitness center inside new Audubon complex.
Paul Bass Photos
Builder Fowler cuts ribbon on already-leased Phase 2 of The Audubon.
A day after breaking ground in a Dixwell parking lot on new apartments for low-income renters, officials gathered on an Audubon Street lot Wednesday afternoon to break ground on 66 luxury apartments — while cutting the ribbon on 135 fast-filling-up new ones.
In the officials’ telling, those two events are linked: part of a continued construction boom that’s growing a livable city while helping more people to afford to live here.
Wednesday’s groundbreaking took place at The Audubon New Haven, a 470-apartment-and-retail mini-city rising in phases on a former 3.3‑acre superblock parking lot bounded by Orange, Audubon, State and Grove streets.
Tuesday’s event marked the completion of Phase 2 of the project: a ribbon-cutting for the second wave of completed apartments. Monthly rents for the apartments start at 1,850 for studios and $3,800 for three-bedrooms. The 135 units were leased within 100 days, according to developer Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, signaling that a recession tighter economic times may not have slowed New Haven’s market-rate apartment boom.
“New Haven’s hopping!” Mayor Justin Elicker declared before joining Spinnaker CEO Clay Fowler and other officials in cutting the ribbon.
Then the group decamped to Audubon Street to break ground on phase 3 of the project, 66 more apartments on the block between State and Orange.
City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli noted that the same group had assembled on Tuesday afternoon to break ground on nonprofit builder Beulah Land Development Corporation’s 69-unit apartment complex to arise on the former Joe Grate’s lot at the Dixwell-Orchard-Munson intersection. Those will almost all be affordable, not luxury, apartments (for families making 60 percent of the Area Median Income or below, or below $61,740 for a family of four.)
“This is building on old parking lots, not tearing stuff down, [but] creating new value,” Piscitelli said.
Elicker argued that both projects help make housing more affordable for New Haveners: Beulah Heights, with lower rents; and Audubon, by meeting the unmet market-rate housing demand and in the process lowering pressure on rents at other existing buildings by increasing supply.
Development chief Mike Piscitelli, Mayor Justin Elicker, Alder Eli Sabin, builder Clay Fowler at Wednesday's event.
Downtown/SoHu/Wooster Square Alder Eli Sabin echoed that argument. He noted that the latest statistics show that rents rose 20 percent in New Haven over the past year, in a market short of about 3,200 desired market-rate rental units and about 8,000 desired affordable units.
“This project helps meet that demand with supply,” said Sabin.
Wednesday’s event occurred against the backdrop over a national debate over how best to ensure that not only the wealthy can afford to live in communities like New Haven facing shortages of affordable house.
Nationwide, affordable-housing advocates have broken into two camps. (Read different takes about that in depth here and here.)
One side, dubbed “Build build build,” argues that the best way to make housing more affordable is to let market-rate developers build as many homes as they want in order to ease the pressure on rents elsewhere. According to that argument, placing affordable-housing requirements on market-rate builders ends up preventing them from being able to afford to build at all, thereby actually making it harder to lower rents.
Other advocates argue that that supply-and-demand theory doesn’t always work in practice, in part because new high-rent apartments can create a market for more high-rent apartments; and that government should subsidize the building of lower-rent homes because the market won’t create that housing.
Construction crew working Wednesday on above-ground Farmington Canal walking-bike trail connection catty corner from The Audubon, which markets opportunities for car-less urban living.
In the case of the Audubon, Spinnaker bought the land from a private owner and pursued only market-rate housing, with no subsidies and no conditions attached. That’s why the project has gone up relatively quickly.
If Spinnaker were to buy the land now, it would have to include 15 percent “affordable” units under a new city inclusionary zoning law passed with the goal of making housing more affordable in New Haven.
Spinnaker CEO Fowler (pictured above) was asked Wednesday if he could have built this project under those conditions — if he would have been able to make the budget work and obtain financing.
He said the question is complicated.
“So long as it’s 10 percent” affordable housing and no more, he said. “We only make 10 – 15 percent profit” on these projects, and there’s only so much cost-shifting available to cover losses from subsidized units.
Even then, it depends how deeply discounted rents must be on those units, he said.
Alder Sabin interjected that the city was careful to construct its inclusionary zoning ordinance with tax abatements and permission for increased density in order to help developers afford to pursue new projects. Sabin supports both increasing housing supply and having government subsidize affordable units that the market will not create. He also strongly backed the inclusionary zoning ordinance.
Mayor Elicker added that another goal is important too in developing the city: integration. It’s important to have people from different walks of life live together, he said, in order to address challenges like racism and unequal opportunities. He pointed to this New York Times article reporting how children in low-income families find more success in life if they grow up in economically integrated settings.
Corner of Orange and Elm, where Spinnaker razed the old Webster Bank for a hotel, a plan now shifting to residential.
Underscoring the tension between those two arguments is the fate of Spinnaker’s two other planned projects nearby that have proceeded more slowly than the Audubon.
One is the proposal for a mixed-use development on the site of the former New Haven Coliseum site bounded by Orange, George and State streets and MLK Boulevard. That one includes public subsidies and affordable housing along with requested public improvements.
Fowler reported Wednesday construction is now ready to begin on that project’s $75 million three-part first phase. He predicted ground will be broken on the first 200 apartments within 60 days, with two more sub-phases not long after.
The fate of a planned boutique hotel at the old Webster Bank project at 80 Elm St. is more complicated. The hotel market changed since the onset of the pandemic. So the company has not been able to line up needed financing. Fowler said Spinnaker now plans to build apartments there instead. It does not need any zoning relief to do that. It expects to present a site plan for that job to the city “in the near future,” Fowler said.
Polly Russell, who moved with her husband from their New Haven house to The Audubon right before the pandemic. "We found a community," she said. Neighbors surprised her with a plaque in the complex's dog run memorializing her beloved pet Ziggy after Ziggy died.
First comes residential, then retail: complex commercial spaces to fill at the corners of Grove and State (above) and Grove and Orange (below).
Builder Fowler: New Haven is "the best small city between Boston and New York."