CT: Empty parcel near Stamford CT rail station being shopped as site for high-rise apartment building

Could another high rise be going vertical along Interstate 95 next to Stamford's central commuter rail station? That is one vision for the owners of a parcel bounded by Atlantic, Dock, Manhattan and Pacific streets, who are now dangling the lot for any developers to move ahead with a project.

Under a design attributed to the Stamford architectural firm Marsh + Woods Architects, one potential iteration of the building would include a residential tower rising nearly 40 stories with 484 units, with a wide base or a run of ground-level storefronts fronting Dock Street and a larger parking garage on the lower levels.

That would top the Park Tower Stamford condominium building as the tallest in Stamford — but any new developer would bring their own vision to the property at 560 Atlantic St., according to Don Carbo, a commercial real estate broker with New England Properties Real Estate who is representing the property owners.

Carbo said he could not divulge details on the listing, and did not say if the owners are looking to retain any equity portion in a future development.

"There's a lot of interest on it already," Carbo said on Thursday. "Calls are coming in."

Stamford is in the midst of an ongoing apartment boom that has seen the addition of thousands of units in the past several years, with as many as 4,500 units or more in the pipeline according to the most recent count by the city of Stamford's economic development office. That number does not including the hundreds more that could be built at 560 Atlantic St.

On the south side of I-95 and the Metro-North commuter rail line, contiguous properties along Atlantic, Dock, Manhattan and Pacific streets have been cobbled together over a dozen years, including two purchased last year under limited liability companies listed in the name of Frank Steinegger, a Darien resident who runs a construction company in Stamford.

The combined lot is now being packaged for sale to the highest bidder, without making public any initial asking price in a commercial listing posted by New England Properties Real Estate.

The parcel could also become home to a possible corporate headquarters if any have interest in the site. More than two years ago, broadband giant Charter Communications moved into a new headquarters complex on the opposite side of the Stamford Transportation Center, after moving its headquarters to Stamford in 2012 from St. Louis, Missouri.

But with plenty of office vacancies already in downtown Stamford, including the Stamford Plaza complex on Tresser Boulevard owned by RFR Realty, a residential development appears the more likely outcome. Across I-95, the first phase of the Atlantic Station high rise opened in 2018, with commercial tenants now moving into Atlantic Station including Golf Lounge 18.

Over 12 months through June 2022, apartment occupancies in Stamford jumped about three percentage points to 96.9 percent, the city reported that year. As of Thursday, Apartments.com listed 1,750 available units in Stamford, ranging from a Bedford Street studio for $1,540 a month to $7,500 for a unit in the newly built Smyth residential building at 100 Tresser Blvd. a few blocks north of I-95 and the Stamford Transportation Center.

Marcus & Millichap analysts calculated last June that Stamford will have four of every 10 new apartments that come online this year in Fairfield County, in a review of the region's apartment market.

"As recent as 2019, it cost less to make a mortgage payment on a median-priced home than to rent a local top-tier apartment," Marcus & Millichap analysts wrote. "However, that dynamic inverted with the ramp-up in mortgage rates in recent years, which has been compounded by record home prices amid limited for-sale inventory. This is increasing the prevalence of renters at top-tier properties."

Includes prior reporting by Paul Schott.

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