Image courtesy of Gilbane Building Company and Xenolith Partners

New Haven’s mayor has begun the process of transferring land to a developer that wants to build 450 new homes in the city’s downtown.

A pair of surface parking lots between State Street and the Amtrak train tracks could be sold for just $1.29 million, according to paperwork filed with New Haven’s equivalent to a city council by Mayor Justin Elicker’s office.

The sale would come with a Development and Land Disposition Agreement between the city and a joint venture of Gilbane Development Company and Xenolith Partners. The New Haven Board of Alders will have to approve the agreement and the land sale.

The companies have proposed to build the 450 new apartments, including 116 affordable housing units and up to 78 units “for working families,” in two side-by-side buildings. At the same time, the city plans to narrow and spruce up State Street to make it more pedestrian-friendly.

The first, 7-story building is expected to break ground in June 2026, with the second, 12-story building expected in spring 2028 once the first is completed.

Gilbane is also part of a joint venture aiming to build a pair of short towers hosting 470 units near New Haven’s main train station. The State Street site is next to the ongoing, block-sized Spinnaker Real Estate Partners-led redevelopment dubbed “Square 10.”

The parking lots are part of a larger batch of empty, city-and state-owned land offered up for affordable housing. At the same time as it offered the State Street lots, New Haven officials inked a deal with a joint venture of the city’s housing authority and developer LMXD for another set of parcels on George Street that could generate around 175 apartments.

The parcels are a legacy of New Haven’s aggressive experiment in postwar “urban renewal” that saw many properties demolished but never redeveloped.