1 Night, 4 Plans, 51 More Apts Ok’d

New Haven’s market-rate apartment boom continued apace as four different projects that would add 51 new units of housing across town — including in former ground-floor commercial and office spaces — won key city sign-offs.

Such was the outcome of Wednesday night’s regular monthly City Plan Commission meeting, which took place online via the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

Over the course of the three hour meeting, commissioners unanimously approved three site plans and two special permits related to four different projects in Westville, Downtown, Wooster Square, and Fair Haven Heights.

Unlike with some of the splashier multi-hundred-unit, new construction developments approved by the City Plan Commission in recent years, the largest project approved Wednesday night is a planned new 31-unit apartment complex on Olive Street consisting of a converted former office building and an adjacent, newly constructed three-story residential building. The smallest was a plan to convert part of a Court Street building’s vacant ground-floor commercial space into two new studio apartments.

Nevertheless, the night’s worth of approvals spoke to a continued interest among developers and residential real estate investors in building market-rate rental housing in New Haven—even during a pandemic and associated economic crisis. It also spoke to a lack of faith among that same group in continuing to hunt for retailers and commercial tenants to fill vacant ground-floor spaces.

“We have a very strong market for residential development and a less strong market for commercial and retail development,” Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand noted before voting in support of ground-floor apartments in the Olive Street project.

Local attorney Bernie Pellegrino, speaking in support of the smaller planned commercial-to-residential conversion on Court Street, agreed. ​“You just spoke a little bit about the market for retail and commercial being difficult, and residential being good,” Pellegrino said, referring back to Marchand’s comments on the previous project. That same reality, he said, was the motivation for his client’s move to add a few apartments to the ground floor of his downtown building.

31 Apartments Coming To 98 Olive

The largest project to be approved Wednesday night will be located at 98 Olive St. That’s where a holding company owned by local landlord Abraham Meer plans to convert an existing former office building into 15 new apartments and build a new three-story building next door with a total of 16 new apartments.

Local architect Wayne Garrick said that the converted building will have a mix of one bedrooms, one bedrooms with lofts, and two bedrooms, while the new building will consist of one bedrooms with alcoves and two bedrooms. The new building will be made of white brick to complement the red brick existing building.

“This is a development that’s been in the works for over two years now,” said local attorney Ben Trachten. He noted that the developer has had extensive conversations about the project with the City Plan Department, the Board of Alders, the community management team, and other neighbors. The city has agreed to sell a publicly owned parking lot at the site to facilitate the development, and part of the money brought in from that sale will go to a new city affordable housing fund.

“This is just all around a solid development for this area,” he said.

Marchand lamented the fact that the project has apartments, and not retail space, planned for the building’s ground floors. ​“I for one would love to have a larger bakery on the first floor of the building rather than residential units, but I don’t think the market supports that,” he said. Thus his — and his colleagues’ — vote in support of a special permit allowing the project to have ground-floor residential use.

Garrick said that the developer plans on pulling building permits for the project later this year, and hopes to have it completed and open in approximately eight or nine months, before the fall of 2021.

Riverfront Apartments In The Heights And Westville

The second-largest residential project approved by the City Plan Commission Wednesday night is slated for 904 Quinnipiac Ave.

The property’s owner, Tom Kolitsopoulos, plans to convert an existing single-family house into four apartments and then build four new duplexes on the narrow stretch of lot behind the existing building pointing towards the river, thereby adding a total of eight newly constructed apartments to the site.

Local architect Fernando Pastor said that each of the new duplexes would have two three-bedroom apartments.

“We have the buildings separated,” engineer James Sakonchik said about the four planned new duplexes. ​“We did not want to create a long townhouse, but rather try to create separations between the units.” Each of the newly built apartments will have their own terrace.

“All these boxes are lifted from the ground so there’s room for the cars” beneath the buildings, Pastor said. He said the terraces and the windows on either side of the new buildings should allow for a lot of light. ​“They’re very luminous apartments,” he said.

The project will also include a public right of way to allow for access to the Quinnipiac River.

Next up, commissioners signed off on the conversion of first-floor office space into six new apartments at 192 Fitch St. in Westville.

The homeless services nonprofit New Reach currently owns that three-story, mixed-use building, but has been looking to sell it since last year.

Attorney Meaghan Miles said that the prospective new owner of the building, New Haven Fitch LLC, plans to convert the ground-floor space into apartments to allow for a total of 14 residential units. The building currently has a total of eight apartments across its second and third floors.

This project is just an internal conversion of an existing building, Miles said, with no new construction or significant exterior changes beyond swapping out the current windows for new, larger windows. This project also includes a public right of way to access the adjacent West River.

“Eyes On The Street”

And the smallest residential project of the night to win commissioners’ approval is at 109 Court St. The building’s owner, a holding company run by Steven Sadler, plans to convert a portion of the existing first floor commercial space into two studio apartments.

Pellegrino said that, of the building’s two ground-floor commercial spaces, one is currently occupied while another has been empty and vacant for two years.

The special permit requested by the developer would allow him to follow through on plans to convert roughly a quarter of the existing commercial space into the two new residential rentals.

“We plan to keep 75 percent of that first floor as commercial, business, office or retail,” Pellegrino said. ​“But the rear part of that space, given the size of the units, really makes it difficult” to find a commercial tenant. He said the owner will be keeping the Court Street-facing storefront part of the space reserved for commercial use. It’s the rear that will become apartments.

East Rock resident and City Plan Commission regular attendee Kevin McCarthy testified in support of the Court Street commercial-to-residential conversion.

“This property, while lovely, is frequently vacant,” he said.

He called on the Board of Alders to amend the city’s zoning ordinance to make it easier for landlords to put apartments on the ground floor, so that property owners don’t have to secure a special permit before putting such space to productive use.

“We all value eyes on the street,” he said about the ideal of having ground-floor retail or commercial, especially in the city’s downtown. ​“But eyes on the street only works when the property’s occupied.”