The former University Row Homes on Henry Street. Credit: Thomas Breen file photo
The housing authority is moving toward its goal of redeveloping seven apartments at the historic University Row Homes, a year and a half after buying the now-vacant property for $825,000 at a foreclosure auction.
That progress came in the form of a $400,000 predevelopment loan, which the Housing Authority of New Haven’s (HANH) Board of Commissioners approved for the Glendower Group, its nonprofit development arm, at its latest monthly meeting last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, another investor in an adjacent grouping of Dixwell row homes — Madison-based landlord Alex Opuszynski — expects that his 18 one-bedroom and four-bedroom units will be ready by the end of spring.
The housing authority’s predevelopment loan is expected to fund a variety of work that is needed to reach financial closing and begin construction — including environmental testing, hazardous materials assessments, architectural and engineering review, historic preservation coordination, and financial modeling at 133-137 Henry St.
“We’re right at the point to begin to incur funds,” said Ed LaChance, Glendower’s vice president of development. “We want to formalize that through a predevelopment loan.”
“These units are vacant?” Board Chair William Kilpatrick asked.
LaChance confirmed. “It’s not currently inhabitable. It needs a lot of work.”
The loan was approved unanimously by present commissioners Kilpatrick, Danya Keene, and Kevin Alvarez.
University Row Homes is a three-story brick building that includes multiple addresses on the northern side of Henry Street between Orchard Street and Dixwell Avenue. Three of its properties went to foreclosure auction in the summer of 2024, after two years of unpaid taxes and interest. (Read more about the ownership confusion and mismanagement allegations surrounding the former co-op properties here.)
At the time, the roofs needed serious repair work. Tenants whom the Independent spoke to in 2024 described putting out buckets to catch water each time it rained.
Private Landlord/Developer: “We’re Crushing It”
Real estate investors ultimately outbid the housing authority at the first two of three auctions. Alpha Acquisitions and Vanguard Private Client Services CEO Alex Opuszynski won 139 Henry with a bid of $1 million. Jianchao Xu, or “JC,” won 127 Henry with a final bid of $480,000, as submitted by his company Nash Street New Haven, LLP. HANH then won the property at 133-137 Henry St. in the third foreclosure auction with a bid of $825,000.
Xu ultimately sold 127 Henry to Opuszynski, who now owns the properties on either side of the housing authority’s.
Last year, Opuszynski’s company received zoning relief to turn his properties into a total of 18 apartments rather than 12, while reducing the total number of bedrooms in those apartments from 48 to 36. Some of the existing four-bedroom apartments will be converted to one-bedrooms. The make-up of the apartments is 12 one-bedroom apartments and six four-bedroom apartments. They are all restricted to renters making no more than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), or an annual income of $72,800 for a family of two. Opuszynski’s company received more than $2.2 million in construction loans to build those apartments.
Now, Opuszynski said that two apartments are already occupied, four more apartments are leased, and the other 12 will be ready soon. “We’re crushing it,” he said in a phone interview. “We’re already wrapping up.” He estimated that all units would be ready within four months.
As an owner of so many units, Opuszynski said, “I’m trying to utilize that majority ownership as a means to try to set the tone for the quality of construction, the pace of construction, the management expectations once they’re going into service.”
Opuszynski said that the company has a diverse set of contractors working on the project, including members of the community — like New Havener Henry Smith III, an owner of FAD Mechanical. “I would hire them again and again,” he said. “This guy’s the real deal.”
“I want to be an uplifting force for the community,” Opuszynski said. “I just wish we could do more of these.”