Developers of the Dixwell Plaza revitalization project are ready to start construction after securing private funds and receiving a $10-million allocation from the state Bond Commission. The project includes replacing a mostly vacant shopping plaza with a mixed-use development including nearly 150 housing units, 20% of which will be affordable, and 15 affordable townhouses. ConnCORP, […]
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Developers of the Dixwell Plaza revitalization project are ready to start construction after securing private funds and receiving a $10-million allocation from the state Bond Commission.
The project includes replacing a mostly vacant shopping plaza with a mixed-use development including nearly 150 housing units, 20% of which will be affordable, and 15 affordable townhouses.
ConnCORP, the new for-profit community economic development arm of workforce development nonprofit ConnCAT, is spearheading the project.
The redevelopment targets a 7.6-acre site that will be revitalized into a retail, business, residential and cultural center with a 300-seat performing arts center, banquet hall and restaurants, supermarket, retail sites, development agency headquarters and an entrepreneurial incubator for minority-owned businesses, along with an early child-care center and greenhouses for urban farming initiatives.
ConnCORP CEO Erik Clemons said this is his agency’s signature project within a portfolio of other ambitious ventures that aim to rejuvenate neglected parts of the city.
“In our eyes, we're always set on Dixwell and Newhallville in New Haven, one because it's a primarily Black neighborhood community and it has languished in poverty for decades now,” Clemons said. “We believe that we should be aggressively addressing poverty all over the city, especially in African-American neighborhoods. That's really the genesis and orientation of why we chose to do this.”
Economic benefits
With state funding in place, including an additional $2 million for site remediation, ConnCORP officials are looking to demolish the plaza and Elks Club buildings in the first quarter of 2023, and break ground for construction in the second or third quarter of the new year. The project will run in two phases, and should take about three years, Clemons said.
The project is expected to generate 700 permanent jobs and 600 construction jobs, with an economic impact of nearly $700 million by year 10 for the Dixwell area and hundreds of millions more throughout New Haven, Clemons said.
He praised the public and private support for the project, from state legislators and groups like the Department of Economic and Community Development who “helped champion our cause and who saw this project as we saw it … as a transformative project,” Clemons said.
The $10 million will go toward the start of construction, with each area of the project as important as the next.
“This is a community center development project,” Clemons said. “This isn’t us coming into the neighborhood and saying ‘we’re going to do this.’ … We were intentional about sitting with the community and hearing from the community for the last two to three years. So what we are delivering is in response to what we heard the community say they wanted and needed.”
ConnCORP has funding in place to start construction but is still looking toward public and private investors, including philanthropy, and negotiating financing with banks.
This work by ConnCORP and its partners helps to reinforce the significance of cultural equity and restore the Dixwell area in a manner that is forward-thinking, said New Haven Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli.
He praised the development agency for its work on this and other projects, saying “ConnCORP has emerged as one of the leading workforce development partners in all of southern Connecticut.”
