First housing projects OK’d through CT development authority

The first four developments paid for through the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, including housing, a museum and downtown retail space, got approval on Friday for about $19 million in bond funding. Connecticut’s State Bond Commission approved about $652 million in funding for statewide projects, school construction, upkeep of state facilities and purchasing of electric vehicles. The Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, formerly called the Municipal Redevelopment Authority, was established in 2019 as an unfunded entity and officially got money and started work in 2024. The authority partners with municipalities to help them reconfigure their zoning to allow more housing and transit-oriented development, particularly in downtown areas. More than 40 towns are member agencies. Once towns are member agencies, developers can apply to the authority for funding. The agency has been a favored initiative of Gov. Ned Lamont and is one of his administration’s answers to a looming housing crisis partially borne of restrictive local zoning that makes it hard to build apartments. “The demand is there for housing. We need more housing to make sure that people can continue to move to the state, stay in the state, young people can stay in the state,” said Lamont, who chairs the commission, during Friday’s meeting. The money the bond commission distributes has already been approved by the state legislature. The government typically issues bonds for capital improvement projects and other high-cost items, meaning that private investors can purchase the bonds and essentially lend the government money for a set length of time. Much of the CMDA’s funding comes through the bonding process. The first four projects to get funding approval are in Enfield, Norwich and New London. The commission approved $9.4 million to build more than 150 apartments in Enfield, near a station planned to be a part of the Hartford Line. That project will have 20% of its units set aside as workforce housing, or housing that’s affordable to working residents. In Norwich, the commission approved $3 million for redeveloping an office building in the downtown area. It will be a mixed-use development with 58 apartments and commercial space. There are two projects in New London — one for $5 million to transform the former New London Day newspaper campus into apartments, a ground floor museum and retail space. The other is a $2 million bond to create apartments alongside ground-floor commercial space and a public market within walking distance of the train station. “This is kind of the greatest place that we could have hoped to have been at, which is within two years, starting to move funding into housing development, and it’s explicitly housing development that hits those co-benefits of downtown revitalization, economic development, transit ridership and transit-oriented development,” said David Kooris, executive director of the authority.