15-Unit Apartment Building Approved For Hamilton Street ‘Gateway’

A three-story apartment building targeted for the “gateway” to Hamilton Street from New Brunswick was approved July 7 by the Zoning Board of Adjustment.

The 15-unit building will be constructed at the corner of Hamilton Street and Hawthorne Drive.

The building will consist of 10 1-bedroom apartments and five 2-bedroom apartments, the Board was told.

The building will also feature a lower and an upper common lobby, Michael Testa, the project’s architect, told the Board.

There will be three apartments – two 1-bedroom and one 2-bedroom – on the first floor, and six apartments on each of the second and third floors, he told the Board.

The developer, Liv Devco, won relief from the Board from the Hamilton Business District zoning regulation calling for first-floor retail in mixed-use buildings.

Vince Dominach, the executive director of the Hamilton Street Business District, said the Hamilton Street Advisory Board wholeheartedly supported the developer’s request.

There are thousands of square feet of empty retail space in new residential buildings on Hamilton Street, Dominach said.

“To add more retail … the Hamilton Street board felt would be inappropriate,” he said.

Even though there will be no retail on the building’s ground floor, there are still exterior design elements that mimic the actual retail buildings in the area.

That’s good, Dominach said, because “it gives the same feel of it being commercial, but at the same time, we don’t have empty store space.”

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