School Reborn As 30 ​“Affordable” Apts

An empty school building is about to fill up again on Prince Street — this time with tenants, not students, in one the fastest-changing blocks in town.

The city cut the ribbon Wednesday on 30 new ​“affordable” apartments on the street, inside the rehabbed former Welch Annex School.

Two dozen local politicians and city and state officials joined Stamford developer Randy Salvatore Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the completion of the school-to-housing conversion at the 90-year-old brick building at 49 Prince St.

The 30 new studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments at the corner of Prince and Gold Streets marked the latest in a flood of new housing that Salvatore’s RMS Companies has brought to that section of the Hill in recent years as part of the three-phase, five-building Hill to Downtown redevelopment plan.

Salvatore’s company has already built and opened three new residential buildings within a short walk from the Welch Annex conversion.

Those include 110 apartments at the Parkside Crossing complex at 22 Gold St. (opened in 2019), 90 apartments at the Maddox complex at 216 Congress Ave. (opened in 2020), and 104 apartments at the Aura complex at 246 Lafayette St. (opened in January 2021).

In addition to the 30 new apartments now open at 49 Prince St., RMS is also in the process of building 223 additional apartments a half-block away at 9 Tower Lane, at a complex to be called the Pierpont.

A neighborhood destroyed during mid-20th Century Urban Renewal has arisen again from the asphalt.

“Just a few years ago these parcels were either vacant parking lots or, in the case of 49 Prince St., a dilapidated, leaking, asbestos-filled building,” Salvatore (pictured at right, with Mayor Elicker) noted at Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting.

Now the lots are bursting with new housing that, according to Salvatore and RMS Director of Property Management Maria Ruales, is 97 percent occupied.

That number applies to the three buildings already open. The new Welch Annex School apartments are all built and open to rent, with tenants expected to start moving in this summer, according to RMS.

All of this right is next to a flurry of construction underway as part of the next phase of the city’s Downtown Crossing neighborhood-restitching project, and near the planned new 10-story bioscience office and lab tower at 101 College. St.

“New Haven has long been the cultural and intellectual capital of Connecticut,” state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) Commissioner David Lehman (pictured at right) said. ​“It’s clear now that it’s also the economic capital, the economic driver of the state.”

All ​“Affordable”

Many of the speakers on Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting lineup focused on how the 30 apartments at the former Welch Annex School are deed-restricted to affordable rents.

Two of the studio apartments will be restricted at 25 percent or less of the area median income (AMI), six studios at 50 percent AMI, 10 studios at 60 percent AMI, four one-bedrooms at 60 percent AMI, and eight two-bedrooms at 60 percent AMI.

Per a 17-year tax abatement deal approved by the Board of Alders last September for this project, Salvatore’s company must keep the 30 apartments at those below-market rents for a minimum of 42 years. The Welch Annex School apartments also received a host of government subsidies, including 4 percent low-income tax credits, $500,000 worth of city Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds, a $2,751,000 loan from the state Department of Housing, and a construction to permanent loan from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) worth up to $3.75 million.

Mayor Justin Elicker thanked Salvatore for ​“going above and beyond” in including ​“deeply affordable” apartments at the new 49 Prince St. complex, which he said was built in 1930 as St. Anthony School. ​“It looks pretty spiffy today,” he said.

Acting Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Arlevia Samuel praised Salvatore for helping make ​“this whole neighborhood a much more inviting and pleasant place to live.”

Hill Alder Carmen Rodriguez said that new apartment complexes like this one are exactly what the Board of Alders wants to support. That’s why it listed the creation and preservation of affordable housing as one of its top five priorities on its recently-passed legislative agenda.

“This is what we need in the Hill,” she said. ​“We need affordable. We need folks to feel part of the community they live in. … We are going to push so that we have one New Haven that is safe, affordable, and for everyone.”

So, how much will these apartments actually rent for, given their deed-restricted affordable rates?

According to a table provided by RMS’ Ruales, the 25 percent AMI studios will start out at rents of $375 per month, the 50 percent AMI studios at $826, the 60 percent AMI studios at $1,006, the 60 percent AMI one-bedroms at $1,062, and the 60 percent two-bedrooms at $1,261.

Ruales said that more than two-thirds of tenants who occupy the roughly 300 apartments in the already-open Parkside Crossing, Maddox, and Aura apartments are in some way connected with Yale New Haven Hospital or Yale University. Many are medical residents and hospital staff, she said.

Who does she expect will rent these new deed-restricted affordable apartments at 49 Prince St.?

“We’re looking for the same demographic,” she said. The lowest-rent units are designed for ​“someone looking to get back into the workforce, someone just starting work again.”

The 60 percent AMI units, which make up the bulk of the projects, are likely ​“mostly for employees of the hospital, nurses, housekeepers.”

Is there enough demand to fill these 30 apartments at the former Welch Annex School, and the 223 additional apartments soon to open at 9 Tower Ln.?

“I am hopeful,” Ruales said. Based on the 97 percent occupancy rate across the buildings already open, she said, the demand appears to be there.

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Wednesday’s press conference in full.