Image courtesy of Gray Organschi Architecture

A local developer is proposing to build 69 apartments at a parcel north of the city’s popular Broadway shopping district.

Local developer Beulah Land Development Corp. and New York City developer HELP USA have teamed up to propose the mostly-affordable project at 340 Dixwell Ave.

The 4-story project received zoning approvals in May and goes before the New Haven City Plan Commission Thursday.

Totaling 112,899 square feet, 340+ Dixwell, as the project is called, will fill a vacant, triangular lot at the intersection of Dixwell Avenue and Orchard Street near where the Dixwell neighborhood meets New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood. The residential portion of the building will rise above 2,359 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 1,856 square feet of amenity space.

The unit mix will include 26 one-bedroom apartments, 33 two-bedroom apartments and 10 three-bedroom apartments. Most of the units will be priced for renters making 60 percent of area median income or below, and the developers expect to submit their project for low income housing tax credit funding from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority. The

Thirty-two parking spaces will be provided.

The building will be constructed with mass timber technology – an environmentally-friendly alternative to steel made out of large, fire-resistant columns and plates of timber made by fusing smaller pieces of wood at angles using adhesives under high pressure. It will also be built to “passive house” standards, meaning it will use roughly 80 percent less energy than a comparable conventional building by dramatically increasing insulation of the building envelope and improving energy recovery from HVAC systems.

Mass timber is growing in popularity among developers who want to reduce their buildings’ greenhouse gas impact as pending changes to building codes enable larger structures to use the material. It has already been used in several projects in and around New Haven.