Older apartments demolished to make way for 190-unit complex on South Chapel Street

A wrecking crew has been busy for the past week demolishing two student housing complexes to make way for the construction of what will be one of the largest apartment buildings in Newark.

The demolition includes Continental Court, which is a three-story apartment building on South Chapel Street that contains 41 units, and University Commons, which is a 32-unit townhouse community on Haines Street.

In their place, Tsionas Management will build The Continental, a six-story, 190-unit student apartment building that will span an entire block from Haines Street to South Chapel Street.

“The proximity adjacent to the University of Delaware creates an excellent opportunity to redevelop the property into a more cohesive, modern apartment building consistent with the city’s planning goals to promote high-density residential properties in this area,” Michael Hoffman, a lawyer for Tsionas. told city council last year.

The Continental will include 18 one-bedroom apartments, six two-bedroom apartments, 62 three-bedroom apartments and 104 four-bedroom apartments, for a total of 632 bedrooms.

The building will include a 511-space internal parking garage. The garage will be surrounded by apartment units, meaning it will not be visible from the street.

Plans also call for 96,000 square feet of open space, including a lawn area, a paved path from Haines Street to South Chapel Street and an elevated entry plaza with outdoor seating area. A glass “grand main entrance” will rise the full height of the building, and there will be solar panels on the roof.

Also included is an internal courtyard to provide light and ventilation to interior apartments. In response to police concerns about large parties in the courtyard, Tsionas agreed to keep it locked and accessible only to maintenance workers.

Once built, The Continental will tower over its neighbors, which includes the four-story University Courtyard complex and a number of rental homes. However, it soon may be joined by an even taller project.

Aptitude Development, a New Jersey-based firm that specializes in student housing projects, is proposing to build a seven-story apartment building directly adjacent to The Continental site.

That plan calls for building a T-shaped building at 87 S. Chapel St. The front of the building would be South Chapel Street, while access to the parking garage would be on Continental Avenue.

The 1.6-acre site would combine three parcels on South Chapel Street and Continental Avenue, which contain a total of five rental houses and a three-story apartment building. It would also include the backyard of a neighboring parcel owned by the Delta Eta Corporation and formerly used as a fraternity house and later a residential treatment center for drug-addicted offenders who are pregnant.

The 79-foot-tall building would include parking, a lobby and amenity space on the ground floor, and residential units on the six upper floors. There would also be a level of underground parking.

The building, to be called The Marshall, would include 146 apartments, 54 of which would have two bedrooms and 92 of which would have four bedrooms.

The Marshall proposal is still in the early stages and is under review by the planning department. Eventually, it will go to the planning commission and city council for approval.

While Newark passed a law in 2022 limiting buildings to no taller than five stories, it only applies to Main Street and other areas in the downtown zoning district. Buildings in the RA zoning — which mostly is comprised of the high-density student housing areas around Haines Street and South Chapel Street — are still allowed to be as tall as seven stories.