The project will include greenspace and a walkway connecting Union Ave. to Church St. South and Columbus. The City Plan Commission voted Wednesday to approve the housing authority’s plan to construct three buildings containing 541 new apartments across the street from Union Station — as part of the first phase of development of the 2,490-unit “Union Square” project. The local land-use commissioners took that vote during their latest monthly online meeting. They voted unanimously to approve the site plan, coastal site plan, and class C soil erosion and sediment control plan for phase one of the Housing Authority of New Haven’s Union Square development. That major rebuild is slated to take place atop 5.5 acres at the site of the now-razed former Church Street South apartment complex. The project will also see the demolition of the current Robert T. Wolfe apartment building right next door at 49 Union Ave. Speaker after speaker at Wednesday’s meeting — including City Plan Commission members and representatives from the housing authority and the public — stressed that residents who will be displaced from the 93-unit Robert T. Wolfe building as well as residents who have already long been displaced from the former 301-unit Church Street South complex will have the right to return to the newly built Union Square development. The new development will include a substantial number of below-market-rent apartments, though the exact affordability mix has not yet been finalized. “This project really will serve as an entryway to the city,” said Ed LaChance, the vice president of development at The Glendower Group, which is the housing authority’s development arm. “Union Square will be the front door to the City of New Haven,” added project architect Paul Santos of Newman Architects. It will be “the first thing you see when you exit the train station.” The 541 apartments included in phase one will consist of 78 studios, 265 one-bedrooms, 145 two-bedrooms, 48 three-bedrooms, and larger four- and five-bedroom townhouses facing the Hill side of the project. LaChance and Santos said that phase one will be built in phases — with the first two buildings, consisting of 206 units and 139 units respectively, allowing for the relocation of Robert T. Wolfe’s existing tenants before that latter building is demolished and the third building, at 196 units, goes up. Santos said phase one includes 30,000 square feet of commercial space. The project’s site plan states that this first 541-unit development will include 182 on-site parking spaces. The City Plan Commission held a public hearing on Union Square’s first-phase development earlier this month — but ultimately passed on taking a vote, because the alders had not yet approved a rezoning proposal for the site that would place it in the city’s Transit-Oriented Community (TOC) zone. The housing authority had been looking for the commission’s approval even before the zoning vote to give them a better chance in their application for more than $26 million in competitive funding from the federal government. As Westville Alder and City Plan Commission member Adam Marchand noted Wednesday night, the alders approved the Union Square TOC rezoning proposal on Monday — thereby allowing the commission to take a vote on a zoning-compliant site plan proposal Wednesday. Dolores Colon and Carmen Rodriguez, the former and current alders representing the Hill’s Ward 6, each spoke up during the public testimony portion of Wednesday’s meeting in support of the project. So did longtime Hill resident Thomasine Shaw, who noted that Union Square represents “an opportunity to bring a community back” that was displaced roughly a decade ago with the demolition of the Church Street South apartments. “New Haven has a tendency to drag its feet,” Shaw said. “Can we please just get this started and taken care of?” Marchand praised the project as “a huge development, even in the first phase.” Over time, he said, “it’s going to have a huge impact on that part of town” by the train station. “We need the units. We really need the units. And we need high-quality units for folks with modest means,” Marchand said. He said it’s a “big deal that folks displaced with the demolition of Church Street South” will be given an opportunity to return to the same spot where they once lived — albeit “in much-improved housing, much-improved circumstances.” Fellow City Plan Commission member Leslie Radcliffe, who also lives in the Hill, agreed. She said this project has clearly been designed to “provide necessary housing” for both displaced former Church Street South tenants as well as many more new residents. This project could be “a very good bridge between our community and the rest of New Haven.” “I believe this development delivered something for everybody,” said commission Chair Ernest Pagan. It has new places to live, large townhome-style apartments for families displaced from Church Street South, green space for kids to play, and opportunities for lots of new construction jobs. With that, the commissioners voted unanimously to approve each part of the project’s phase one. The site plan approval comes roughly two and a half years after the housing authority bought the 8.27-acre, ex-Church Street South site in November 2023 for $21 million. It also comes roughly six years after the former privately owned, government-rent-subsidized 301-unit Church Street South complex was demolished in 2018 after years of neglected maintenance destroyed roofs and walls and poisoned kids with asthma. Housing authority-hired attorney Christopher Rousseau said Wednesday that the current version of the Union Square development emerged from two years of planning by the housing authority. That planning began in October 2023 and was funded by a $500,000 planning grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The post 541 Apartments Approved For Union Square’s Phase 1 appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less