🔒Amid housing shortage, Fairfield County is a hotbed for affordable multifamily development proposals

Fairfield County has become prime real estate for affordable multifamily development as the highly desirable region close to New York City faces a significant housing shortage, developers and land-use lawyers say.

The shortage is primarily due to local zoning boards adopting regulations that did not allow multifamily housing over the past half-century, said Dominick Thomas, a Derby attorney who represents developers proposing multifamily housing proposals in Shelton, a Fairfield County city of around 42,000 residents.

“Therefore they weren’t built, and therefore you ended up with a housing shortage,” he told the Hartford Business Journal. “When a zoning commission says we don’t want housing because we don’t want housing, that isn’t operating rationally in accordance with good planning. A lot of the commissions, I think, have become insular.”

The state has a shortage of as many as 350,000 residential units, primarily due to its restrictive regulatory environment, according to a recent report from the CBIA Foundation for Economic Growth & Opportunity.

Developers have responded to the shortage by proposing numerous multifamily projects, often under the state’s 8-30g affordable housing statute, which allows builders to override local zoning regulations if a town’s affordable housing inventory is below 10% of their overall housing stock.

That’s the case in many Connecticut communities, particularly in wealthy Fairfield County.

Developers who invoke 8-30g must make at least 30% of a project’s apartments affordable for 40 years.

In the past seven years, Thomas has represented developers who have won approvals for nine multifamily housing plans that have resulted in 680 new apartments in Shelton.

They include a Bridgeport developer’s 152-unit project at 452 River Road, and Greenwich property owner Richard Kral Jr.’s plan to build 35 condos and 110 apartments on the Housatonic River.

John Abene, a Shelton developer represented by Thomas, recently received approval to build 100 apartments at Fountain Square Center, at 801 Bridgeport Ave., in Shelton. Agim and Shprsa Ismali, a married Shelton couple also represented by Thomas, have recently received approvals for a 30-unit apartment building, at 2 Mohawk Drive.

All of these Shelton projects were approved under the state’s 8-30g affordable housing statute, Thomas said.

Other Fairfield County municipalities that have seen significant multifamily development proposals include Stamford, Norwalk, Danbury, Fairfield and Westport.

Over the past decade, the rental stock in the Stamford-Norwalk area has increased 36%, with development accelerating in recent years, according to a report by real estate services firm Institutional Property Advisors. More apartments were built from 2019 to 2024 in the region, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, than in the prior five years, the report said.

Stamford alone has added about 15,000 apartment units over the past decade, growing its multifamily inventory by about 56% to 40,000 units.

“A key factor aiding demand for these rentals has been transit access,” the Institutional Property Advisors report said. “The majority of post-pandemic openings were within a few miles of Interstate 95, Route 1 or the Metro-North rail line.”

‘Plainly ridiculous’ activity

The town of Fairfield, home to around 64,000 residents, is one of the more active municipalities in Connecticut when it comes to multifamily development.

The town’s Planning and Zoning Commission is currently reviewing seven 8-30g multifamily housing proposals that, if approved, would result in more than 1,000 new apartment units.

Many of those proposals have come in since the start of the year, after the town in December applied to the state Department of Housing for permission to implement a four-year affordable housing moratorium.

The state granted that request a few months ago, which exempts Fairfield from 8-30g requirements until April 2029. A municipality is eligible for a moratorium each time it shows it has added affordable housing units, measured in housing unit equivalent (HUE) points, equaling the greater of 2% of the housing stock, as of the last decennial census, or 75 HUE points, according to the Office of Legislative Research.

Fairfield’s affordable housing stock makes up 3.05% of the town’s total housing inventory, according to the town’s website.

Mark Barnhart, Fairfield’s economic development director, noted five other towns in Connecticut have been granted 8-30g moratoria since 2020: Brookfield, New Canaan, Orange, South Windsor and Waterford.

However, multifamily proposals submitted in Fairfield before the moratorium officially went into effect, can still move forward through the approval process.

Those projects include Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners’ plan to replace an 80-room Circle Hotel, at 441 Post Road, with a six-story, 493,710-square-foot apartment building with 478 units.

In mid-March, Bridgeport-based Primrose Companies proposed a three-building, 204-unit apartment complex, at 4221 Black Rock Turnpike.

Easton developer Stephen Shapiro is seeking approval for two 8-30g multifamily housing plans: a 100-unit apartment building at the site of St. Emery’s School, at 108 Biro St., and a 39-unit apartment building, at 1477 Congress St.

Across the street from the school, Fairfield developer Eric Delaurentis plans to demolish St. Emery’s rectory, at 105 Biro St., to make room for a 140-unit apartment building.

Shapiro also has an approved 8-30g project for 19 apartments at 430 and 452 Stillson Road, in Fairfield.

“Any town that’s desirable, especially with the housing shortage we have, whether it’s Fairfield, Westport, Darien — you name it — people are going to want to develop in those areas,” Shapiro said.

He said his largest proposed project in Fairfield, the redevelopment of the St. Emery’s School site, “makes sense” because it would provide multifamily housing near the train station, alleviating the need to drive on traffic-congested Post Road, Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway.

Such transit-oriented development has been a major focus in Connecticut.

“We want to put housing by where jobs are and transportation is,” he said. “If you put housing by public transit, that’ll help solve the problem.”

Fairfield has always attracted multifamily developers because it’s a highly desirable community on Long Island Sound and close to New York City that draws top dollar for real estate, said Barnhart, the town’s economic development director.

“That’s why these guys are in the business that they’re in,” he said. “They’re not trying to provide affordable housing units out of the goodness of their hearts.”

He said the recent frenzy of 8-30g proposals has caused the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission to meet more regularly (weekly instead of biweekly) since January.

“I don’t know that they anticipated something like we’re seeing here,” he said. “I think that it’s plainly ridiculous.”

Shapiro said he has several other smaller multifamily housing plans across Fairfield County — including in Stratford, Trumbull and Shelton — that don’t include affordable housing components, which typically require higher-density development, but instead focus on middle-income housing.

There is also a significant need for that type of apartment stock in the state, he said.

“8-30g affordable housing — that density — makes sense in some areas, but it doesn’t in others,” he said. “There’s not that happy medium with the middle housing, and I think that’s something that, at the state level, we really need to work on in general, whether it’s Fairfield County, New Haven County, Hartford County, wherever.”