• RJ Development & Advisors LLC’s plans to build a new five-story, 176-unit apartment complex at 291 and 309 Ashmun St. and 176 – 186 Canal St. The fenced-in 1.7 acre site bounded by Henry Street, Canal Street, and Ashmun Street is currently owned by the city, and that the Board of Alders voted in December 2020 to sell to local developer Yves Joseph for $500,000. The project will also include 97 on-site parking spaces for cars and 38 parking spots for bikes.
Joseph said Wednesday night that the project has been in the works since 2016, when his company first responded to a city request for proposals (RFP) to buy and develop the publicly owned lot into a new mixed-use, mixed-income housing project.
As part of the Development and Land Disposition Agreement (DLDA) and tax break deal approved by the alders in 2020, the new apartment complex must set aside 33 percent of its units at deed-restricted below-market rents over the course of the 15-year accord. (See here for more details.)
This was the one large new apartment project approved Wednesday night that would not have been affected by the IZ law set to take effect Friday, because it already had a separate alder-approved affordability agreement in place. (The IZ law will not apply to all existing apartment complexes and and will also not apply to all development projects for which plans were submitted to the city prior to Feb. 18.)
Joseph told commissioners Wednesdaynight that the design and groundfloor amenity spaces of this project are meant to inspire “activity, energy, and use of what I think is a remarkable and quite possibly underutilized amenity of our City of New Haven” — that is, the adjacent Farmington Canal trail. He said the ground floor of the building will include both bike storage and a “bike maintenance shop” to further that goal.
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