Developer Ancora selected New Haven for its first Connecticut project as it prepares to invest $4 billion in life science and tech projects in partnership with a British insurer. A 9-story, 200,000-square-foot lab building is part of the initial phase of the Square 10 project at the former New Haven Coliseum property. Image courtesy of Pelli Clarke & Partners and Jacobs

State grant funding will help New Haven’s latest new-build life sciences development get out of the ground.

Or, more accurately, it will help the project’s developer get the ground out of the site.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s office announced that the state Department of Economic and Community Development’s Brownfield Remediation and Development Program is giving developers $990,000 in a grant to remove or remediate contaminated soil on the site of its planned 277,435-square-foot building on the former site of the New Haven Coliseum as part of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners’ “Square 10” development.

Spinnaker’s development partner on the 9-story lab building, Ancora Partners, bought the tower site in March for $11 million. Spinnaker acquired control of the block-sized Square 10 site from the city of New Haven in October of last year.

Square 10’s first phase includes 200 apartments. Ancora’s lab building, up to 100 housing additional units and a 650-space parking garage will follow. A subsequent phase could add a third multifamily building.

Other projects funded in the latest round of state brownfield remediation grants include a nearly $1 million award to the developers of a 150-unit affordable housing complex at 10 Liberty St. in New Haven, who will put the money towards environmental cleanup and demolition of existing, empty industrial sites on the property, and a large planned sports complex in Ansonia.