Image courtesy of Lessard Design

One of the prolific developers helping drive New Haven’s multifamily boom was approved last night for another large apartment complex just south of the city’s downtown, along with a potentially transformative development in the city’s largely-Black Dixwell neighborhood.

RMS Cos. had proposed a 112-unit, 7-story building at 188 Lafayette St., roughly equidistant between downtown New Haven, the New Haven Metro-North train station and Yale New Haven medical center. The site is bordered by several other RMS projects.

The project’s unit mix will be made up of 35 studios, 36 one-bedrooms and 41 two-bedrooms. The building will also be built on top of a 3-story, 176-space garage that will serve both tenants and the surrounding neighborhood, as the development will rise in place of a parking lot.

Amenities will include limited on-site indoor bicycle storage and a private, fourth-floor courtyard.

The New Haven City Plan Commission approved the project unanimously. The project does not require zoning relief.

At the same meeting, commissioners also approved a proposal for a multi-phase redevelopment of the Dixwell Plaza shopping center to the north of the city’s downtown, called ConnCAT Place.

That proposal was brought by ConnCORP, a subsidiary of the local nonprofit Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology, and is being billed as a major investment in the city’s Black community. The project will convert the car-oriented retail plaza into a park, offices and classrooms for a job-training program, a 5,000-square-foot community health center, 9,000-square-foot daycare center, an 18,000-square-foot food hall, a 20,000-square-foot grocery store, 5,600 square feet of additional retail space, a performing arts venue, a police substation and a 184-unit residential mid-rise. Ten percent of the housing units will be designed to ASNI Type A standards for handicapped accessibility.

Image courtesy of HGA