SCSU Student Apartments Proposed in Hamden

While most of Tuesday’s Planning and Zoning Commission meeting was taken up by , commission members also got their first look at a project meant to serve a somewhat older population: college students.  

The Sound Development Group of Trumbull submitted a proposal to build 32 units of townhouse-style apartments that would be rented to students attending Southern Connecticut State University.  

“There’s a growing need for additional student housing at Southern,” Sound Development Group Attorney Bernard Pellgrino told the panel, and the proposed 2.24-acre site at 190 Pine Rock Avenue, “would almost feel like you’re on the campus.”  The location borders an existing six-story dorm.

It’s a former sand and gravel plant that’s been closed for many years and includes one metal building that Pellegrino calls “uninhabitable.”  He told the commissioners that the developer “has been working in Connecticut since 1992… and developed student housing projects for Sacred Heart University in Bridgeport  [and] Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.”

The Sound Development projects, he says, “have some unique qualities and programs in their student housing such as security…such as furnishing the apartments completely for the students… things that have worked for them in their prior developments that they will be proposing for this site.”

Philip DiGennaro of Sound Development also told Hamden Patch the location is also good because it’s not too close to any residential neighborhoods where students and homeowners may have trouble getting along.

If approved, the complex would provide housing and parking for 128 students. 

Ten additional parking spaces would be available, including some reserved for people with disabilities.

The proposal will go back before the Commission on June 14.