A construction crew began filling in a hole at an historic bank’s grave at Orange and Elm Streets as a first step to building new apartments.
The crew works for Spinnaker Real Estate Partners. A limited liability corporation controlled by Spinnaker principal Clay Fowler bought the property in 2017 when it housed the art deco former Webster Bank building. The Norwalk-based developer then had the building, including an interior 1849 original Gothic home of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, demolished in 2020 in order to build a six-story 132-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel there.
Then came the pandemic. Then came a change in the hotel business. Fowler ditched the hotel plan. The lot has remained fenced off and empty since then.
Fowler said he plans now to build housing there instead. Eventually.
For now, “we’re preparing the site,” Fowler told the Independent Wednesday. “We’re putting compacted materials, structural soils onto the site which would be the first level to start building from that level up.”
His company has been working on plans to build more than 100 apartments on the property. They won’t need additional zoning relief, he said. For now the company is focused on carrying out the first phase of the multi-use development underway down Orange Street at the former Coliseum site. It has not yet lined up financing for the Orange-Elm apartment plan, Fowler said, and does not yet have plans to submit to the city for site approval.
The plans will include some affordable apartments as required under the city’s new inclusionary zoning ordinance, Fowler said. That fact, along with rising interest rates, has made the quest for financing harder.
Still, “we’re optimistic” about the plan coming together, said Fowler (pictured above). “That’s what we do.”
