171 More Apartments Planned For 9th Square

by Mona Mahadevan The New Haven independent

Mark Wilson: “Parking people takes precedent to parking cars.” Credit: MONA MAHADEVAN PHOTO

The project is planned for these city-owned parking lots, which are next to a Hertz.

The Elicker administration plans to sell a handful of George Street parking lots to a public-private development team looking to build 171 new apartments — as well as a dumpster alley for adjacent condo dwellers.

Preliminary plans for the development were presented Wednesday evening at Gateway Community College, located at 20 Church St.

Around 15 people attended the meeting, including city Neighborhood and Commercial Development Manager Mark Wilson, Hill Alder Carmen Rodriguez, and six residents of the neighboring condominium complex, Trader’s Block.

As detailed on Wednesday, the new-apartment plan includes an accommodation for Trader’s Block residents — namely, a five-foot-wide alley designed to be just large enough for the wheeling out of dumpsters. (See more on that below.)

First discussed at a press conference in July 2024, the project is part of the Elicker administration’s broader efforts to transform Ninth Square’s large stretches of asphalt into mixed-use buildings. This particular development is slated to be built on city-owned parking lots on the northern side of George Street, between Hertz’s rental car agency and Orange Street. The Glendower Group, the nonprofit development wing of New Haven’s public housing authority, and the New York City-based developer LMXD are leading the project in a joint partnership.

Wednesday’s community meeting took place roughly a month after the Board of Alders approved selling a pair of nearby city-owned surface parking lots, on State Street near Fair Street, for $1.29 million to co-developers Gilbane and Xenolith, which plan on constructing 450 new apartments.

Jake Pine, a managing director at LMXD, presented their plans for a seven-story, 156,000-square-foot apartment building. He said 3,700 square feet on the ground floor would be reserved for retail, and that the second floor would host amenities, including a fitness center, outdoor patio, co-working area, and lounge. Those communal spaces will likely be powered through solar panels on the roof.

The co-developers are looking to purchase the publicly owned lots from the city and secure all financing by the second quarter of 2026, Wilson said. After that, they’ve budgeted 24 months for construction and another 12 for leasing, meaning the development is projected to be fully complete in 2029.

They expect to source funding from both public and private sources, though nothing has been confirmed yet, Wilson said. While they expect to receive some money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in general, they’re still in “wait-and-see” mode with federal funding options.

According to Pine, of the 171 units planned for the new building, 51 will be designated as “affordable,” with income limits ranging from 30 to 80 percent of the area median income (which currently translates to an annual income of between $27,300 and $72,800 for a two-person household). The complex will offer units ranging from studios to three bedrooms, with larger units skewing to be more affordable. The exact breakdown can be found in a chart below.

“New Haven is in a housing crisis,” Wilson said, pointing to the 30,000 people seeking rental assistance on the Housing Authority’s waiting list. The goal of this development, and others like it, is to create “natural affordability” by increasing the housing supply, he said.