The company left N.Y. for the state, but will it be allowed to build under restrictive zoning laws?
In a history spanning just several years, Fullstack Modular has developed a portfolio of successful and planned projects that range from a sleek, six-unit apartment building sandwiched in-between stately rowhouses, to a 32-story high rise with dozens of affordable units towering over a basketball arena and one of the nation's busiest subway stations.
In the company's soon-to-be home of Connecticut, however, such projects are at the center of one of the state's most-heated political battles.
Fullstack, a modular developer based in Brooklyn's Navy Yard, turned many heads last month when it announced its decision to decamp to Connecticut — a state with a long and well-established history of opposition to the very sort of dense, multi-family structures on which the company has built its brand.
Just 2.2 percent of residential land in Connecticut is zoned to allow houses with four or more units as a right, according to an atlas developed by Desegregate CT, an advocacy group that favors denser and more affordable development.
By contrast, nearly three-quarters of residential land is exclusively zoned to allow single-family housing.
“I was honestly so curious why they chose to move to Connecticut,” Pete Harrison, the director of Desegregate CT, said of Fullstack's plans.
Prefabricated units
Fullstack's business model is built around designing and constructing prefabricated building units — or mods — at the company's 100,000-square-foot Brooklyn factory. Those units are sold to developers, who have typically taken the lead in obtaining the necessary permits to complete the project.
Upon its relocation to Connecticut, however, Fullstack is aiming to become more involved as the developer or co-developer on nearby projects, according to Roger Krulak,
the company's founder and president.
Krulak told CT Insider in a series of written responses to questions this month that Connecticut's reputation as being hostile to dense, affordable housing did not factor into the company's decision to relocate. He added that he was not aware of any existing mid-or-high-rise buildings in the state that were developed using modular construction.
“Hopefully, that will change in the near term, as we're talking to several developers in the area about potential projects now that we're nearby,” Krulak said.
Longtime advocates of reforming the state's zoning codes, however, say that in many Connecticut towns, any effort to challenge the conventional thinking that favors spread-out, single-family housing is likely to run headlong into entrenched opposition.
“Just like a lot of public or private developers, they're going to run into a lot of the anti-housing arguments — it's not pretty, it's too dense, it's out of character,” Harrison said. “It's certainly going to be a challenge to convince local governments to think about something new.”
Fullstack's decision to invest up to $12 million in developing its new headquarters in Hamden — as well as a connection to New Haven's Gateway Terminal — was seen as a coup for Gov. Ned Lamont's economic development efforts, which have focused on bringing new companies and taxpayers into Connecticut.
Lamont, a Greenwich Democrat, has also sought to spend up to $600 million to address the state's housing shortage, though he has remained cool to more aggressive proposals that would force some towns — particularly those with a history of excluding affordable housing — to approve denser development.
When asked whether the state's restrictive zoning codes had come up during his administration's talks to lure Fullstack to Connecticut, Lamont said they had not.