The view from Dixwell Ave, featuring Bluey.
Outdoor patio space: movie screenings coming soon?
Tenants have almost entirely filled up a long-in-the-works, church-affiliated affordable housing development in Dixwell that opened its doors to new renters late last year.
The 69 total apartments — bound by Dixwell Avenue, Munson Street, and Orchard Street — were first proposed in 2018 by Beulah Land Development Corporation. They have since been built with the help of Spiritos Properties LLC and New York City-based nonprofit HELP USA. Construction began in 2022.
The lot is the former home of a gas station and parking lot where Joe Grate used to set up his popular barbecue stand.
The Dixwell-Munson-Orchard apartments, spanning the addresses of 340 Dixwell, 316 Dixwell, and 783 Orchard, received a Certificate of Use and Occupancy on Dec. 30, 2025, according to city Building Department records.
“I love leasing out new apartments, especially when it’s a first apartment,” said Property Manager Irma Ross on Thursday. “I get excited too.”
Ross is employed by New Neighborhoods, an affordable housing management company.
Administrative Assistant Takai Dixon, who also works for New Neighborhoods, said that tenants began moving in at the end of last year and nearly filled up the two-building complex in February.
Out of those 69 apartments, Ross said, only two one-bedroom, market-rate units are left — and one woman was going to be coming by later to pick up the keys to one of those apartments.
“We really try to make it a great experience for residents,” Ross said. She said that the complex’s two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments filled up quickly.
The two buildings are made of mass timber — an environmentally friendly construction method that prioritizes using wood, a renewable resource, over concrete and steel. The wood, imported from Austria, spans the inside of the buildings, even accenting tenants’ apartments.
Ross said she has heard from tenants that “they love the wood because it’s unique and comforting.”
Beulah, a nonprofit affiliated with Dixwell’s Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church, entered an agreement with the city in 2022 for a 30-year tax break for the project. Headed by CEO Darrell Brooks, the company also received a Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) award of $1,582,761 in tax credits for the project.
Fifty five of the total units are affordable for families making up to 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), or $67,920 for a family of four. The remaining 14 units are rented out at market rates.
Beulah has been building affordable rental and owner-occupied housing since the 1997 shooting of 7-month-old baby Danielle Taft devastated the church’s neighborhood on Orchard Street, at a time when the drug trade thrived in rooming houses on the block owned by absentee landlords.
Both of the new affordable-apartment buildings have multipurpose rooms, laundry rooms (only three-bedroom apartments have in-unit laundry machines), and storage rooms. The building at 340 Dixwell has a gym and a patio, and tenants from either building are able to access them.
Dixon said that one multipurpose room is set to be used by a tenant this weekend for her child’s first birthday. New Reach, which also has offices on-site, also uses the space.
“I like the communication with tenants,” he said. He is hoping to organize a movie screening on the outdoor patio some time soon, with the weather warming up, as there are also plenty of kids in the buildings.
Maya McFadden contributed reporting.