Affordable Housing In The Works On Dixwell

A new 69-unit apartment complex planned for Dixwell Avenue will consist primarily of ​“deeply affordable” apartments — and will be built with a new environmentally sustainable product called mass timber that could revolutionize the way low-income housing is constructed.

Darrel Brooks, David Cleghorn, and Jeff Spiritos made that pitch Tuesday night during the latest monthly meeting of the Whalley Edgewood Beaver Hills (WEB) Community Management Team.

The virtual meeting took place online via the Zoom videoconferencing app and was attended by 23 participants.

The development in question will be located at the vacant triangular lot at the corner of Dixwell Avenue and Munson Street at 340 Dixwell, 316 Dixwell, and 783 Orchard St.

Brooks, who is the chief operating officer of the Beulah Development Land Corporation, took the lead in presenting on Tuesday. He was joined by Beulah’s partners in the project: Cleghorn, the chief housing officer of New York-based H.E.L.P. Development USA, and Spiritos of the mass timber-advocacy Spiritos Properties.

The group described the mass timber construction method as healthy, renewable and relatively affordable — no hammering or drilling required, as pre-holed sections are all ready for pipes and cables. They also described it as attractive, fire resistant, and a renewable resource that will also help keep away asthma.

Brooks’s non-profit, the housing development arm of the nearby Beulah Heights Pentecostal Church, has a 25-year history of restoring old housing stock in the Dixwell neighborhood. That includes building townhouses for low income people and senior housing.

The new project, said Brooks, would not only ​“transform a major corridor in Dixwell” but lead the way in the use of mass timber to make deeply affordable and attractive housing, deeply needed in New Haven, a nearer reality.

Click here for the presenters’ PowerPoint with preliminary renderings along with advantages of the mass timber technology.

It has has been used, Spiritos said in an email after the meeting, already in some small settings, such as a building on the campus of Common Ground High School, but never before in the city in order to address the pressing need for affordable housing.

Click here for a previous story about the planned development, including overwhelmingly positive community reaction to the project.

“We know of a few other [mass timber] projects in the planning in the U.S., but none that are for the 60 percent AMI or less income group,” Spiritos reported.

The project, which already has received needed special exceptions and variances from the Board of Zoning Appeals, is still two years off from completion and must go through a financing bonding process at the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) as well as a City Plan Commission site plan review.

$700 1‑Bedrooms, $1,200 3‑Bedrooms

Yet the preview, one of several that Brooks said is planned with management teams in the area, was received with warm enthusiasm by WEB participants.

Neighbors submitted questions through the Zoom chat function, not so much about the nature of mass timber advantages in cost and time in construction, but rather on just what deeply affordable means, and specifically what the planned rents will turn out to be.

The developers said that, of the 69 apartments in the planned new four-story development, 80 percent will be reserved for those earning up to 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). Another 20 percent would be what the presenters termed ​“supportive housing units,” and the remaining 20 percent will be market rate.

Pressed for the proposed rents in the Chat, Spiritos responded: ​“Rents are planned to range from under $700 for a one-bedroom and under $1200 for a three-bedroom apartment for those eligible for the up-to-60 percent AMI units.”

The key to making a mass timber building work, according to the presentation, will be ​“light, strong, and inherently fireproof cross laminated timber” that will enable the structures on the site to be framed quickly with holes already cut for duct work, piping, and light fixtures, and no need for the drywall.

Although it’s hard to tell during a Zoom presentation if a kind of collective ​“ah” emerges from an audience, I detected one when images of the wood-lined apartments were displayed. That environment, according to the presentation, is ​“healthy, warm, solid, and reduces asthma and makes concentration easier.”

Brooks said that the motto or logo for the type of housing being planned through the use of mass timber is ​“luxury living at affordable prices.”

The project has challenges ahead including being successful with CHFA in November of this year in obtaining 9 percent tax credits, which will be a key in the project’s financing.

Spiritos wrote that at this point because the issue is ​“fluid,” he prefers not to give further details of the financing plans and whether a local city contribution is part of the mix.

Historic Demolition At 783 Orchard

Another issue with the planned new development regards 783 Orchard St., which is building of enough historical significance that its demolition — under an 180-day delay that ends on Sept. 1 — is being reviewed by the city’s Historical District Commission )HDC) as well as by State Historical Preservation Office (SHPO).

The issue was engaged briefly at this month’s regular meeting of the HDC as commissioners wanted to know the demolition status. City Plan Director Aicha Woods reported that because public funds — at minimum the CHFA state bonding — are involved, Section 106 of the state historic preservation law would be engaged.

That section requires the developer who gets permission to raze an historical building to provide mitigation or compensation to the affected community.

In the case of 783 Orchard, Woods said that might mean creating educational materials for a cultural history of the Dixwell neighborhood in question, among other possibilities.

“We’re observers… It’s an area of competing interests and we hope it’s resolved,” Woods said.

“We are working constructively with Connecticut SHPO to reach an agreeable solution,” Spiritos wrote in an email.

If the project is successful in obtaining the CHFA bonding approval in November, construction would start in fall 2021 with completion and occupancy anticipated for a year later, fall of 2022.

WEB Chair Nadine Horton pronounced the project beautiful and said she was ​“very happy” to contemplate its arrival in town.“Too many times the affordable is bland or boxy,” she said as the meeting concluded. ​“It doesn’t have to be cheap to be beautiful.”