State St. Parking-To-Housing Plan Advances

(Updated) A development team’s plan to build nearly 450 apartments atop a publicly owned parking lot on State Street inched forward — with a second community meeting, a refined design and an estimated price tag of $125 million.

Developers of the apartment complex to-be spanning two blocks of State Street, now occupied by city-owned parking lots, updated community members on their plans for the Ninth Square site at a meeting held in the basement of 200 Orange St. Thursday night.

The meeting was the second of a planned three hosted by representatives from Providence-based real estate firm Gilbane Development Company and affordable housing developer Xenolith Partners, alongside principals from the New Haven-based architect that the firms are contracting with, Newman Architects. The first meeting was held last November at City Hall.

The community listening and Q&A sessions come as the developers continue to refine their plans while the nine-month window to finalize the Development and Land Disposition Agreement (DLDA) needed for them to buy the land from the city and break ground closes. The Board of Alders must ultimately review and vote on that prospective DLDA before it can become final. 

The city and developers first announced these parking-lot-buildup plans roughly six months ago in July.

The proposal is a step in New Haven’s long uphill climb out of a deep housing hole. Per Xenolith’s Andrea Kretchmer, it’s also part of another effort, years in the making, to ​“re-knit” Wooster Square, Downtown, and the Hill, which was the focus of a study conducted by the city back in 2016.

“The city identified a series of underutilized parking lots that had, let’s say, almost three-quarters of a million buildable square feet that could be developed on those sites,” she told the crowd of about 20 attendees.

In 2025, most are still sitting there. But, if all goes according to plan, they won’t be for long.

Gilbane’s Brock Williams said that construction is expected to start sometime in 2026.

And in addition to the strip stretching from Chapel to Fair Street, the city signed another Memorandum Of Understanding at the same time last year to develop the public lot behind the Hertz rental car shop on George Street.

The overall plans for the State Street development haven’t changed too dramatically since the first community meeting back in November. It’s still two, fairly narrow buildings, split into separate ​“phases,” one seven stories, the other 11, separated by a courtyard, with 25 percent of the units set aside at below-market-rate rents. 

The 11-story building, which comprises ​“phase one,” will contain 279 apartments in total. The seven-story building, ​“phase two,” will contain 160 apartments.

The complex will also include 130 parking spaces across two levels, and expanded sidewalks and bike lanes, following the city’s decision to narrow State Street to two lanes.

The estimated total development cost for the apartment complex is $125 million, according to Williams.

The architects have updated the look of the building a bit, in response to comments from community members at the first meeting, some of whom were in attendance again on Thursday.

“Some talked about buildings that were more modern, […] glassier. Some spoke about buildings that were a little bit more traditional,” said Paul Santos, Newman’s Director of Housing. ​“You’re going to see maybe what is effectively a blend of the two.”

The new plan incorporates brick features and more segmentation of each of the complex’s parts to give the appearance of multiple buildings lining the thoroughfare. The brick section would come into view as you approach the site on Crown Street on foot.

Still, community members had more suggestions. During the Q&A portion of Thursday’s presentation, Rishabh Mittal, a transport planner who attended the first meeting, asked about how the building would fit in with its surroundings, juxtaposed with the fortress-like Knights of Columbus center to the south and the tower at 360 State just north, and whether different materials could be used to give it more pop.

“This is just a wish, but could you make this out of mass timber?” Mittal asked, referencing the relatively recent trend of making structural components for tall buildings out of huge prefab slabs of wood.

Santos said his firm wanted to go in that direction, but they ran the numbers and it wound up being too costly, especially given growing uncertainty about the cost of all construction materials as the threat of tariffs looms. Still, Santos left a version of the idea on the table. ​“Maybe there’s a way in which we might be able to bring some of that mass timber aesthetic into the interior once we start getting into more of the interior design,” he said.

The date of the third meeting is yet to be announced. According to Mark Wilson, the city’s manager of Neighborhood & Commercial Development, it should happen sometime in February or March.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Gilbane’s total development at this site will contain 279 apartments. The article has been corrected to reflect that one of the new buildings will contain 279 apartments, and another one of the new buildings will contain 160 apartments.