Affordable housing footprint expanding downtown
“It should be done, I would say, by September, maybe October.” Richard Freedman, president of Garden Homes Management
STAMFORD — Downtown Stamford just keeps on growing, this time with nearly 200 new apartments — including a number of units deemed as affordable housing — under construction off Washington Boulevard.
Work continues at 1315 Washington Blvd., a soon-to-be apartment building abutting St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, a few blocks from the city’s core business district.
“It should be done, I would say, by September, maybe October,” said Richard Freedman, president of Garden Homes Management. The Stamford-based company specializes in affordable housing and owns a series of similar properties in the city.
All in all, the building will offer 187 apartments across five stories, an anomaly in a downtown with increasingly more high-rise structures. Of those units, 41 will be affordable.
The Zoning Board approved the building, which has been under construction for approximately 10 months, back in the summer of 2018.
Just down Franklin Street, Garden Homes Management built Franklin Apartments in partnership with Inspirica, which provides social services to people who are housing insecure.
“Every project we’ve built in Stamford in the last 10 years or so
“Because our rents are less than the rest of the market, we tend to fill up fast. There’s certainly plenty of one-bedroom apartments that you can rent for $1,700 a month. It’s just that they’re probably an older building.” Richard Freedman, president of Garden Homes Management
has exceeded the affordability requirement,” said Freedman. “This one in particular, because a portion of the site was a former city street. That was part of the agreement for us to buy the property from the city, that we would put in even more (below market rate units) than we normally put in.”
Garden Homes Management purchased the city land and discontinued part of a dead-end street adjacent to the church as the site for the new apartments.
The city mandates that 10 percent of all new multifamily housing developments be dedicated to below market rate housing. Developers can circumvent that mandate by paying out money that the city applies to the development of more affordable housing.
Developers have built about 250 below market rate units through the city’s program, just under onefourth of the below market rate housing stock in Stamford.
The newest Garden Homes Management property adds another 41 units to the mix, including both studios and one bedroom apartments.
Garden Homes Management bucks Stamford trends in another way, too. It doesn’t build luxury apartment buildings, like the ones scattered across Washington Boulevard, Tresser Boulevard, and lower Summer Street.
“Our units are a little smaller, and you don’t have washer-dryers in the units,” said Freedman. “We have a nice gym here, but that’s the only amenity in the building.”
The average two-bedroom apartment rents for $1,964 in Stamford, according to the online rental marketplace ApartmentList. But Freedman said that one-bedroom units in this new property would lease for around $1,600 or $1,700 a month.
“They’re $300 or $400 a month less than comparable new construction,” he said.
The demand for these affordable units is clearly there, Freedman said. Another similarly priced property from Garden Homes Management completed in 2012, at 800 Summer St., filled up in three months.
“Because our rents are less than the rest of the market, we tend to fill up fast,” he said. “There’s certainly plenty of onebedroom apartments that you can rent for $1,700 a month. It’s just that they’re probably an older building.”
As for 1315 Washington Blvd., he’s hoping to fill it in “no more than six months.”