Bridgeport to turn 100-year-old vacant school into 70 affordable apartments: ‘Meets a need’

BRIDGEPORT — A vacant Bridgeport school will soon be turned into 70 affordable apartments. 

The former Waltersville School at 167 Steuben St. was built around 1900 and was in use for about 100 years. It has been vacant since 2009.

The building will be restored to its “historic glory,” said William Coleman, deputy director of Bridgeport’s Economic Development Department, about the $38 million project. The building will be called Waltersville Commons. 

“We’ll have some nice new apartments coming online, and we’ll have some more affordable options to live within the east side of the city,” Coleman said. “It certainly meets a need.”

All 70 apartments will be deed-restricted affordable rental units. The apartments will serve households earning between 30% and 80% of the area’s median income, according to the Connecticut Department of Housing and the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, in a statement announcing the news. 

The building will contain one- and two-bedroom apartments with nine units designated for supportive housing, which is housing for people with disabilities, temporary housing for the homeless, “halfway house” settings and other forms of housing where residents are getting assistance in either transitioning to apartment life or need assistance for life.

“The affordable housing crises is real,” Coleman said. 

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim has a citywide goal of creating 6,000 new housing units by 2030. 

“Bridgeport wants to make sure it achieves that goal by the end of the decade, with 30 percent of those units as deed-restricted affordable. The city now has 2,500 and 3,000 new units, including those that are in the predevelopment and planning stages,” Coleman said. 

APEX Building Group in Harlem, N.Y., is renovating the building, which is expected to take 18 to 24 months.

Amenities will include security features, a laundry room, an auditorium, a community room and open space.

The school, which sat empty for nearly two decades, can’t be repurposed for any other type of use, Coleman said.

“It’s a school that (the city) has decided is obsolete,” he said. “The facility is too old to really provide the kind of setting they want for their students.”

Two schools — Barnum School on Waterview Avenue and the new Waltersville School on Hallett Street — were built several blocks away from the former Waltersville School building. After those schools were built, the city decommissioned the older building. 

The news about the 70 affordable apartments was liked over 400 times, drew 160 comments and was shared 50 times on a Bridgeport social media page. The overwhelming majority of the comments were highly favorable. 

The former Waltersville school is one of nine developments across the state to receive state financing for a total of 627 units to be created or preserved, according to a statement from the state Department of Housing and the state Housing Finance Authority. 

The other developments — in Avon, Hamden, Montville, New London, Newtown, South Windsor, and West Hartford, and a second in Bridgeport — will include a total of 359 affordable units for low- and moderate-income renters, of which 72 will be designated as permanent supportive housing. 

In 2011, a developer, EHDOC-BLD Waltersville School LLC, a partnership between Steel Point developer Bridgeport Landing Development and the Elderly Housing Development and Operations Corp., both of Florida, was chosen to purchase the old school building.

The developer wanted to convert the old school into 60 low-income housing units for the elderly. Ultimately, however, they were unable to secure financing for its project, Coleman said.

“Citing the difficulties and cost of funding the historic restoration, their last iteration of the project concept actually called for the demolition of the school and for new construction in its place,” he said. “Although it took longer to get to where we are today, it is a welcome result to be able to preserve this part of the city’s history and to give it new life.