A conceptual rendering of the project.
DERBY — After more than a decade of false starts and fanciful plans that never came to fruition, the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously approved the construction of 203 market-rate apartments in the Derby Downtown Redevelopment Zone Thursday.
The commission approved Derby Downtown LLC’s plans to build two, four-story buildings on Factory Street at the site of the former Housatonic Lumber.
The market-rate apartments include 178 one-bedroom units, 21 two-bedrooms units, and four two-bedroom townhouses.
The plans also call for about 8,000 square feet of retail space on the first floors of the buildings. The developers said it’s too early to name what businesses they’d be recruiting, but said they’d like to see at least one restaurant.
The development includes 169 parking spaces on the property. The City of Derby agreed to allow the developer to use an additional 104 parking spaces in a vacant parking lot across the street.
Derby city officials and consultants determined the traffic generated from the development will not have a major impact on nearby roads and intersections. The state will also review the traffic data, as the development is a stone’s throw from Route 34/Main Street, a state-owned road.
The developers said they hope to start construction at roughly the same time the state begins the long-awaited widening of Route 34.
Derby officials said the Route 34 widening project was supposed to go out to bid this spring. In a podcast interview with The Valley Indy Feb. 4, Mayor Rich Dziekan said the state pushed it to next fall.
The developers have five years to get a shovel in the ground, though they can ask for extensions. Those are normal timeframes.
Dziekan’s administration sees the development as a turning point for the mostly empty redevelopment zone, which stretches from the Derby-Shelton bridge along the Housatonic River on the south side of Route 34 to the Route 8 entrance ramp.
The new apartments will be next to Route 8, the Derby train station, and the city’s popular greenway river walk. In addition to the Route 34 widening, there are also plans to refurbish the Derby-Shelton bridge to better connect downtown Derby and Shelton.
“We view this project as the first of many dominoes to fall in the transit-oriented redevelopment of our downtown,” Dziekan said in a statement after Thursday’s planning and zoning commission meeting. “The 203 market-rate residential units will provide a critical mass of residents who will patronize the city businesses, especially those along and around Main Street.”
Click play on the video below to watch Andrew Baklik, the mayor’s chief of staff, talk about the proposal in front of the planning and zoning commission.
Carmen DiCenso, Derby’s economic development liaison, said the city is also in early negotiations with a scrap yard company operating at the end of Factory Street. Developers have said its presence makes a redevelopment projects more difficult. The city could purchase or help to relocate the business.
“We have been waiting a long time. This is going to change Derby,” said Jena Barretta, who has owned 23 Factory St. since 2009. She and her husband, Chris, operate Barretta Enterprises, a residential and commercial landscaping company, on the property.
Barretta Enterprises will move once construction starts.
The Barrettas are teaming with the Lepore brothers, Jim and Steve, builders out of West Hartford, to make the $40 million redevelopment of the property a reality.
(Left to right)Jim and Steve Lepore with Chris and Jena Barretta.
During Thursday’s meeting, both Ted Estwan Jr. and Glenn Stevens talked about how there had been two serious development proposals in the redevelopment zone before.
However, the plans involved the entire zone — and the developers didn’t own all of the land they wanted to develop.
This proposal came from the local owners, a key difference.
“You’ve assembled a team with the landowner, developers, legal, engineering, and you’ve put in a lot of effort,” he told the Barrettas, the Lepore brothers, and their consultants.
Click the video below to watch Estwan’s remarks.
During a public hearing connected to the development proposal, Walt Mayhew, the city treasurer, questioned how much money the development would bring to the city, and whether it was enough to cover costs associated with any new public school students the apartments generate.
Mayhew, who was speaking as a private citizen, also questioned the project’s density, noting that Derby is already one of the most densely-populated places in the state.
The developer’s consultants said these type of apartments are aimed at millenials and empty nesters. The apartment building, with mostly one-bedrooms, won’t generate lots of school kids, they said.
Dominick Thomas, a lawyer with an office on Main Street, said anyone who doubts whether the development can be successful just has to look across the river to Shelton, where hundreds of apartments with first-floor retail has been built and rented on Howe Avenue and Canal Street.
