Lot Transformed Into ​“Parkside Crossing”

City and state officials joined Randy Salvatore to cut the ribbon — and to enjoy the view from a tricked-out rooftop — on his latest completed project, an upscale development in the Hill.

The event marked the opening of Parkside Crossing at 22 Gold St., the first of five apartment complexes Salvatore is building as part of New Haven’s broader Hill-to-Downtown Community filling in land between the train station and Yale’s medical district..

The four-story, mixed-use building is home to 110 apartments and infills a surface lot adjacent to Amistad Park.

Thursday’s ribbon cutting was the first realization of a plan for community revitalization that was 10 years in the making.

“Just 55 weeks since we were last on this property for the ceremonial groundbreaking,” Mayor Toni Harp said. ​“Boy, what a difference 55 weeks makes. That is really great progress.”

Harp thanked all the many people involved with making the first phase of the project and the future Hill-to-Downtown projects and how they ​“continue moving all of New Haven forward.”

“Today we celebrate additional progress to make the best and highest use of New Haven’s relatively small footprint,” she said.

Thursday’s ribbon-cutting marked the third in New Haven for Stamford-based Salvatore and his RMS Companies in New Haven, after the downtown Novella apartment complex and the Blake Hotel. He said he continues to be bullish about the future of the Elm City and is looking forward eventually to bringing nearly 600 apartments to the Hill. If all goes according to plan, he could be finished in about 30 months, he said.

Preleasing of Parkside at City Crossing started about six weeks ago. So far 31 of the apartments have been rented, Salvatore said.

A studio rents for $1,710 a month. Three-bedrooms start at $3,875. Thirty-three of the apartments rent for less, aimed at people making up to 80 percent of area media income.

“You have truly created a business-friendly culture here,” he said. ​“It is why I continue to invest and continue to be so bullish on the future here.”

Michael Piscitelli, the city’s acting city economic development administrator, said that the Parkside resulted from neighbors, business and legislative entities getting together to do the hard work of trying ​“to figure out what to do with the legacy of urban renewal and how to create a city that is responsive to the economy that was coming our way.”

“I can tell you as a planner how important it is to start with planning,” he said.

Now, he said, New Haven’s ​“innovation economy” is being bolstered by the more than $400 million in National Institute of Health grants that come through Yale School of Medicine, the bioscience pipeline created at 100 College St., the recent announcement of the $838 million investment in a state-of-the-art neuroscience center at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and the efforts of the city to improve train service and access through Tweed. The people drawn to all those developments ​“need a place to live, to work and play right here in the city.”

Salvatore said that the additional phases of his Hill projects are underway. (Read the latest about that here.) So is the process of making sure that all of those buildings will have at least 30 percent of the apartments affordable to people making up to 80 percent of the area median income. Thirty-three of the Parkside apartments have been reserved for affordable housing.

At Thursday’s event, the builder thanked Connecticut’s Department of Housing Development for its help in making the affordability piece of the project a reality and thanked them in advance for any help with making it further realized in the future phases.

“We cannot wait for the next bond commission meeting,” he said.

Click the video below to catch all the official remarks including Department of Economic Community Development Commissioner David Lehman and Nathan Karnes, a financial project manager of the Connecticut Department of Housing Development.