by Thomas Breen
A rendering of the future 10 Liberty St. apartment complex.
At the construction site on Monday.
Another 150 new apartments are on the rise in the Hill — as the site of a former Liberty Street lighting manufacturer turns into a new $70 million affordable housing complex.
City and state officials gathered with New York-based developers in a tent at the 10 Liberty St. construction site Monday for a press conference — followed by a groundbreaking — to celebrate the city’s newest residential development.
The 150-unit complex has been spearheaded by the Cortell Development Group and WBP Development LLC, and has received an influx of funds from the state Department of Housing (DOH), the Connecticut Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA), the state’s Brownfield Remediation Program, and Bank of America.
Developer Jonathan Cortell and state DOH Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno said that 149 of the new apartments will be deed restricted at below-market rents for tenants making between 30 percent and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), with an average AMI for the affordable units of 60 percent. That currently translates to an annual income of between $27,300 and $72,800 for a family of two. (The one other apartment at the complex will be reserved for a building superintendent, Cortell said; that unit is not subject to the other rentals’ affordability provisions, as the super’s income will exceed the other units’ maximum AMI.)
Cortell said that this project, which has been in the works for several years, almost fell apart thanks to a provision in the Donald Trump-signed One Big Beautiful Bill that gutted energy-efficiency tax credits originally included in the Joe Biden-signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This new complex at 10 Liberty St. includes a geothermal-powered heating and cooling system as well as a solar array.
Cotrell said that this project was able to benefit from those originally planned for Biden-era tax credits after all because the 10 Liberty development was far enough along, having secured necessary construction permits. Similar such projects, however, will not be able to secure such a benefit thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill.
Speaker after speaker at Monday’s presser celebrated the team effort that has brought 10 Liberty to a groundbreaking — with a completion date ideally within 18 months.
“This is such a community undertaking,” Cotrell said. He praised New Haven for being uniquely receptive to new affordable housing developments, especially ones so close to a major state transit hub in the nearby Union Station.
“We love putting shovels in the ground and getting these projects going,” Mayor Justin Elicker said, noting the city’s goal of 10,000 new homes in ten years, with 30 percent affordable.
Mosquera-Bruno, a long-time former New Haven affordable housing nonprofit leader, said that the state’s housing department provided $16.5 million in subsidies for this project.
She also said that her very first apartment in New Haven, after immigrating from her home country of Ecuador, was in the Hill at Kimberly Avenue and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. She recalled walking ten blocks each way to the area of Liberty Street to drop off her daughter at daycare before getting a ride with a friend to her factory job in Branford.
The governor and the state’s legislature have provided the funds to help make projects like this happen, she said about 10 Liberty. “There is no excuse for us not to do this work.”
Mayor Elicker: “Build build build.”
Housing Commissioner Mosquera-Bruno.
Developer Jonathan Cotrell.