Ironburgh Organization / Thomas Breen photo
A digital rendering of the proposed 201 Munson project. Below: The current site’s dirt stockpile, which can now remain in place through July 2020.
The new owners of 201 Munson St. plan to build 392 apartments on a large, vacant formerly industrial site on the Dixwell/Newhallville border — and have been granted an extra year to remove the towering stockpile of clean dirt that has been standing there since last summer.
On Thursday afternoon, the Manhattan-based Ironburgh Organization, the new co-owners of the nearly 13-acre site that used to house the Olin Chemical Company on Munson Street, submitted to the City Plan department a detailed site plan for the development project.
Building off of the plans originally conceived of by Double A Development Partners and presented to the community — and the city — several years ago, the site plan describes a development that will include a total of 392 apartments: 371 in a five-story, 320,000 square-foot wood-frame residential building over a one-story concrete podium, and the rest in 21 three-story townhouses with two-car garages along Munson Street. The central building will also contain 27,000 square feet of leasing and management offices and amenity spaces.
The site will include a total of 478 parking spaces: 156 surface parking spaces, a covered ground level garage with 280 spaces, and the rest in the townhouse garages.
“What we are now submitting for site plan approval has incorporated all of the input from the multiple New Haven community meetings and multiple New Haven City Plan Commission meetings that have been held,” the site plan’s accompanying project narrative reads, “and we are now ready to move the project forward.”
Click here and here to download a few of the site plan document submissions.
New owner Jeffrey Chung and engineer David Sacco at Wednesday’s City Plan Commission meeting.
On Wednesday night, Ironburgh’s Jeffrey Chung received a unanimous approval from the City Plan Commission for a one-year extension to a previously granted special permit regarding the stockpiling of clean soil on the site.
That approval, which resets the stockpile removal date from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020, came during the commission’s regular monthly meeting on the second floor of City Hall.
Sitting beside local engineer David Sacco, Chung explained that he and several other new co-owners on the project closed on their purchase of their respective stakes in the development just a few months ago, in April.
Wednesday night’s City Plan Commission meeting.
While New Canaan-based developer Doug Gray also still owns a significant portion of the project, Gray’s original development partner, the Brent Anderson, is now out.
“At this time we’re ready to really start the work,” Chung said. Assuming that the project wins site plan approval from the City Plan Commission next month, he said, the new ownership team plans to begin construction later this year or early next year.
City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison and Westville Alder Adam Marchand.
As construction begins, the developers will need to use the 26,000 cubic feet of clean dirt currently stockpiled on the site to remediate and encapsulate the remaining lead-contaminated earth.
“We couldn’t move the dirt until we had a formal solution that was fully laid out,” he said.
“When will the start of that construction affect the pile?” asked City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison.
“The pile is going to be depleted largely in the first phase,” Chung replied. All of the clean dirt will be used up by the new removal deadline of July 1, 2020, he promised.
Crystal Gooding and Chung.
Dixwell resident Crystal Gooding asked Chung and Sacco what they are doing right now to protect residents from the impact of dirt being disturbed from the large stockpile and flying into the homes of neighboring residents. She’s heard complaints from people who live nearby, she said, who have told her that on windy and rainy days, dirt has flown into their living rooms and bedrooms.
Sacco said that a local contractor has installed erosion control measures such as “infiltration swales” around the site designed to catch stormwater runoff. The stockpile has also been “stabilized” with seeded grass, he said, which should minimize the capacity for disturbance of the dirt on windy days.
“If there are ongoing issues,” he said. “It’s something we will look into and try to address.”
Alder Steve Winter and Chung.
Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter, who represents the area that covers 201 Munson St., said that he frequently hears concerns from Shelton Avenue neighbors about those very “massive, prehistoric weeds” on the stockpile.
He said that he and neighbors are very concerned about the site being maintained and cared for, and that it has been far too long since any representative from the development team has updated the neighborhood on what is going on at the site.
Chung promised to appear at an upcoming community management team meeting to discuss the latest plans for the site.
“The site is large,” he said, “and it is our intention to turn it into something much nicer looking.”
Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand said that extending the timeline by which the developers had to remove the large dirtpile was the most logical thing to do — because if the commission didn’t, the developer would have to remove the clean soil immediately and might not be able to following through on the planned construction project.
“We’re extending a deadline that has already passed,” he added. “Which is certainly not ideal.”