A new plan for mixed-use development inside New Haven’s Science Park aimed at reconnecting and reviving the neighborhood earned approval from the city planning commission this week.
Twining Properties and L&M Development Partners pitched a new 287-unit residential complex dubbed “Winchester Green” to the planners on Wednesday. The project won approval, along with two new streets connecting to Winchester Avenue and a public plaza designed to enliven the area.
“Today… nobody’s going to stroll down Winchester Avenue. It’s dead,” Alex Twining, a New York-based developer who has built several projects inside Science Park, told the commission. Plans to lower retail rents, slow traffic and create new public spaces should create more life in the 56-acre area, originally redeveloped as office space.
“We want to slow down the traffic, make people actually slow down and see what’s there,” Twining said.
Now home to a parking lot, the new apartment complex would offer rental apartments in a range of sizes, with 20% set aside as affordable. New parking for the complex would be built across the parcel where two derelict buildings stand now.
Also debuting would be two streets cutting across the “superblock” formed by Division, Winchester, Mansfield and Munson streets, reviving historic routes from north to south and east to west. The intent is to break down the isolation of Science Park and draw people in to shop, eat and relax.
136 new one-bedrooms approved for Chapel and Olive
Earlier in the meeting, planners gave approval to the site plan for another new rental building planned for the area adjacent to Wooster Square, at 78 Olive St.
That structure, next to the State Street Metro North station, will consist of 136 one-bedroom apartments and 35 parking spaces, with 10% of units set aside as affordable.
Developer PMC Property Group was urged to meet with the community to continue talks on environmental and other concerns. The 13-story apartment complex will rise next to the Strouse Adler building, also developed by PMC.
New housing planned for ‘missing tooth’ at Chapel and State
On the opposite corner of State and Chapel, developer BC Chapel Street LLC asked the commission to approve zoning changes to add more residential units in space originally designated as commercial.
A set of buildings at 742, 754, 756 and 760-768 Chapel and 294, 300 and 310 State would be renovated to allow for a total of 76 units, with 80% set aside as affordable. Much of the site plan has already been approved, but developers were seeking to fix a “missing tooth” section of the project at 300 State and allow for first-floor residential occupancy.
The construction of so much new housing in what was once prime downtown commercial space reflects an ongoing shift in New Haven real estate, Commissioner Adam Marchand said.
“There was solid reasoning behind the decisions that led to certain downtown zones having a requirement for first-floor commercial space, because there was a time when there was a strong demand for commercial occupants,” Marchand said. “You know we’re operating in a different environment when it’s actually preferable to have people living on the first floor than having empty storefronts with nothing happening in them.”
Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.
