Hartford Business Journal

22 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER 5, 2026 The Beam apartment complex in New London's Fort Trumbull neighborhood (shown in center), with downtown and the Thames River in the background. The 203-unit development is part of a broader housing push as Electric Boat's expansion adds to demand across southeastern Connecticut. Contributed Photo Room Needed Electric Boat's expansion fuels housing push in southeastern CT middle housing as one way to help address that problem. Meanwhile, he said municipalities need to take an active role in deciding how to accommodate growth. "With communities, there's this kind of push-pull against developers," he said. "We can't just wish the growth pressures away. Developers are the people that are building our community for us." Investor confidence In New London, commercial real estate firm RJ Development & Advisors (RJDA) just started work on a second major waterfront apartment complex. The $95 million project, called The Mizzen, will bring 251 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, close to Electric Boat's New London engineering building. Plans call for a 250,000-square-foot building and 232 parking spaces. RJDA said the first apartments are expected to be available in mid-2028. The project is adjacent to The Beam, a 203-unit apartment complex completed in late 2022 that marked RJDA's first entry into the New London market. "When we came into the market in 2021, there really was no proof of concept that new Class A construction was viable at scale," said Yves Joseph, RJDA's CEO. "The Beam leased up to 90% in 90 days. We've been building all over the state and have never experienced an absorption that effective and that rapid." RJDA acquired the 6.28-acre site for The Mizzen — the last remaining parcel on the once-disputed Fort Trumbull By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com H ousing shortages are common- place across Connecticut, but Electric Boat's expansion is putting particular pressure on the state's southeastern corner. The submarine maker is on pace to meet its goal of hiring 8,000 new workers this year, while also expanding beyond its Groton waterfront shipyard and New London engineering building into a new training and support center at the former Crystal Mall in Waterford. That influx of new workers is placing demands on the housing stock in all three locations, and the pace of devel- opment has stepped up. But efforts to accommodate that growth are raising questions about land use, zoning, traffic and infrastructure. Groton, which hosts Electric Boat's historic waterfront shipyard, has taken a data-driven approach to both spurring development and addressing resi- dents' skepticism about the need for new housing. The town carried out housing market analyses in 2021 and 2023, prompted by Electric Boat's expansion and the influx of residents to Connecticut's waterfront communities during and just after the pandemic. The first study found that within 10 years, the town needed more than 4,500 new housing units just to meet basic demand. The second study put the need at 6,500 units. The town is now partnering with the Department of Defense on a more comprehensive regional study focused on "missing middle" housing — such as duplexes, townhouses and small apartment buildings. The ongoing study indicates that southeastern Connecticut may need as many as 18,000 new housing units by 2035. Jonathan Reiner, Groton's director of plan- ning and development services, said changing household sizes are adding to demand. "If you just look at housing patterns, in 1950, there were four people per household," he said. "Now we're much closer to two people per household. We need 100% more housing units just to house the same number of people." In 2019, Groton rewrote its zoning regulations to allow multifamily housing in more areas, recognizing that larger developments were needed to meet demand. "That really does seem to be what developers are interested in building right now as opposed to subdividing and then building single-family or duplex houses," said Deborah Jones, the town's assistant director of economic development. The missing middle study is expected to recommend further zoning changes to encourage smaller multifamily devel- opments, including buildings with three or four attached homes. Most development applications involve undeveloped land, although officials want to encourage the reuse of old school buildings and former strip malls along Route 1. "It's an enterprise zone," Reiner said. "We've adopted a mixed-use center type of zoning. It's a tax increment financing district. But we haven't seen that redevelopment on a large scale to what we're looking for, for kind of that walkable mixed-use center." Groton currently has around 1,400 to 1,500 housing units either under construction or expected to break ground this fall. About 23% of the town's current housing stock is affordable, but Reiner said many longtime residents are being displaced as a more affluent workforce moves in. He sees additional missing Jonathan Reiner Yves Joseph

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