Dixwell Plaza Redevelopment Moves Ahead

Dixwell Plaza’s planned redevelopment has gained a general contractor, a childcare partner, and a food hall operator — and has lost a too-pricey underground garage — as the local team behind the now-estimated $220 million project moves ahead with its effort to build up the heart of New Haven’s historic Black neighborhood.

Those updates were offered Wednesday night about ConnCORP’s planned transformation of the fraying mid-century shopping strip on Dixwell Avenue between Webster Street and Charles Street.

At the Lab at ConnCORP at 496 Newhall St. just over the New Haven town line in Hamden, several dozen people gathered for a ​“meet & mingle” event to learn more about the Dixwell-anchoring redevelopment now known as ConnCAT Place. The event was organized and hosted in part by the local anti-racist public relations agency, The Narrative Project.

ConnCORP CEO Erik Clemons, ConnCORP COO Paul McCraven, and a half-dozen other project backers and partners announced that the redevelopment has tapped the internationally accomplished construction and development company Skanska to be the general contractor, the Fair Haven Heights-based early childhood education nonprofit Friends Center for Children to run the site’s childcare center, and ConnCORP Vice President of Food and longtime local restaurant entrepreneur Gideon Gebreyesus to oversee the site’s planned new food hall.

They also said that Phase 1 of the project, which has risen in estimated cost from around $185 million to $220 million thanks to inflation, will no longer have an underground parking garage, but instead more-than-expected surface parking spaces, pending site plan modification approval by the City Plan Commission. (See more on that below.)

Clemons said that the redevelopment team, which is a for-profit subsidiary of the Science Park-based job training nonprofit Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT), is still actively fundraising for the project. He said that demolition of the existing Dixwell Plaza buildings should take place in the first quarter of 2023, and the two-year construction of Phase 1 of the project should begin in the second or third quarter of next year. 

“The last time we saw each other, we didn’t own this building. We didn’t even own this block,” Clemons said, referring to the in-person public meetings ConnCORP held right before the start of the pandemic as the group was in the midst of a years-long effort to purchase the individual condos that comprise Dixwell Plaza.

He referred back to an economic impact analysis brought up earlier in the night by ConnCORP Chief Investment Officer Anna Blanding. Blanding projected that the Dixwell Plaza redevelopment will generate roughly $1 billion in economic activity and create 740 jobs in the state over the next decade, with much of that taking place in the City of New Haven.

“That is huge,” he said. ​“Hundreds of millions of dollars will come to this city, most of it coming to the Dixwell neighborhood. We have a special moment in time here. … We have to really be committed to our business. We have to be disciplined in our business. … Thank you for pushing us. Thank you for sticking with us, for believing with us.”

The meetup took place roughly 10 months after ConnCORP won site plan approval from the City Plan Commission in December 2021. 

That approval, for Phase 1 of the planned redevelopment, permits the group to knock down Dixwell Plaza’s existing commercial condos and the old Elks Club at 87 Webster St. and build in their stead 184 apartments (20 percent of which will be set aside at below-market rents), a 18,460 square-foot food hall, a 20,000 square-foot grocery store, 5,600 square feet of Dixwell Avenue-fronting retail space, a new headquarters for ConnCAT, a healthcare clinic, a daycare center, a public plaza, a 259-space underground garage, and a 237-space temporary surface parking lot. 

Phase 2 of the project, which has not yet gone through the site plan review and approval process, is slated to include a new 350-seat performing arts center, a five-story office building, 13 new townhouses, and a 340-space garage.

"A Significant Undertaking"

Much of the formal presentation portion of Wednesday’s meetup saw representatives from ConnCAT Place’s various partners describe for the crowd how their organizations will be contributing to making this redevelopment plan a reality.

Skanska USA Building Vice President Richard Murphy said that his firm will be responsible for Phase 1’s construction. While Skanska is a Swedish company, he said, it has worked in Connecticut for 32 years, It most recently finished construction and restoration projects on the campuses of Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) and Yale University.

“We are a part of the New Haven community,” he said. ​“We have a really good feeling for the subcontractor base” in the city and region.

He repeated that the demolition of the existing Dixwell Plaza buildings should take place in the first quarter of next year, and ​“full-blown construction” should start in the second or third quarter of 2023. Two years from then, he said, ​“you’ll see this amazing project,” gesturing towards one of the many posterboards positioned around the auditorium displaying renderings of the planned new ConnCAT Place.

Murphy said that Phase 1’s construction should see 45 to 55 individual subcontracts available to firms needed to ​“build out various parts” of the project. 

At the peak of construction, he said, there will be roughly 150 to 200 workers on site daily. Overall, Phase 1 should see over 800,000 man-hours of construction work put in for the job.

“It’s a pretty significant undertaking,” Murphy said.

Because Skanska is such a large and established company, he said, it is able to self-insure, and subcontractors unable to cover the costs of their own insurance will be able to work under Skanska’s policy. 

He said the firm will hold a jobs fair for interested subcontractors in October to talk more about specific work available for this project.

Gideon Gebreyesus, who as a vice president at ConnCORP oversees the affiliated local food ventures Orchid Cafe, Petals Market, and Monterey Chicken, said that he will manage ConnCAT Place’s planned new ​“food hall.”

That hall will have enough space to support 15 to 20 local food entrepreneurs who are looking to experiment and build up their culinary businesses and who don’t currently have the capital or opportunity to open up a full restaurant of their own.

“Our job is to support them, to nurture them, to see them grow through the food hall,” Gebreyesus said. 

Each will have roughly 300 to 400 square feet to test out their businesses. ​“They don’t have to worry about the day to day,” about maintenance or service or the costs of running one’s own brick-and-mortar business, he said. ​“It will allow them to do what they do best, which is nurture their craft.”

Friends Center for Children Executive Director Allyx Schiavone and her colleagues Miriam Johnson Sutton, Aundrea Tabbs Smith, and Melanie Billings presented on how their local Quaker-influenced early education nonprofit will run ConnCAT Place’s new childcare center.

The Friends Center provides full-day childcare services 50 weeks a year for a racially and economically diverse group of young children ages three months to 5 years old, as well as free housing for its teachers and sliding-scale tuition for participating families.

Schiavone said that the group, which already serves 122 children across two sites on East Grand Avenue and Blake Street, will be able to serve an additional 68 children at its planned new Dixwell location.

Tabbs Smith said that the Friends Center will need 22 full-time educators to work at this Dixwell site, as she urged those in attendance to let their friends and family and peers know about the job opportunities.

Johnson Sutton spoke about how the Friends Center prides itself on serving a diverse group of families, with 67 percent of participating children being Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

“We are thrilled to be a part of this team,” Schiavone said about partnering with ConnCORP on the ConnCAT Place project.

Underground Garage Dropped

Towards the start of Wednesday night’s presentation, ConnCORP COO Paul McCraven told the attendees that, while the redevelopers were able to win all necessary city approvals for Phase 1 last year, they’ll be returning to the City Plan Commission later this month to seek a modification to the previously approved site plan.

The redevelopers originally envisioned constructing a 259-space underground parking garage and a separate temporary 237-space surface parking lot as part of Phase 1. The temporary surface lot would then be replaced by an above-ground garage as part of Phase 2.

“It was very, very expensive,” McCraven said about the underground garage. So ​“we decided to eliminate” that part of the plan and will be going with more surface parking instead.

An Aug. 18 letter submitted by local attorney Carolyn Kone to the City Plan Commission provides more details about that requested parking change.

“Due to the current costs of construction, ConnCORP has determined that construction of the Underground Garage is not feasible,” she wrote. ​“ConnCORP is proposing that the 237 parking space temporary surface lot approved for Phase 1 (the ​“Original Parking Lot”) be expanded to include 392 parking spaces (the ​“Expanded Parking Lot”) in order to provide the parking required under the Zoning Regulations for Phase 1. In connection with such expansion, the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center building located at 230 Dixwell and the police substation located at 26 Charles Street, which were not slated for demolition until Phase 2, will not be demolished under Phase 1. The grading and demolition plans have been updated to reflect this change. Additionally, the FAR [Floor Area Ratio] for the Site has been reduced from .93 to .90, which is within the permissible FAR (2) for the BA District where the Site is located.”

Click here to read that site plan modification request letter in full. The City Plan Commission will likely review and vote on this modification request at its next meeting later this month.