Three new apartment buildings, now OK'd for 446A Blake.
Make way for 144 new apartments on Blake Street, now that a Brooklyn builder has won the final needed city approval to convert a former factory-turned-office complex in Westville into new housing.
The City Plan Commission granted that approval during its latest monthly online meeting last Wednesday. The local land-use commissioners voted to give a Brooklyn-based developer the go-ahead to start constructing those apartments at 446A Blake Street, one of two properties which make up part of a larger Planned Development District (PDD) at 400 Blake St.
That broader PDD is already home to 293 existing market-rate apartments owned by a different company. The 1.89-acre site at 446A Blake St. is owned by a holding company controlled by Tom Gelman and Yair Barda of Brooklyn, as well as by a California-based company called Moonars LLC.
The City Plan Commissioners voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve the developers’ site plan, which includes the construction of two new five-story buildings and the conversion of existing office space to create a total of 144 apartments, 12 of which will be set aside at below-market rents. Specifically, six of those apartments will be set aside for renters making up to 60 percent of the area median income (AMI), and another six will be set aside at 80 percent AMI. In all, the complex will include 30 studio apartments, 96 one-bedrooms and 19 two-bedrooms.
All 144 apartments are anticipated to be spread across three buildings. Two of those structures will be built anew while the third will be established by partially demolishing and building up an existing three-story, brick office building on the site, on top of which another floor will be added. A wing of that former office space will be connected to one of the two new buildings.
The complex will also come with the development of 85 parking spots for cars and 20 for bikes as well as new landscaping plus the creation of a courtyard for tenants.
The developers, represented by local attorney Jim Segaloff, plan to begin construction in the summer or fall of this year and wrap up by the fall of 2025.
“It’s a very important project,” Segaloff pitched during Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s going to add to the vibrancy of the Westville village.”
While the site is not located within a regulated inland wetlands area, a floodwall established by the Army Corps of Engineers exists between the site and the West River. The 446A Blake St. applicants said they plan to put a walkway along that floodwall to “provide closer viewing on the vista of the river.”
The commissioners ultimately approved the project with a condition requested by City Engineer Giovanni Zinn: That the developers coordinate all work done along the floodwall directly with the engineering department to avoid any conflict with the Army Corps of Engineers down the line.
This project represents just the latest in a handful of large residential developments underway or coming soon to this stretch of Westville. Right next door, the local megalandlord Ocean Management is currently constructing 129 new apartments at the site of the former 500 Blake Street Cafe. And a few blocks away, a Branford-based developer working with local investors Mendy Paris and Sim Levenhartz unveiled plans to knock down two commercial buildings at Whalley Avenue and Fitch Street and construct in their stead 245 new waterfront apartments.