On The Brink Of A ​“Bigger City”

New Haven’s economy is set to expand by thousands of apartments, hundreds of hotel rooms, and a nearly $1 billion new neuroscience center in the coming years — if projects in the pipeline proceed as planned in 2020.

In an interview with the Independent, city Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli offered an update on new construction and talked through the latest in the city’s years long building boom.

The projects are paving the way for what Piscitelli (whom new Mayor Justin Elicker has tapped to hold the development post on a permanent basis, pending Board of Alders confirmation) sees as ​“the opportunity to look at a bigger city.”

According to an official local economic statement put together by Piscitelli and his staff in anticipation of the city’s latest bond refunding, private developers completed or began construction on over 1,655 new market-rate housing units in New Haven in 2019. The report states that another 1,937 market-rate units were also in the works as of October.

Many of these new developments have been or are slated to be built atop surface parking lots.

The past year has been filled with groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings and dirt piles towering over active construction sites.

And City Plan Commission meetings have routinely stretched to six hours a pop as developers pitch their projects as complying with the city’s technical zoning code requirements, and neighbors push back on how these projects might transform their community’s historic character, affordability, demographics, and architectural appeal.

“We’re all sort of recognizing a bit of a moment in time,” Piscitelli said. ​“It’s a great investment climate. It’s driven by the high quality and meaningful work here, and the centers of excellence: The hospital and the university.”

Yale New Haven Hospital announced in 2019 that it plans to build an $838 million neuroscience medical research and treatment facility as part of a larger renovation and expansion of its existing St. Raphael Campus in the Dwight and West River neighborhoods.

“It’s the opportunity to look at a bigger city and to be globally competitive in the face of incredible challenges and intense competition,” Piscitelli said about all of the new housing developments and major economic development boosters like the neuroscience center.

“The strength and the global identification of our city has a lot to do with Yale University and the global stature of that institution.” Around the university and the hospital, in turn, have grown a surging biotech and life sciences economy from Science Park to Long Wharf.

Piscitelli also praised the alders for passing an updated and extended version of the city’s tax assessment deferral program this year, which provides an appraised value phase in schedule for significant developments and building rehabilitation projects.

“Anyone looking at a project in this city has some sense of how taxes will scale over time,” he said. ​“That’s very, very helpful. And that eliminates by and large these one-off” deals and implements instead a predictable, consistent tax break structure.

The city’s total population is 130,418, according to the bond statement report. That’s still a far cry from the 160,000-plus who lived in the city back in 1950.

“Cities of some vibrancy are really driving the nation’s economy right now,” Piscitelli said. Based on the city’s actual growth in recent years and expected growth in the years ahead, New Haven might just be turning a corner in the direction of its former peak population numbers and towards becoming an even more formidable urban center in a state mostly bereft of large cities.

Piscitelli said the demand statewide for new housing is roughly 50,000 units by 2025, according to a study by the Connecticut State Data Center. That’s not just affordable housing, but all different types, including market-rate.

“When filling that demand, creating new supply will not be evenly distributed,” he said. ​“It will be the center cities, the vibrant innovation spaces, transit-rich communities where that demand will be filled.”

Spinnaker Staying Busy

Much of the city’s building boom to date has taken place in and around Downtown. And the most visible, and most nearly complete, of those projects is the Audubon Square development by Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estates.

Earlier this year, Spinnaker started leasing the 269 apartments and seven-story garage built into the project’s Phase 1 on the superblock bounded by Orange Street, Audubon Street, State Street, and Grove Street. The company also has nearly finished construction of the 66 new townhouse-style apartments on Audubon Street as part of the project’s Phase 2, and won site plan approval to build another 149 new residential units and 6,900 square-feet of first-floor retail in a new building at 335 Orange St., at the northeast corner of Orange and Grove.

“Now that we’re past the early framing and construction work, people can get a sense for the quality of the architecture and it’s tracing Audubon Square out to State Street,” he said. ​“It really fits the context of the neighborhood.”

He said that Spinnaker has identified a restaurant for one of the site’s planned retail spaces.

Spinnaker has also begun demolition of the old Webster Bank building at 80 Elm St., where it plans to build a new 132-room Hilton Garden Inn hotel, with construction starting in early 2020.

That’s not the only new hotel in town. The Graduate New Haven opened a new 72-room boutique hotel on Chapel Street at the site of the former Hotel Duncan rooming house. Randy Salvatore opened the 108-room Blake Hotel at George Street and High Street downtown. And Choice International Hotels won site plan approval to build a 130-room hotel on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard this year on the Rt. 34 West site, right next to a planned new four-story, 763-space parking garage on Legion Avenue.

This year also saw Spinnaker take over the planned mini-city development of the old Coliseum site. Spinnaker held a few community planning sessions in the Fall for this project.

Piscitelli said that city staff and Spinnaker representatives will be meeting in January for an internal design review for the project.

Then, in March or April, the city and developers will host another few community meetings with real schematics and design details on display.

After that, Spinnaker will likely go before the City Plan Commission in Fall 2020 for site plan review of Phase 1.

Piscitelli said that one of the best things the city can do to make sure that the Coliseum development proceeds as planned is to complete the Downtown Crossing, Phase 2 infrastructure improvements on schedule.

That project has led to significant lane closures on the Hill-Downtown boundary, but should eventually lead to a new raised intersection and crossing on Orange Street. Phase 2 should wrap up in 2021, he said.

The city needs to ​“stay on the construction schedule for Downtown Crossing such that we’re not overly impacting that area with two big projects at the same time,” he said.

“Nice Density” In Wooster Square

One major development project that Spinnaker let go of in 2019 was the two buildings and 220-plus luxury apartments and groundfloor retail planned for Chapel Street and Olive Street, including at the former Comcast site.

After finally coming out on top after years of legal wrangling with the Philadelphia-based landlord of the nearby ​“Smoothie” apartment building, Spinnaker flipped the Comcast-site project to the Houston-based international residential development firm Hines for a total of $14.6 million.

Piscitelli said that Hines plans to stick with the site plan review that Spinnaker already got approved — and extended for another year — by the City Plan Commission.

The new developer should be demolishing the old Comcast building in 2020, he said, and beginning construction soon after they wrap up interior design work. ​“It’s going to be exceptionally well-designed,” Piscitelli said about the development. ​“This was an important mixed-use project to get off the ground at such a key location.”

Just behind that planned Hines development is 87 Union St., a planned 299-unit market-rate apartment and commercial complex to be built by a team of New York City-based developers.

“They’re in the ground,” Piscitelli said how the developers have already demolished the site’s former building and are beginning to dig a foundation.

“It really creates nice density there.”

Corner Block

Further down Chapel Street in the direction of Downtown, another major development received site plan approval in 2019 to build hundreds of new market-rate apartments atop existing surface lots at 842 – 848 Chapel.

That’s Paul Denz’s Corner Block Development, which should result in a 46-unit apartment building at the corner of Orange Street and Chapel Street and another 120 new apartments on Chapel Street in between Orange Street and Church Street.

Piscitelli said that, even though the City Plan Commission has approved the site plan for the project, the alders have not yet signed off on a Development and Land Disposition Agreement regarding selling a small piece of city-owned property at that corner in order to facilitate the completion of the development.

The aldermanic Community Development Committee is slated to hear a proposed DLDA related to Corner Block in February or March, he said. ​“We hopeful to get that in so that they can get out of approvals in March and get started [with construction] later next year.”

40% Parking Lots? Not Any More

In the Hill North and Yale New Haven Hospital-Yale School of Medicine medical campus area just to the south of Downtown, Randy Salvatore’s Stamford-based development company opened this year the 110-unit Parkside Crossing apartment building on Gold Street. That’s the first of five apartment buildings his company plans to build in the area as part of the larger Hill-to-Downtown redevelopment project.

Salvatore’s company is already underway in constructing two new buildings containing a total of 194 new apartments on Lafayette Street and Congress Avenue.

Salvatore received site plan approval from City Plan Commission this year for Phase 3 of the project, which will see a new six-story, mixed-used building with 223 apartments on Tower Lane.

“That area, when we started the Hill-to-Downtown plan, was 40 percent surface parking,” Piscitelli said. He said somewhere between five and 10 parking lots are in the pipeline to be in construction in the coming year, he said.

“It’s a remarkable shift in urban development.”

The city’s medical area and sector is seeing phenomenal growth not just in housing, Piscitelli said, but in the innovative research and medical care work driving employment in the area.

Alexion still has over 500 employees in its 100 College St. building and is investing $10 million in its Global Product Development Lab, he said. The Yale School of Medicine announced this year that it would be backfilling the rest of the open office and lab space vacated by Alexion when it moved its corporate headquarters to Boston.

After the Orange Street section of Downtown Crossing is finished, Piscitelli said, Phase 3 will focus on building out a new intersection and reconnection on Temple Street — which in turn will create a few new large developable parcels in place of the current Rt. 34 Connector.

“It’s a place where you can create a fairly large structure without undue impact on neighbors or residential because of the situation of the old Rt. 34,” he said. Plus, the site is already zoned BD‑3 and supports high density development. ​“It’s a great moment to open up two new development sites. One across from 100 College St. and one across from Gateway Community College.”

He said the city plans on hosting community meetings about any prospective developments on those parcels in the coming months.

Neuroscience Center

And then the largest definite medical project announced this year was the $838 million new neuroscience center and St. Raphael Campus expansion that YNHH plans to build out at Orchard Street, George Street, Sherman Avenue, and Chapel Street.

The aldermanic Legislation Committee gave a thumbs up to the project’s parking plan in December, he said. Hopefully the full board will provide those final approvals in January, he continued.

As for the project planned 1,000-new parking spaces to be included in new and expanded parking garages on Orchard Street, Piscitelli said, ​“no one’s a fan.”

But, he continued, it’s important to remember that ​“employment is driving the demand for parking. That’s a good thing.” He said the city will use whatever pressure it can to encourage the hospital to build garages with relatively flat parking trays, so that the buildings can be ultimately converted into different types of human-centered uses once there’s no longer as much of a need for cars.

He said the city has hired Ninigret Partners to help with marketing the city’s growing bioscience and life science employment sectors.

201 Munson, Bassett Street, and ​“Inclusive Growth”

In Westville, Piscitelli noted, Ocean Management recently took over 500 Blake St. and will likely be hosting community meetings about its plans for that site in the new year.

Mendel Paris, meanwhile, recently bought 50 Fitch St., and should be doing the same type of community outreach around 200-plus apartments he plans to build out at that site.

In Newhallville, he said, the Livable City Initiative’s Executive Director Serena Neal Sanjurjo and Neighborhood & Commercial Development Arlevia Samuel are working on building out business plans and potential partnerships for the former state social services building on Bassett Street, which the city bought for $900,000 and plans to build out as a worker-owned commercial laundry.

“That is a transformative project,” he said.

And on the Newhallville/Dixwell border, the new partnership that owns the 201 Munson St. project won site plan approval to build nearly 400 mostly market-rate apartments at the former Olin industrial site.

The city has been working very hard to ensure that that project results in the re-opening of the public right of way on Argyle Street, Piscitelli said.

And as for the former Church Street South site across from Union Station, Piscitelli said, the city is still trying to win a $30 million grant under the federal government’s Project CHOICE program to facilitate infrastructure improvements that would allow for that site’s redevelopment.

“One of the biggest challenges we have right now is supporting a public infrastructure for growth,” he said. ​“These aren’t farms. These aren’t square or rectangular sites that are ready for development. There’s a lot of infrastructure work we need to do in order to reclaim and put some of this stuff up for productive use.” That would include adding a new park and new street connections to the Church Street South site.

Piscitelli said that the commercial corridor rezoning initiative was an eye-opening experience for his department and the City Plan Department, as well, particularly after neighborhood concerns around gentrification and out-of-scale development stalled the project on Dixwell Avenue and Grand Avenue.

“All of us need to work harder,” he said, to make sure that the community feels heard, to make sure that community voices are a part of the way this city grows, to make sure that the city’s growth is truly inclusive.