168 Apartments Teed Up For Wooster Sq.

One hundred and sixty eight more apartments took a big step closer to coming to Wooster Square, after the project’s new co-development team won permission to modify a plan last approved in 2021.

The City Plan Commission took that unanimous vote of support Wednesday night during its latest monthly online meeting.

The commissioners voted to approve modifications to a previously approved Detailed Plan Review for the construction of a new six-story, mixed-use development at 20 – 34 Fair St.

Those commercial properties currently hold two service garages and a surface parking lot.

They are located on a newly housing-rich stretch off of Olive Street on the border of Wooster Square and downtown, and they were purchased in April for $3.45 million by a company controlled by Clay Fowler of the Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners.

On Wednesday night, local attorney Greg Muccilli explained how Spinnaker and the New York-based real estate development firm Epimoni, which built the Olive & Wooster apartment complex right across the street, plan on constructing 168 new apartments at 20 – 34 Fair St. That marks a slight reduction from the 185 apartments for this same site that the City Plan Commission approved back in October 2021.

Muccilli said that the new development will contain street-level commercial space. ​“The signature aspect of this development,” he said, is the ​“Fair Street Greenway” — a publicly accessible walkable connection that will reopen for the first time in years a stretch of Fair Street between Union and Olive Streets.

He said the developers are still in negotiations with the city to grant an easement for that Fair Street section, whereby the owner of the property will be responsible for maintaining the greenway even as that section will be open to the public.

Micculli and engineer Tim Onderko said that the modifications before the commission on Wednesday were relatively minor when compared to the original development plan approved in 2021. According to the developer’s application, some of those changes include an increase to the size of the public promenade, decreased Olive Street front yard, changes to the balcony pattern and other architectural details, and an update to the traffic flow within the parking garage to allow for two-way traffic.

What’s the anticipated time frame for construction? asked Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand. ​“When would it be ready to be occupied?”

Spinnaker representative Will Cannon said they hope to begin construction by the end of this year. ​“We hope to deliver the first units in approximately 12 to 14 months,” he said, and then to wrap up construction within 18 months.

With that, the commissioners voted unanimously in support of the modified development plan.