Nick Falker of Cambridge Realty Partners | The Elm in New Haven | Living in a College Town
Transcript
Announcer 00:02
Welcome to American Building, a weekly recorded show whose mission is to share an alternative perspective of what we build in America, and why. Together we discover how the work of the real estate industry connects to every American. In season two, we focused on how buildings changed as a result of the pandemic. In this season, we're revisiting conversations from previous seasons, to see where Americans put their heads down at night. Together, we will discover the many definitions of home across the New York City metropolitan area, which includes over 23 million Americans. Each week, we'll visit a new building and explore complex and confusing issues related to housing access to see what they can teach us about ourselves, and our country will meet those who work to develop in thoughtful and impactful ways, who build neighborhoods to be more sustainable, affordable, accessible, or inclusive, who labor to create thriving communities, and transform the lives of generations to come. Through their stories, we will humanize often polarizing topics. Profound, surprising, and hilarious. This show is for developers and builders with boots on the ground for innovators trying to find ways to improve our industry, for the policymakers and public employees. And for any person who has walked by a building and wondered why. And now your host award winning architect turned developer and startup founder Atif Qadir, AIA.
Atif Qadir 01:53
This is American building. And I'm your host, Atif Qadir. I'm the Founder of Commonplace. Join me as it take a drive by the skylines and strip malls, crosswalks, and rail crossings, balconies, buildings and boroughs to discover a new generation of housing. Let's build common ground.
Atif Qadir 02:26
In this episode, you will learn about the current state of student housing, how student housing differs from traditional multifamily housing, and the economic and social impacts student housing can have on surrounding areas. You'll join me in learning about the Elm, a project that attracts students, university affiliates, and young professionals to downtown New Haven.
Atif Qadir 02:54
So student housing has been in the spotlight over the past few years. Before the pandemic, there was a shortage of student housing, driven by a generationally high level of college enrollment, itself driven by the private credit market to finance higher education. During the pandemic, student housing was almost completely empty. Now, after the pandemic, mirroring the trends of revenge travelers, there seemed to be revenge students desiring a residential experience with other students after years of living in their parents basements. That is driving vacancy to historically low levels again, I'll be it with a smaller set of colleges than before, as a mini higher education bubble burst with the advent of zoom school, shuttering colleges across the country.
Atif Qadir 03:48
That low vacancy is also pushing new investment in this asset class, with a nod towards buildings designed to meet post COVID HVAC standards and buildings that are around universities with healthy business models. Student Housing is considered a subset of multifamily housing. Student housing itself can vary a lot. It can be on campus or off campus. It can be single family, or multifamily accommodations can be luxury or basic. They can be dormitories, which are in other words, units without ensuite bathrooms and kitchens or actual apartments.
Atif Qadir 04:29
There are an estimated 8.5 million student housing beds across the US and that is expected to grow to 9.2 million this decade. That works out to an additional 73,000 beds per year or six Yale's every year. The National multifamily housing council released a fascinating report on the future of student housing. Check it out at the link in the show notes
Atif Qadir 04:59
The economic and social impacts of student housing can be enormous in both good and bad ways. Student Housing when privately held by a for profit entity can be a significant source of property tax revenue for municipalities that are starved of it, because the nonprofit status of universities precludes them from paying those very same property taxes. Student Housing when off campus can drive business for food and beverage outlets, and other retail because the students living there often aren't cooking and have disposable income.
Atif Qadir 05:40
And for anyone who has spent time in New Haven or any other college town, there's a noticeable vibrancy that comes from the large changing array of domestic and international students that lived there. That is why New Haven is New Haven, as opposed to say, Waterbury, Connecticut, that a similarly sized city, I bet you haven't heard of. Now, on the bad side,
Atif Qadir 06:10
Student housing can push up pricing for other types of multifamily because students sometimes have a higher willingness to pay than typical residents. For example, rents in Chapel Hill, where the University of North Carolina is located, increased 24% last year when the university reopened. That said, 43% of students in America are what is considered housing insecure, which is often driven by not being able to find something that meets their needs at a price point they can afford. About one quarter of those who are housing insecure, experienced homelessness. Sound familiar? This is the American housing affordability crisis.
Atif Qadir 07:01
In this episode of American building, I am sharing an edited version of the conversation I had in February 2022. With developer Nick Volker. Nick is the Managing Director at Cambridge Realty partners, a development and asset management firm based in New Haven, Connecticut. His father started the firm to focus on Office and industrial assets. And now the company's focus is on multifamily. Previously Nick worked at Cigna Realty investors and Bristol group. He began his career at Eastdil secured in San Francisco. He is a graduate of Colby College, enjoy the conversation. Thank you so much for being here with us, Nick.
Nick Falker 07:45
Thanks. Awesome. Great to be here. Appreciate the opportunity.
Atif Qadir 07:49
So as you were starting up the second iteration of Cambridge Realty partners, what were some of the challenges and some of the learnings that you had, as you were setting down that course? Well,
Nick Falker 08:03
biggest challenges to starting a real estate company, the biggest challenge, in my opinion, is the capital, it's a capital intensive business, you're buying hard assets. And there's all of the good that comes with that people always talk about the tangible nature of it relative to other asset classes. And the challenges of that, which is it's, it's by definition, capital intensive, because you're buying a real asset. So or you're building a real asset either way. So you know, there's an inherent conflict there when you're going first startup, but you need heavy capital, that obviously doesn't exist with internet startups.
Nick Falker 08:40
So you kind of, you need to have either an angel investor or family member, someone that's willing to back you, or you need to be old enough and have been in the game long enough to show a track record, and have in your back pocket a stable of more institutional investors that are ready to back you for professional reasons. So that's an inherent friction to starting up a real estate company that's always been there. And it hasn't really changed with the all of the evolution that's gone on in the business world of the last 20 years, that hasn't really changed. And that was certainly my biggest challenge. And in many ways, it remains one of our biggest challenges we've grown and our access to capital has grown. But as we grow with each iteration, the next round of deals that we do grow in step with that. So we're always pressing the next bigger loan, the next bigger equity check. And I suppose that that challenge will never stop. And that's exciting. But the zero to one stage is certainly the most challenging because once you have the track record proven, it's much easier to say, well, we're just stepping up in terms of size and scale. But this is something that we've done for a long time. That's a much easier conversation for capital source, then we're starting out on our own and this is why we think it's going to work.
Atif Qadir 09:54
What are the things that you mentioned when you were raising capital for your first deal?
Nick Falker 09:58
So I really The All I had to point out, which I suppose any startup real estate person has to point out is their previous experience, which had been extremely relevant. It had been multifamily development, it had been industrial and office building value add projects with Bristol group. You know, when I was at Cigna, we deployed several 100 million dollars of equity into class A institutional multifamily development around the country and tier one and tier two cities. So, and I've been in the business from 2006 until 2015, at that point, so it's almost a 10 year stretch of very, very relevant experience. But the question that most people had was, but you haven't done it yourself. And it's, it was an extremely valid question.
Nick Falker 10:43
And it proved to be a onpoint question as well, because when I did start doing it myself, there were things I didn't know, the intuitive things that when you, I imagine that you only gained by doing it yourself, such as intuition for how much it costs to renovate the 600 square foot apartment versus a 1300 square foot apartment. And if you're going to class A standards, or you're taking a class C building and bringing it to Class B minus those, the dollars involved in those renovation differences, that becomes intuitive quickly, especially if you have the financial background and in the business, but you don't develop the close intuition until you do it yourself. And that can lead to mistakes. And it led to mistakes on my end as well. You know, there were several projects we did in the beginning that were ultimately financially successful. But we made underwriting errors because we didn't have an extremely close eye for renovation costs, it was more broad brush estimation that we were building our pro forma with, which was got us 90% of the way there. So you know, that's not to say they were fatal flaws, far from it. But what could have been a 20% IRR, maybe wasn't 18 Because of those mistakes. So and those are mistakes that we fixed. And that's how we've gotten better.
Atif Qadir 12:01
Out of curiosity for the construction underwriting, Were there certain things that you did have to turn the screws and tighten up a bit? Was it I'm guessing it likely was the rough carpentry numbers, those can swing a lot because of material prices, or some of the specialty trades or specialty equipments? Was it both of those? Or were there specific instances for you?
Nick Falker 12:23
Absolutely. In COVID, or prior?
Atif Qadir 12:27
For those first projects?
Nick Falker 12:28
For the first projects? Yeah, I would say labor and materials, absolutely. All of the above, the cost of labor vary wildly, depending on the quality of the contractor, you know, and the amount of insurance that they had, etc. You know, it's very easy to renovate five units with kind of buys in a truck. Or you can renovate those five units with the same general contractor with all of the insurance qualifications and everything else that you would use for ground up $40 million project. And that would cost something much different.
Atif Qadir 13:00
And he or she would likely have a bigger truck, right? That's right. And
Nick Falker 13:04
multiple trucks. Yes. You know, and there are pluses and minuses for all of these decisions. And there's risks and benefits. But yeah, we certainly could have done things better, of course, because we were startup we didn't know everything and we don't know everything now. And that's an endless process of learning and improving.
Atif Qadir 13:23
One thing in particular, when I was taking the experience from textile development and starting my own development business to do value add opportunistic, small scale multifamily in Jersey was that the norm for construction contingency is 10%. That's all right, if you're doing $100 million deal, but if you're doing a $5 million deal, especially if it's value add, I learned to change the number from 10 to 25%, to account for all of those things that you're just talking about.
Nick Falker 13:51
Yes, absolutely. Right when the budgets extremely small, 10 percents not going to give you a lot of wiggle room to make a mistake. Not at all. But of course, if the budgets quite big, you know, now you're talking now you do have a few bucks to work with. And we didn't play that that exact same strategy. We have a $40 million development in Bloomfield, Connecticut, starting right now. And we have a 5% owner's contingency on it. Whereas with the LM, our downtown New Haven building that we just finished, I think we had a 10% owners contingency in it. And that was a 13 million. So $13 million builds in downtown New Haven versus a $40 million dollar bill. significantly different different underwriting.
Atif Qadir 14:31
So let's pivot then to the the LM is located in downtown New Haven. And some of our listeners may not have heard of this city and those that have may automatically associate it with Yale. What is special about the city for you and what drew you to this particular site?
Nick Falker 14:50
New Haven is a wonderful city. The location is great, it's on it's on the water. It's on the on the sound, and it's basically halfway between New York and Boston. It's on the train line. Is to New York. But it's got all of the benefits and niceness of Connecticut. It's not so dense that it's hard to get around Trump, it's not really a problem. It's also just got a ton of character. It's got grit, it's got Yale University. So it's got the college town fun aspects to it. It's got a local long standing kind of grittiness with great food, great restaurants, and a not too fussy, fancy vibe to it. So for all those reasons, my family and I've loved living here for 10 plus years, this site itself was brought to our attention on off market basis in 2019. So in a local investor that I that I know and knew at the time, had a relationship with the seller who had owned the property for about 30 or 35 years. So the site itself, the development site for the home was a parking lot when we purchased it, and right next to the parking lot was 100 unit building that we also purchased with it from the same seller, the parking lot, that's now the home was so it was the parking lot for the 100 unit building that we purchase.
Nick Falker 16:03
There's been a movement in New Haven along with most American cities for the past 10 years to, if not a formally change their zoning laws, then to unofficially require less parking downtown urban areas, obviously, to allow for more density more building in an effort to bring down housing costs. So anyways, we purchased that the local investor that I knew brought it to our attention that he had a relationship with the seller, and they may be interested in doing an off market transaction. And he needed help financing the project and getting it done. So he called me and we got it done. And then as soon as we closed on that acquisition, which was a $15 million dollar acquisition of the 100 units plus the parking lot, we immediately started talking to the city of New Haven about entitling the parking lot for development. So that conversation with the city started right as we closed, which was February of 2019. And then, with a lot of back and forth, formal and informal with the city. About a year later, we received building permits and broke ground for the owl, which was March of 2020, when we broke ground, right as COVID was unfolding. Perfect timing.
Atif Qadir 17:20
So I think probably one of the the best piece of advice that I got as I was starting and development company was sure, sure, yeah, you have all the experience at all, they just buckle up. Building,
Nick Falker 17:36
development is hard, and it is hard and there's no matter what you're building, you're going to have unforeseen issues back to the contingency conversation. The best advice I got when I was budgeting for the development of the LM was put in more contingency than than you think you need. Certainly don't use any rule of thumb from a 50 million or $100 million development that you may have learned at a previous employer and apply it to a much smaller project exactly as you set out to it. So but there were many unforeseen issues, most notably was global pandemic, I would say.
Atif Qadir 18:08
So let's take a step back a little bit. So more about New Haven. So there has been a boom of rental building construction in New Haven over the past seven to 10 years. And we've had the opportunity to tour buildings, like the novella and the Corsair. Who else is developing in the area? And what did you take away from their projects? As you started planning for the
Nick Falker 18:33
Yeah, the question, so it's still mostly local developers. Until maybe the last two years, it was really local developers meaning Connecticut, you know, there's Fairfield County developers and hard for developers, but mostly Connecticut based folks, I would say in the last two to three years that started to broaden out quite a bit. So it's certainly institutional capital from New York and Boston has come into town, and even on the GP sides that Heinz just purchased a development site in Wooster Square in New York. And they are developing a two or 300 unit project there. So that is very new for New Haven. There's, I think the first signs of the city broadening were kind of institutional capital or capital sources from further outside of Connecticut, coming into town, and now they're coming into town on a GP basis where they're actually buying sites controlling sites developing CITES. So you're certainly seeing that. I don't know whether that says something about New Haven or whether it says something about where we are in the capital markets. I'm not sure. Probably a little of both. But that's all happening right now. Yeah.
Atif Qadir 19:42
So tell us about the development strategy in more detail, and who else is working on this project with you?
Nick Falker 19:51
So we worked with a local design and builds firm are based in New Haven. They were the architects on record and also the general contractor, they have both of those skill sets in house, their local company, I'm friends with the owner of the company and the partners there. And I had known them well before we started the project. So we did interview other architects and general contractors for the job. But going into the project, I spoke with the owner of urbane New Haven, he said he was very excited about the concept, the location, and basically it was going to do the project with with this group. And less, we can't make it work for some reason. So that was kind of the mindset going in. And that was a relationship based. I mean, that was a good, a good story of a small town project coming together. It was it was two local companies that knew each other that that had every intent to do the project together. And they were excellent. They designed a very unique, cool building.
Nick Falker 20:50
And then they executed the built through, what I would imagine was probably the most challenging 18 months to build a building that you could imagine all the supply chain issues, all the pricing pressures, all the labor issues as the pandemic rolled out all of the political uncertainty. And if you recall, in the beginning of 2020, when COVID was unfolding, New York City actually shut down construction for a period of time, I think Boston did as well. So
Atif Qadir 21:20
the state of New Jersey did as well. And my project shut down for two months.
Nick Falker 21:24
Yeah, tough. So we were looking, we had, we're right on the cusp of closing the construction loan in March of 2020. For the Elm. And we're staring down this pandemic environment and looking at what was happening in New York first, and then later, Boston, as you just said, New Jersey were the governors were shutting down construction. Obviously, if we close the loan and had drawn on the loan, we'd be paying interest on that. And similarly, if the GC was buying out all of their goods, and then sitting on them and labor and sitting on them without cable to begin building, the cost implications of that are huge. So that was a very difficult decision to make. Governor Lamont, the governor of Connecticut issued a formal statement that that's available on YouTube, sometime in the middle of March, where he actually cited New York and Boston having shut down their construction industries.
Nick Falker 22:18
And then he specifically said, we are circling construction is one of the few core industries that we will do everything within our power to remain open as it's a bright spot for the local Connecticut economy. And it has the ability to maintain operations, mostly outdoors and for a variety of other reasons. Given the fact that everything else was shutting down. He specifically cited construction as something he was going to try to keep open. So that was really the trigger point for me. Once he made that statement. I spoke to our lenders, I said, Look, guys, we need to close on this and move forward. Now we're never and they were an excellent partner. They closed and we started building and we were never shut down.
Atif Qadir 23:00
In the case of New Haven, it's not just any other Second City, literally Yale is right there. Yes,
Nick Falker 23:09
that would have been a different different conversation with our capital sources. Had that not been the case, we're basically right on the edge of Yale's campus. And and had that not been the case. If this was a more suburban multifamily project, I imagine the friction we would have encountered with the capital sources would have been would have been more significant. But that was huge for this. And then, of course, Yale did shut down as soon as we started construction, construction industry did not. But within weeks of us starting construction, Yale, shut down, send all their students home. And then he was very unclear whether they'd be coming back for the fall. And as you recall, and fall 2020, they came back in a very hybrid way. So there's far fewer students on campus than, than there are now. But anyways,
Atif Qadir 23:53
do you know what I would imagine then is, it's probably then a different story of being next to a major research university that is in a city versus a major university research university, for example, University of Connecticut, which does not have the benefit of a multi industry city like New Haven, because then you can balance those ups and downs that you might have within one particular area.
Nick Falker 24:16
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, you have a more diversified tenant base potential tenant base. If you're in a city, you know, you can can you there's so many options at your disposal to if you have a well located multi quality multifamily building in a city. There's so many options available for you to generate income in a in a challenging environment. If there's a recession or a pandemic. You can switch to Airbnb, you can do all sorts of things to generate income. And the reason for that is people need places to live. Always. So if you're flexible with the ways in which you lease your building, you can stay lease if you're in a more suburban area if you built purpose, student housing UConn to use your example in Storrs, Connecticut, which is very woodsy, very suburban, and UConn shuts down due to a pandemic, you're you've got an empty building, you don't have any other options.
Atif Qadir 25:11
So speaking of building, so walk us through the building, that's, that's your new construction project. So our listeners could imagine what they would experience when they walk through it when it's completed.
Nick Falker 25:22
So you you enter the building, it's got a industrial vibe to it, there is a concrete podium that the parking is underneath. And the building really sits on top of that. And as you enter the lobby, you can see kind of the exterior wall of the concrete podium, on that podium, we had a local artist do a kind of a mural wall painting of kind of a New Haven landscape. It's got kind of a mix of like bright, cool colors with like an urban, industrial vibe to it. So that's, that's the vibe of the building. There's kind of there's a gym, immediately to your right. And to your left of the lobby, there are some conference rooms, some shared workspace areas with some TVs where people can break off into study groups, or work from home in a more comfortable place outside of your apartment.
Nick Falker 26:11
And there's there's an elevator bank, six storey building, each floor has, I think six to eight units on it. It's a mix of studios to four bedroom units. And the roof deck is there is a roof deck, which is you can take the elevator all the way up, or you can take the stairs, and we've got some cocktail tables and lounge chairs. cornhole, you know, it's just right, check all the boxes for your roof that Yeah, and it's got a cool view of downtown and when the weather's a yellow campus to upstairs, it looks right at downtown and the yellow campus. Yeah. So people, when we open the building in the fall, people were using it quite a bit.
Atif Qadir 26:51
As you were going through the design process with urbane and New Haven, what are some of the choices that you made in terms of finishes given this as a multifamily building? There's a student population. So you want it to look good, but also stand up? What were some of the decisions you made?
Nick Falker 27:07
So yeah, so we developed it to luxury standards. But we made unique strategic decisions, I would say that a lot of our competitors didn't make, you'll see a lot of kind of cookie cutter new multifamily tendencies when you tour a lot of these, these buildings. And we found a lot of those amenities were not being utilized by many of the tenants in competing buildings. A theater room, for example, was a good example that we found that there was very little usage of those types of concepts. And that was prior to the pandemic. And with COVID. People are using those types of things significantly less. So we emphasized a good fitness center, we emphasized bright, modern, warm colors, we emphasize modern fit and efficiency, usage and flow of space. But we probably downplayed some of the tricks.
Nick Falker 27:58
You know, things like the theater room, we opted for multiple conference rooms with TVs that you can project on and whiteboards that you can brainstorm on, we have some small ones for groups of two or four. And we have some bigger ones for groups of six or eight. And I think as the work from home aspect of life has really grown with the pandemic, those spaces are just very, very valued. So that that worked out to our benefit for sure.
Atif Qadir 28:24
I think that's an excellent point that you make is having toured a number of the large multifamily properties in New Haven, I always noticed the fact how empty all of their amenities are, especially with a student population, which doesn't necessarily have a nine to five schedule, there should be people in the gym all the time who go in the country all the time. And when I asked a broker about why that is and what the situation is, she said, people like the idea of having amenities not necessarily using those amenities. And it seems like such a foolish game to play just make your apartments nicer than right.
Nick Falker 29:02
I think that's spot on. But you can't pour all that money into your into your apartments and not spend on the amenities. So you have to figure out where you want to allocate the money. But I think that's spot on. I think the usage of the amenities generally speaking is much lower than the costs associated with constructing them which would suggest but on the flip side, you kind of have to choose where you want to build out your amenities if you want to compete. So you do need to check certain boxes. And we're building more suburban two new project multifamily developments now that are more suburban than the ones outside of Hartford and in a suburb of Hartford ones in New Jersey, and it's exactly that we have to choose which amenities we want to spend big on for the tour through the project, knowing that we need to capture eyes and attention and check certain boxes through the tour but the utilization of its it's lower than it should be.
Atif Qadir 29:57
So speaking of the utilization of people Usually utilizing those spaces and talk to us more about who you thought your renters were going to be, as you were underwriting this deal, how that changed over the course of the project, and who actually is renting at the property?
Nick Falker 30:12
Yeah, we expected the tendency to be 80 to 90%, Yale, and that would be mostly graduate students. But it was our expectation, maybe 90% graduate students 10%, undergrad of the 80 90% that we thought would be out. And if the 80 to 90% had been Yale at the other 10 to 20%. We expect it to be the young professional coat. That ratio of Yale to young professional is more of more in line with 5050. Now, that's a result of COVID. There are a lot of folks, relatively a lot of folks moving from New York into New Haven right now. And I say relatively, because there's a lot of folks moving from New York, everywhere. Florida, Connecticut, New Jersey, so Colorado, Georgia, right? Yes. So New Haven is getting up a share of that, which is great for New Haven, and we've got an excellent location. And we've got some big units that are more accommodating for young professionals or maybe even young families that have the ability to rent a relatively more expensive apartment in New Haven. So we're capturing a segment of that.
Atif Qadir 31:19
Excellent. And out of curiosity, do you find folks signing multi year leases? Because if they're for a PhD program, that could be 56789 1011 12 years?
Nick Falker 31:31
Yes. The requests are there, no question about it, people are definitely asking for two or three year leases, we're actually not accommodate because the lease has been. So well received and so strong, we're signing one year leases, and so we'd love to keep you at the end of your year renew. But the requests are certainly there for two or three year leases.
Atif Qadir 31:48
That's a great word of confidence in the product that you've created. March 2020, COVID. And that spring into summer, the New York Times estimated that 5% of New York City's residents left and never came back. To put that into context. That is the entire population of Minneapolis or Cleveland, or Tampa. So let's see a lot of people, if all you did was look at the Instagram feeds of celebrities, it would seem that they all went to East Hampton. And in reality, many of those actually came to Connecticut to buy homes or to rent properties. Could you give us a window an underground look at what the residential market was like in New Haven before? COVID during COVID? And then after COVID, maybe some more anecdotes of some of your renters?
Nick Falker 32:38
Yeah, absolutely. No, Connecticut has certainly been a beneficiary of of population growth from people leaving New York during COVID. And I do think a portion of that is permanent. How much of that is permanent? I don't know. But a portion is i i believe, and the the residential market in Connecticut, it's it's fragmented, you really have the Fairfield County residential market, that New Haven Residential market, under the Hartford, Greater Hartford residential market, all of those markets have risen in terms of property values and time on the market. And basically, by any other metric, they've all risen across the board, Fairfield County, unquestionably the most. So I think, following the financial crisis, until COVID, Fairfield County, single family market was was soft. And employers were basically there's a kind of a net loss of employers from southern Connecticut into New York and other urban areas. And that obviously has been reversed of it.
Nick Falker 33:41
And the residential market has come back strongly in Connecticut, in New Haven. I don't really know the percentages, but single family homes, I would assume, and it's also a very neighborhood city, but so I bet it varies quite a bit from neighborhood to neighborhood. But in the neighborhood I live in, for example, in East rock, I would imagine, single family home values on average are up 20 to 30%. I think those that's pretty representative of the country, though. So I think over the past 18 months or so. So 24 months. So yeah, I think Haven has done well. Connecticut's done well, it's the quality of life here has has always been an attribute. And the natural beauty of it has always been an attribute relative to Jersey or New York, no offense, New Jersey. And those are things that just kind of came back to the forefront for people making decisions leaving leaving New York.
Atif Qadir 34:35
So the reasons why someone comes to a New Haven and why they choose to stay. Let's talk about that in more detail. Because I think the New Haven story is actually one that is repeated across the metro New York City area and then across other MSS in the US. So one of the important things that we've talked about is this sense of place and these unique aspects that are are only new havens. In terms of everything from Yale to the pizza, so tell us more about the popular neighborhoods that are in New Haven and what you think makes them great places to live, perhaps beginning with East rock.
Nick Falker 35:10
Yeah. So these rock is a great place to live. It's less than a mile north of downtown New Haven. And you know, business school is basically in East rock a little separated from the core undergrad campus. Wooster square, as you mentioned before, as a perfect analogy, it is kind of the Brooklyn vibe, but neighborhood of New Haven. And that's where the Heinz development site is that I mentioned earlier, to under a 300 unit project that's, that's under construction now that Heinz is building. And then you have downtown, which has become more viable of a place to live as more residential development has gone up there in the last few years.
Nick Falker 35:45
But still, in my opinion, is a less desirable place to live than East rocker Wooster square, for example, you know, East rock and Leicester Square, still very walkable to downtown, and you can have more space. And it has really nice neighborhood amenities, coffee shops, bars, restaurants. And you don't have to be in an elevator building with parking challenges, for example, that you would have downtown. So there are obvious reasons to live in downtown New York, or downtown Boston. But I don't think that really applies to New Haven, because the neighborhoods are so accessible even by foot, certainly on on a bike. So yeah, so it's a great place to live. Yeah.
Atif Qadir 36:26
Talking about the neighborhoods that are north of downtown, I believe they're around Prospect Street and Science Hill. Are those areas that are desirable for people moving from New York City, for example?
Nick Falker 36:38
Yeah, so Well, Science Hill, really borders kind of the Yale sphere and the East rock sphere. And, you know, a slightly, I hate to say, rougher neighborhood, on the other side of it. So it kind of blends those, those two areas, there's been obviously a lot of investment from Yale and just into Science Park. And there's several new residential projects that are slated for development in that neighborhood mix of affordable housing and market rate housing that has affordable requirements, that were instated, in order to get the zoning variances that were needed to develop that density. So that's an interesting place to live. It's pretty gritty there. You know, it's got that commercial and office feel to it from Science Park. Man, it's next to some pretty gritty neighborhoods. So it's definitely got a, you know, a mixed bag feel to it. But and the Yale hockey stadium, the the whale, the whale is right there, too. So that's a cool attribute of it as well.
Atif Qadir 37:42
And then transportations a really important thing, especially if people relocating to a New Haven. So what does New Haven have going for it in terms of getting there and getting around?
Nick Falker 37:53
Yeah. So I mean, I would say the biggest thing is the Metro North stops in New Haven, the end of the Metro North line out of Grand Central stops in New Haven. So it's the last stop, which directly connects New Haven to New York City, which, fantastic by rail, and you know, in any from anywhere in New Haven, you can take an Uber to the train station, you know, within 510 minutes. So that's pretty outstanding. You can also take the Amtrak to Boston, go straight into South South Station. So you really don't need a car in New Haven. If you have a bike, you're pretty good. You can get to Boston in New York, and you can get to the airports there by public transportation relatively easily. There is a bus system in the city. And then there's a Yale shuttle, which is outstanding, actually, but you have to be yell affiliate to us and student or employee. But that's a really well, highly used system as well. But aside from that, I would not say it's the best public transport you've ever seen. Oh, within the city itself, even within the city, the bus system. Yeah.
Atif Qadir 38:53
To be fair, I think as someone who's visited the city a number of times, it's, as you said, it's eminently walkable. You could literally park your car, right around the green. And if you have a couple meetings, a couple of things to do, you could pretty much like, walk everywhere. It's not even that big of a deal, I think at least personally,
Nick Falker 39:12
definitely, ya know, a mile in any direction will pretty much get you anywhere.
Atif Qadir 39:17
And then also, let's think of fairies are there any are those are actually neighboring cities that have those right
Nick Falker 39:23
neighboring cities. So there's a ferry from Bridgeport to Long Island, which is great. You can avoid New York City if you go into Long Island, but not from New Haven that I know about. That would be cool, though. Maybe we should look into that.
Atif Qadir 39:36
That'll be the next part of Cambridge's future infrastructure development. That's
Nick Falker 39:39
right. Absolutely.
Atif Qadir 39:42
Wonderful. So I think with all of this is great details that you've given about a new haven I don't know why anyone would not want to move to the city. So
Nick Falker 39:51
yeah, circling back on a question asked a little bit ago about what what portion of people coming in in New Haven are staying here and why I think A significant portion of the people that have come to New Haven will stay here and choose to stay here. The work from home aspect, obviously, it's kind of released that flexibility into the workforce that's affected the entire country and urban centers across the country. Certainly, it's it, that's an aspect here. And then you know, you're in a little city without being in New York. So I think you have a lot of the claustrophobia of pandemic related claustrophobia and traffic issues, relieved by coming to New Haven from New York, but you don't give up all of the walkability and other amenities that you would want from a city. So you kind of you get a little little above when you come to New Haven, you get the relief of the congestion, but you still have all of those nice amenities.
Atif Qadir 40:44
I think it's they're all wins. And I think particularly drawing people away from perhaps the urban areas that they're familiar with to go to others. Other parts of the country is, I think, a very big, big benefit overall this past year, having spent time in 12 different places across the country one each month. I can tell you, there's many amazing places to live beyond Brooklyn. So for example, Morgantown, West Virginia, I absolutely love Durham, North Carolina, Charlottesville, Virginia, Austin, Texas. There's so many so many great books and New Haven is absolutely in my top 10 favorite cities in America.
Nick Falker 41:19
That's awesome. Well, that's an impressive list to put it up with. So that's great.
Atif Qadir 41:24
So we've had a chance to talk to the honorary mayor of New Haven, Nick Faulkner. Yeah. So much for joining us stay on the podcast.
Nick Falker 41:31
Sure. Thanks, Jeff is nice to be here. I appreciate it. Absolutely.
Atif Qadir 41:39
Thanks for joining me today on American building. If you enjoyed this episode, and want to hear more, subscribe on your favorite listening app. And don't forget to rate and review and friends. I've teamed up with writers for the New York Times and Wall magazine to launch a digital media platform. To tell the fascinating stories of the impact developers and capital providers. I work with a commonplace. Check it out@commonplace.us