Goatville Welcomes Latest Star Supply Plan

A preserved historical gateway building. Brick and clapboard townhouses with porches that greet the neighborhood. A pedestrian mews with urban gardens off Mechanic Street.

Meet One Lawrence Street, the third plan in five years to attempt to bring a mix of residences and business to the vacant Star Supply building, the desolate former industrial site at the northern end of State Street.

Former Yale Law School student and Goatvillean Ben Gross, now a research fellow at the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU, led a team of seven partners called Goatville Development LLC in presenting preliminary plans for the proposed 250-apartment (with 200 parking spots) mixed retail and residential complex. He made his pitch to the East Rock Management Team at the little Hooker School on Canner Street Monday night.

Gross learned about the property during his years as a Yale Law School student, as a Yale fellow at New Haven governments Livable City Initiative, and as a five-year-denizen of the Goatville section of East Rock before he moved to New York City. The plans are so preliminary Gross and fellow partner and project architect Randolph Gerner couldnt even put a dollar figure on the cost.

Gross envisions studio, one, and two-bedroom apartments, with a smattering of three-bedrooms, all to be offered on a rental basis.

Gerner said the apartment footprint would be smaller than standard, with the studios covering 500 square feet and the one-bedrooms running between 625 and 700. He proposed 30,000 square feet of commercial space on the first and second floors, primarily along State Street. The large space would aim to attract a bigger business than the ones currently on that stretch of State, such as a fitness studio or a small bank.

The designers offered a schematic presentation of how the buildings preserve and echo local history, interact with as opposed to turn their back on the neighborhood, build on the success of Upper State Streets commercial corridor, and defend against the looming presence of I-91. The 45 attendees offered high marks for thoughtfulness and wishes for success.

The project will need it. The site is contaminated with petroleum and solvents from its previous industrial history, although Gross said previous developers had gotten a good head start in defining the environmental issues.

Developers have eyed the 3-acre lot to build stores and apartments as far back as 2006. The Christie Wareck Co. drew up detailed plans for stores and 139 apartments, and even got zoning approval, before the plan fell apart due to in-fighting among the developers. Then Fairfield Residential, the largest privately held multi-family developer in the nation, tried to turn Star Supply into luxury housing; that plan fell apart when the economy tanked in 2008.

Architect Randolph Gerner of GKV Architects, presented the chief features of the latest plan. They include townhouses with porches along Mechanic Street and a pedestrian mews off Mechanic that is a kind of public urban garden on the order of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens, N.Y. Plans call for preserving the two-story brick structure where Lawrence and Mechanic meet. That gateway building would give the name to the project, One Lawrence.

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Goatville Welcomes Latest Star Supply Plan