by Thomas Breen The New Haven independent
… for 168 new apartments being built at Twenty Fair.
Another 168 apartments are on the rise in Wooster Square — along a formerly commercial-industrial corridor that has exploded with new residential development in the past half decade.
That newest apartment complex is called Twenty Fair.
The “Fair” in the name refers to Fair Street, a block of which — between Olive and Union Streets — has been closed to through traffic since the early 1960s.
As Mayor Justin Elicker, city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli, and co-developers Darren Seid and Frank Caico said at Friday’s groundbreaking ceremony, that street will be reopened to pedestrians and cyclists — and will include benches, trees, and other landscaping — in an effort to better connect Wooster Square with downtown.
And then there’s the building itself.
As Elicker and Seid joked on Friday, “groundbreaking” isn’t quite the right word for Friday’s ceremony, as the seven-story building has already gone vertical.
When complete — in time for the summer 2026 “leasing season,” as Seid put it — it will contain 168 studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments, all to be rented out at market rates. A Friday press release states that the project represents “a $60 million investment in the neighborhood.”
Piscitelli put this development in the context of the three other apartment buildings that have sprung up on the block in recent years, including the 299-unit “Olive & Wooster” in 2022 and the 230-unit “The Whit” in 2023. New Haven has “the strongest housing market anywhere in southern New England,” he said.
He said that New Haven issued 570 new housing permits last year alone, and pointed out that the city will be hosting the YIMBYtown conference later this month — to bring together pro-housing politicians, policy wonks, and activists.
“If you have a lot more supply,” Elicker said on Friday, “you’re going to help with affordability as well.”
Caico, a vice president of the Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, and Epimoni, the lead of a New York City-based firm called Epimoni, spoke warmly about what started as a “friendly competitive relationship” in 2017 — when Spinnaker owned the old Comcast site that would become The Whit and Epimoni was looking to build Olive & Wooster — and that has turned into a co-developer partnership.
Seid said that, in addition to having 168 new apartments, Twenty Fair will have 11,000 square feet of rooftop amenity space — “maybe the largest” of any apartment-building rooftop in New Haven — as well as more than 1,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.
Co-developers Darren Seid and Frank Caico.
The future Fair Street “greenway,” looking west from Olive Street.
Alder Carmen Rodriguez: More apartments make for a “safer space for everyone to enjoy.”