Hines
230-unit complex, expected to open next summer.
LCI’s Carmen Mendez: Please pick up after yourselves.
• Comcast demolition to start within month.
• New owners update management team.
• Neighbors press for local hiring, property upkeep.
Neighbors heard about those imminent demolition plans at the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team’s meeting Tuesday night in the Ives Main Library’s basement.
Representatives from Hines, a Houston-based real estate firm, said that they’re planning to build out 230 apartments and ground-floor retail in two buildings on either side of Chapel Street, in a new development that they’re calling “The Whit.”
The new housing will replace the former Comcast building at 630 Chapel St. and a surface parking lot at 673 Chapel St. The developers said they expect tenants will start moving in by mid-2021, shortly after the neighboring 299-unit apartment complex at 87 Union St. goes on the market. They added that construction will probably wrap in early 2022.
Whitney Zimmerman, from Hines.
Whitney Zimmerman, a company director, said that the building’s design will reflect the changing neighborhood around it, referencing Wooster Square’s past and future.
“It used the brick elements along the Chapel Street and Olive Street facade so that it kind of has a townhome feel in a nod towards the Wooster Square architecture, but it also keeps in mind the global, forward-thinking tenant demographic that we think we’re going to have,” Zimmerman said. She added that they’re thinking of creating a “historical installation” for the interior.
Hines hasn’t identified its commercial tenants yet, but the company is hoping for “something the community would appreciate and that would activate the street,” Zimmerman said. An eatery of some kind, like a restaurant or cafe, will likely move into the 2,400-square foot space at 673 Chapel St.
City officials first signed off on the development plans in 2014, but a flurry of lawsuits by a rival landlord blocked construction from starting for almost five years.
Those cases were filed by PMC Property Group, which owns the renovated Strouse-Adler building at 78 Olive St across the street. After a state judge dismissed each case, PMC agreed to withdraw two remaining suits as part of a larger cooperation agreement with the city.
Right around the same time, Spinnaker, the Norwalk-based company that had won the necessary zoning approvals, flipped the properties. It signed over the two Chapel Street parcels to Hines for $14.6 million — more than four times what it paid in 2015. Clay Fowler, Spinnaker’s CEO, said that will allow him to focus on erecting a mini-city at the old Coliseum site.
The project developers from Hines told the community management team that their plans wouldn’t be changing. That meant the development wouldn’t include any set-aside for affordable housing, said Sean Sacks, a managing director for Hines.
Mona Berman, at center.
After five years of waiting, members of the community management team had plenty of thoughts for their new neighbors.
“I’ve worked with a lot of your clients who live in your buildings, so I know the quality of the work. I think it’s really good, and I’m happy about that,” said Mona Berman, a local art dealer. “But there’s a lot of neighborhood issues involved. Everything is pretty subtle.”
The Comcast building at 630 Chapel St.
Caroline Smith, the community management team’s chair, asked if they would be hiring locally.
David Walker, the senior construction manager for Hines, said the work will be led by AMEC, a contractor in Norwalk, which he said has agreed to keep job applications on site that will be forwarded to subcontractors.
LCI’s Carmen Mendez: Please pick up after yourselves.
Carmen Mendez, a neighborhood specialist for New Haven’s Livable City Initiative, asked the builder to start keeping up the area around the property soon, repainting graffiti, picking up litter and salting the sidewalks.
Zimmerman said the demolition crew will take care of some of those problems immediately, and she said the company would work on the others.
Aaron Goode.
Aaron Goode, a safe streets activist, asked for Hines to take extra precautions with traffic management — especially, he added, as the “long overdue” final phase of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail is set to extend down Olive Street toward Long Wharf.
Zimmerman said that she’d been “very excited” when she first heard about the trail and said she was “happy to coordinate” with Goode.
Ian Dunn.
And Ian Dunn, a labor organizer for Yale’s unions, asked for them to think about partnering with Sunrise Cafe, the free breakfast spot at St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church. “It’s a really wonderful amenity for that we need dearly for those who are food insecure,” Dunn said. “As you build your very large, I assume, market-rate apartments, there could be some friction and, I think, ways to solve that now.”
Zimmerman said she has emailed with a Sunrise Cafe volunteer already.