Owner Shake-up Restarts 201 Munson

A 13-acre lot at the border of Dixwell and Newhallville should soon start transforming from a massive mound of dirt into a 400-unit apartment complex, now that the developer has a new set of co-owners for the stalled project.

The development in question is 201 Munson St., a sprawling, 13-acre site site that used to house the Olin Chemical Company.

Double A Development Partners, a partnership of New Canaan-based developer Doug Gray and Denver, Colorado-based developer Brent Anderson, received zoning and environmental remediation approvals for their planned 400-unit apartment complex on the former industrial, contaminated site across from Yale’s Science Park and adjacent to the Farmington Canal Line.

For the past year, the project has been stalled, with nothing but leftover debris and a heaping mound of dirt left standing amidst the vast expanse of cracked asphalt. A sign hanging from a chainlink fence near the site’s Munson Street entrance still reads: ​“Coming Soon … Construction Starting Summer 2018.”

Gray told the Independent on Friday that the delayed development is about to take a big step forward, now that his erstwhile partner has formally dropped out and a host of other investors from New York, Ohio, and San Francisco have jumped on board.

“We’ve been sitting stagnant for well over a year now,” he said during a phone interview. ​“I had partners who didn’t share the same belief” in the project that Gray has.

He said that the final environmental remediation of PCB-impacted soil should begin later this month. When that’s done, he has to demolish the site’s remaining asphalt as well as a long, existing utility corridor on the eastern boundary of the site. That utility corridor will be filled in with the clean soil currently piled on the site’s western boundary.

He said he expects to submit a final site plan for the project to the City Plan Department within the next two or three months, and then begin construction by the end of the summer.

“With all the moving parts,” he said, ​“it took a lot longer than it should have. But we’re finally there.”

He said the planned development remains the same as proposed last year, consisting of roughly 400 units. He said that he and his new partners have not yet settled on how many of the units will be reserved as ​“affordable,” and that they should be ironing out that detail in the next few weeks.

This new timeline is now in place, he said, because of the recent shake-up in co-owners.

According to city land records, on March 18, Double A Development Partners split in half its ownership of the property amongst the company’s erstwhile partners, Gray and Anderson. The latter took control of his 50 percent share of the property through his holding company, Resight Holdings LLC.

That same day, Anderson sold his 50 percent share for $6 million to five new investors, each of whom received 10 percent undivided ownership of the property.

Those new co-owners are LinMunson LLC, a holding company owned by Howard Lin of Forest Hills, N.Y.; ShermanChinMunson LLC, a holding company owned by Sherman Chin of Manhattan; CindyChinMunson LLC, a holding company owned by Cindy Chin of Gahanna, Ohio; MelanieChinMunson LLC, a holding company owned by Melanie Chin of San Francisco; and HM New Haven LLC, a holding company owned by William Cote of Manhattan.

Ten days later, Anderson granted Cote a $1.8 million mortgage for the property.

Also on March 28, Gray sold another undivided 20 percent ownership of the property for $3 million to Lin of LinMunson LLC, and moved the remaining 30 percent over to a holding company he owns called GFT New Haven LLC.

So, at the end of the ownership shake-up, here’s who remains holding some portion of the property:

• Gray owns 30 percent;
• Lin owns 30 percent;
• The remaining 40 percent is split evenly among Sherman Chin, Cindy Chin, Melanie Chin, and Cote.

“New Haven is a vibrant and diverse city with over 130,000 residents and is home to a growing population of students and young professionals,” Cote said in an email response to questions about why he was interested in buying into the 201 Munson St. project. Cote is the founder and CEO of a Manhattan-based development company called Hudson Merdian.

“In a joint venture,” he continued, ​“Hudson Meridian, Ironburgh and Eclipse Development have acquired the site. The team has a long history of transforming urban properties into revitalized developments throughout the country. 201 Munson Street, to be branded as Science Park Apartments, will continue that community-oriented approach.”

When asked if the development will contain apartments set aside at affordable rates, Cote replied, ​“Our team is currently focused on site remediation and building the highest-quality housing available in the area. With construction starting this summer, we are currently evaluating asking rents and market positioning and will have a firm plan by the end of the year. We are grateful for the opportunity to build high-quality housing in New Haven.”

Stacey Davis from the City Plan department confirmed that the 201 Munson St. project has received City Plan Commission approvals for on-site soil remediation and for the stockpiling of up to 26,000 cubic feet of clean soil. Click here and here to download copies of those approvals.

The developers have not yet submitted a final site plan for the construction of the proposed development.

Eddie Hernandez, who lives right across the street at 206 Munson St., told the Independent about the somewhat jarring experience he and his neighbors have had living next to the led development without knowing why it had stalled. There was a lot of remediation activity at the site last spring, he said. Then, all of a sudden, nothing. For months.

“From one day to another,” he said, ​“they just completely stopped.”

Newhallvile/Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter reiterated concerns he has heard from neighbors about the state of the project.

“There’s some questions of whether the development is going to be built at all,” he said. ​“If it is built, will it be part of the neighborhood or apart from the neighborhood? And of course, will there be affordable units? Will it connect different parts of the city, or will it separate them? Those are what I’m hearing generally.”

Winter said he has also heard concerns from neighbors who live next door to the project about what’s going to be done with the giant dirt mound, and about which dirt is clean and which, if any, is still contaminated. He said he has done his best to inform neighbors that the giant mound on the western boundary is clean dirt that the developer purchased from Yale and shipped in to use for future in-fill. But, he said, questions about other areas of the site remain.

“I think its challenging and frustrating for some of the people who were involved with this issue a long time back,” he said, ​“because there was a group of folks in the neighborhood who were calling for a slower and more deliberative process of shaping what the development looked like.”

Instead, the developers and the city told neighbors that the zoning change and the environmental remediation approval had to happen immediately for the project to get built.

And that was a year ago.

But now, Gray told the Independent, those delays are a thing of the past. The project will be built.

“We made a promise to the community,” he said. And that promise will he kept.