New SoNo apartment complex enters final phase of construction
NORWALK — Herbert Edmondson is among those sorry to see the construction workers pack up their equipment from a swath of South Norwalk between Water and Day streets, who have been regulars the past several years at his Herb’s Place food truck.
But Edmondson is seeing more fresh faces becoming familiar ones as they walk across Water Street for breakfast or lunch, he adds, from their new apartments in the Soundview Landing and Harbourside SoNo complexes those crews built.
Gov. Ned Lamont was in Norwalk on Friday to mark the construction of the third and final phase for Soundview Landing. The buildings replace the Washington Village apartments that had been the oldest in Connecticut where families could qualify for subsidies through the state Department of Housing, with the complex also including an equal number of units at market rents. The Norwalk Housing Authority helped families move to other apartments until Soundview Landing could be completed.
“You want a community where people can afford to
live; you want a community where your kids can afford to live,” Lamont said Monday at John H. Ryan Park across from Soundview Landing. “We got away from that a little bit over the last 50 years in this country.”
Soundview Landing has 273 apartments, with public assistance available for 136 of them. It is one of two new complexes in South Norwalk along with the adjacent Harbourside SoNo apartments. Both are within walking distance of Veterans Memorial Park on Norwalk Harbor, The Maritime Aquarium, the South Norwalk commuter rail station and a planned
branch of the Norwalk YMCA.
Over the past decade hundreds of people have worked on Soundview Landing, according to Michael Lozano, vice president of development for Trinity Financial which has its main office in Boston. He noted a two-year delay for the $160 million project as a result of litigation from a group called Friends of Ryan Park. And designers had to elevate both the buildings and Day Street itself to get above newly revised flood stage levels on the heels of the 2012 storm Sandy which inundated the neighborhood.
“We really like tough
projects, we like challenges — but this one took the cake,” Lozano said Monday.
Ahead of construction commencing in November 2016, Washington Village was the oldest public housing complex in Connecticut. On Monday, Mayor Harry Rilling echoed comments he made nearly five years ago at a ceremonial groundbreaking, describing Washington Village as “tired” dating back to his days as a child visiting cousins who lived there.
“This is truly a transformative day for the city of Norwalk,” Rilling said. “There’s no better feeling than pride in where you live, and the amenities in the building are many — things that people didn’t have before.”
Lamont noted the complexity of the financing secured by developer Trinity
Financial to see Soundview Landing through to the finish, from Norwalk Housing Authority grants to tax credits for low-income housing purchased by Red Stone Equity Partners, a New York City firm that resells them to other investors.
“Housing authorities all over the country are becoming the real critical engines for innovative housing, new housing that is replacing the public housing that we knew of old,” said Richard Roberts, Red Stone Equity’s chief business development officer who was once commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “I can’t remember seeing a better representation of that work than today.”
Trinity Financial has
developed multiple apartment buildings in Connecticut over the years, including 66 Summer Street and Vela on the Park in Stamford; and Quinnipiac Terrace and Rowe Apartments in New Haven.
Soundview Landing is the largest of a quartet of major additions in South Norwalk the past five years, alongside the new Harbourside SoNo apartments; The Pearl and 19 Day Street. Next up is The Platform which will total more than 120 apartments on Chestnut Street.
Norwalk resident Dennis Quirk took in the newest apartments Monday while having lunch on a park bench.
“They’ve done a beautiful job,” Quirk said.