186 More Wooster Sq. Apts. Planned

Yet another batch of apartments are on tap for Wooster Square’s expanding downtown edge — and a closed road will reopen.

A New York developer plans to build those 186 market-rate apartments and open Fair Street — next to where he is almost done building 299 apartments.

Epimoni President Darren Seid detailed the plans Thursday night during a virtual community meeting hosted by the city’s Economic Development Administration and Hill Alder Carmen Rodriguez.

The focus of the hour-and-a-half-long Zoomed meet up was the future of 20 and 34 Fair St.

Those two properties, covering roughly 1.2 acres, are currently occupied by service garages owned by Stephen Ahern.

Seid told the half-dozen Wooster Square and Hill residents who attended Thursday’s meeting that his company is under contract to buy those properties — and build them up into a new seven-story, 186-unit apartment building consisting of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom apartments.

He said his company will be seeking a zoning variance to allow it to build apartments 850 square feet in size, as opposed to the minimum 1,000 square-foot requirement.

Seid said the proposed development would see the opening up of a section of Fair Street that currently dead-ends halfway between Union Street and Olive Street.

His company plans to give a right-of-way for that stretch back to the city, Seid said, and build out a public greenway for pedestrians, cyclists, and (potentially) cars to cut through from downtown to Wooster Street.

All of this, meanwhile, is slated to be built right across the street from where Epimoni and fellow New York City-based developer Adam America are busily constructing 299 new market-rate apartments and ground-floor retail space atop a former industrial lot at 44 Olive St. / 87 Union St — a luxury apartment complex to be called ​“Olive & Wooster.”

And it’s a half-block away from where another builder, the Houston-based development firm Hines, is in the process of constructing 230 new market-rate apartments and ground-floor retail across two buildings on either side of the intersection of Olive Street and Chapel Street.

“Our hopes are that anybody who’s looking to rent a unit in the New Haven area is immediately going to say, ​‘You have to look at Wooster Square,’” Seid said on Thursday.

“We think Wooster Square is going to draw people from Norwalk, draw interest from West Hartford, maybe some couples where one person works in one place, one works in another, and New Haven is central. … We think what we’re going to create here is going to be such a beautiful value add to the community, to New Haven, and to Connecticut.”

Just Like Court Street?

The proposed Fair Street development and greenway mark the latest turn in a years-long effort by the city to reconnect downtown and Wooster Square by opening up a long-severed public road.

The city and a Boston-based design firm put together a Wooster Square Planning Study in 2016 that called for the reconnection of Fair Street to Olive. In 2018, city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Steve Fontana told the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team that the city planned to buy those Fair Street properties and reopen the city block with a priority for bicycle and pedestrian access.

On Thursday night, Seid said that his company plans to build a ​“beautiful public amenity” where people can ​“come, get pizza, sit on the benching, use it as a pedestrian and cyclist throughway connecting Downtown and Wooster Square.”

His company’s current design for that stretch of Fair Street would allow cars to go through, too, in a one-way traffic flow from Olive to Union Street.

“There’s almost no better example than Court Street” of what a well-designed, pedestrian and cyclist throughway could look like, Seid said. ​“What we are proposing here is a kind of stamped concrete style to this greenway that blends pedestrians, cyclists, and automobile activity into one.”

That comparison to the nearby Court Street drew some pushback from some of the meeting’s attendees.

“Seven stories on a narrow street is nothing like Court Street,” said Wooster Square resident and New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell. That block has three-story townhouses on either side. This cut-through on Fair Street would have seven-story apartment complexes.

Fellow Wooster Square resident Josh Quagliaroli agreed.

“This essentially is going to look like an alleyway,” he said.

“Age-Old Challenge For Development”

“These mixed-use buildings at high price points are not necessarily in the aesthetic of Wooster Square,” Quagliaroli (pictured) continued.

“We moved to Wooster Square because we don’t want to be downtown. We are separated by State Street, and this is now removing that separation. … I moved from D.C. to Connecticut. I don’t expect D.C. prices.”

Seid said that the market-rate apartments will likely be rented at similar prices to those at other new-construction apartments in the area, including at Audubon Square and the Corsair.

“What you’re mentioning there is a macroeconomic condition,” Seid said. ​“It seems in this moment that maybe I represent the cause of it. I get it. That’s an element of city planning and development, and just seems to be a way of life around the world that doesn’t have a perfect solution to it.

“These neighborhoods are so desirable, and then it becomes an opportunity for more housing in those neighborhoods, and then you end up with this not-perfect solution of people who want to invest and building hosing, and what it does to the neighborhood. This is an age-old challenge for development.”

So what to do?

“It’s not easy,” Seid continued. ​“It’s hard to have every side of it happy. I think it’s forums like this that try to check the boxes on both sides as much as possible.”

He said that if his company decided to ​“go shorter” and build less, the project might not be economically feasible.

“Change is hard,” Alder Rodriguez said. She stressed the importance of developer-community conversations so that projects that ultimately get built incorporate the feedback of people who already live in the area.

Where Does The $ Come From, Again?

Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team Chair Ian Dunn (pictured) asked about Seid’s company’s long-term plans for this Fair Street development, as well as for the 299-unit ​“Olive & Wooster” complex next door.

Another 186 apartments on this block will have a ​“tremendous impact in the neighborhood,” Dunn said. ​“I do wonder what your plans are long-term for these units.”

Dunn noted that a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) owns the ​“Olive & Wooster” development.

“The whole point of publicly traded companies is to create profits for shareholders,” and not to best serve the long-term needs of a community, he argued.

Seid pushed back.

“For us and my company, we love to stay in things long-term,” he said. ​“Our partnership is not a publicly traded company. None of the equity invested in Olive & Wooster is from publicly traded [companies.] That’s not the intention. We’re not necessarily a REIT.”

“Sometimes the market speaks to certain things,” Seid continued, ​“and for people like me, there’s an opportunity to sell. I understand that’s not what you’re after. I’d love to stay in everything I do long term.”

But, he stressed, ​“I’m the guy that’s here in the meetings. … Really, I’m a small piece of the puzzle to investors. So when market conditions bear that it’s time to sell,” that’s sometimes what happens.

Wait a minute, Dunn said. The structure of ownership for Olive & Wooster indeed seems to point to a publicly traded REIT.

The company that technically owns that 44 Olive / 87 Union St. parcel of land is called 44 Olive Street Ground Owner LLC.

That’s a holding company for a firm called Caret Ventures.

Which is in turn a holding company for a firm called Safehold Inc.

Which is a publicly traded REIT.

“This is true,” Seid admitted. ​“I misspoke.” His company, Epimoni, is not a publicly traded company, Seid said.

However, the developers of Olive & Wooster did recently sell the underlying land of that site to Safehold, which is a publicly traded entity. Safehold then signed a 98.5 year lease with the developers, who are still the ones responsible for building the apartments and managing them for the next century.

“Our entity has no publicly traded companies in it,” Seid said. ​“We actually now are a lessee.”

Fontana added that, ​“prior to Darren’s companies, we had some dilapidated buildings and parking lots” on Union Street and, now, Fair Street. His company’s building up of these derelict spaces into apartments and retail represent quite the improvement for the neighborhood.