Thomas Breen photos
418 State St.
Doug Rich and local attorney Gregory Muccilli (right) presents the apartment plans.
The Feldman brothers development team plans to convert the historic James E. English building on State Street into 39 market-rate apartments — more than doubling the density of a project they first pitched four years ago.
Local attorney Gregory Muccilli made that pitch on behalf of MOD Equities’ Jacob and Josef Feldman Tuesday night at the regular monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team on the second floor of City Hall.
Muccilli, representing the New York brothers’ locally-headquartered real estate development company, told the roughly 40 neighbors who turned out for the meeting that the Feldman’s plan to convert the four-story Italianate building at 418 State St., at the corner of Court Street and State Street downtown, into 39 studio, one‑, and two-bedroom apartments.
The plan includes apartments on the first through fourth floors, he said, with a roughly 850 square-foot commercial space carved out on the Court Street side of the building. The planned development project is entirely interior to the existing building.
“It is a classic transit-oriented development project,” Muccilli said, noting that the building is right across the street from the State Street commuter train station and just a few blocks away from the city’s public bus hub on the New Haven Green.
Tuesday night’s management team meeting.
MOD is currently in conversation with the city’s Parking Authority to set up a long-term lease of publicly-owned parking spaces for tenants, he said, so that the developers do not have to provide on-site parking.
The Feldman brothers, who also have long-in-the-works plans to build a five-story, 46-unit apartment building around the corner at the former Harold’s site on Elm Street, had previously won approval from the Board of Zoning Appeals back in 2015 to convert two floors of the James English building into 18 apartments.
Muccilli said that the Feldmans simply could not find a sustainable way to maintain commercial tenants at the building. The building formerly housed the offices of the New Haven Legal Assistance Association (NHLAA) and the Regal Beagle bar. Both tenants have subsequently moved to different locations elsewhere downtown.
“It’ll become hopefully a more highly trafficked area” with these new apartments in the building instead, Muccilli said.
Market Rate Debate
Elsie Chapman (center): Market rate?
Wooster Square resident Elsie Chapman asked Muccilli if the developers plan to include any kind of set-aside of affordable apartments for lower-income tenants.
“MOD operates not at the high-end of the market,” Muccilli said. The companies tries to keep rents competitive, even affordable, for market-rate tenants looking to live downtown.
So no affordable set-aside? Chapman followed up.
No, Muccilli replied.
Jonny Shively.
“New Haven is facing an affordable housing crisis,” Downtown resident Johnny Shively said. “There’s a dire need for families making less than 60 percent of the area median income to be able to afford housing. I personally consider any development that doesn’t explicitly include below market-rate housing to be irresponsible in our neighborhood.” What steps does the public have to voice concerns with this project? he asked.
“This is all brand new housing,” Muccilli said. No one is being displaced here. MOD simply wants to add apartments where there previously were not.
The developers plan to bring their project before the City Plan Commission for site plan review on Nov. 20, he said. They are also applying for a special permit to allow for residential use on the groundfloor of a building downtown.
If MOD gets the thumbs up at that regulatory hearing, he said, then it can proceed as-of-right with this project.
Management team chair Caroline Smith.
“I’m a little confused,” management team chair Caroline Smith said. How can MOD claim that its rents are competitive, even affordable, if this project does not include a dedicated set-aside for low-income tenants?
MOD does not build dedicated affordable housing, he said. Rather, they build what the market can afford.
“These are market-driven needs,” he said. “My clients wouldn’t do what they do if the market wasn’t there for them.”