Developers and city officials on Wednesday marked the start of construction of a 398-unit apartment project at 201 Munson St. in New Haven that had been delayed for years by the pandemic.
As a cold wind raced across the 13-acre site and equipment roared in the background, William Cote, CEO of Hudson Meridian Construction Group, told of the project’s struggles to get to the ground-breaking.
“It’s been a long road here at 201 Munson,” Cote said, describing how his company bought the site four years ago with the intention of breaking ground in March 2020. “The world changed with COVID,” he added. Banks put lending on hold and Cote and his partners struggled to secure financing.
ACORE Capital and Sculptor Real Estate finally agreed to bankroll the project in a $78 million deal announced in May.
“The team of Sculptor and ACORE stepped forward and believed in the project and New Haven and came to support us,” Cote said. The deal was arranged by Tessera Partners and Capital & Venture Resources, with New Haven investor Paredim Partners LLC partnering with Hudson Meridian.
Now visible only as concrete foundations studded with steel supports amid piles of dirt, the finished apartments will consist of 90 studios, 208 one-bedroom units, 78 two-bedroom units and 22 three-bedroom units housed in 21 three-story townhouses.
The planned complex, due to be completed in 18 to 24 months, will also feature a 20,000- square-foot amenities building, 474 surface and garage parking spaces, bicycle parking, and storage units, for a total of 489,000 square feet of new construction.
All of the new apartments will be rented at market rate due to the project’s approval prior to the city’s recent inclusionary zoning law, which mandates a percentage of affordable housing in certain developments.
More housing of all types is needed in the city and developments like 201 Munson will help keep rents reasonable, Mayor Justin Elicker said at the ground-breaking.
“While technically there are no affordable units as a part of this project, I think that having many, many more units in the marketplace naturally will help alleviate some of the pressure on the prices around housing,” Elicker said.
The 201 Munson project is also significant because the land was once contaminated due to its use in the last century for firearms manufacturing by Winchester Repeating Arms and Olin Corp., Elicker added. The property, with frontage along Munson and the Farmington Canal Greenway, had long lain vacant as a neighborhood eyesore.
The site was “underutilized for many, many years and not just underutilized but a detriment to the community,” Elicker said. “This development was done in a way that was collaborative with the community,” he said, adding, “It took a long time to get there.”
Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.
