Image courtesy of Twining Properties and LMXD
The owner of the former Winchester Arms factory north of downtown New Haven has filed plans with city officials for a major expansion.
Twining Properties is seeking to modify the planned development district governing the Winchester Center property, which already holds lab space and hundreds of apartments, in order to add a new parcel to the district, currently covered with a parking lot, and allow residential development on other parcels already included in the district. The New Haven City Plan Commission recently heard and approved Twining’s application for the changes, which now goes to the city Board of Alders.
New York-based Twining and two other partner companies have spent the last few years enacting a $300 million redevelopment plan that saw a 145,000-square-foot office building converted to lab space, dubbed “Winchester Works,” to serve the city’s growing biotech sector and a development application filed and approved for a 285-unit apartment building on the site, in addition to 158 apartments completed by the site’s prior developer in 2015.
The new parcel to be added to the complex, the 1.79-acre 88 Munson St., would be developed either as labs or apartments depending on market conditions, Twining’s application states.
The application also says several dilapidated and contaminated former factory buildings on the Winchester Center site will also be demolished in favor of a parking deck to serve the property, along with at least two more office/lab or multifamily buildings. If built, 20 percent of the units in any multifamily building will be set aside for tenants making 50 percent or less of the area median income. The developers also pledge to “make best efforts” to build these new buildings as all-electric structures and, according to the New Haven Independent, have pledged to take part in city programs aimed at creating opportunities for minority-owned contractors and students in the city’s schools. Twining previously stated ambitions to add up to 900 apartments to the property.
The application seeks no height restrictions on new buildings and asks that the floor area ratio be increased to 6, along with other dimensional changes that would allow buildings broadly similar to those allowed in downtown New Haven, and set parking requirements at one space per two residential units, thanks to the site’s connection to many other parts of the city via the Farmington Canal bicycle trail.
