St. Luke's Development Corporation

Located in the historic African-American neighborhood of Dixwell, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is over 170 years old. It was founded by African-American Episcopalians, including W.E.B. Dubois’s great-grandfather, outraged by discriminatory treatment at the hands of members of Trinity Episcopal Church located on the New Haven Green. Today, St. Luke’s serves a thriving, diverse congregation a few blocks from downtown New Haven.

In 1997, congregants of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church founded St. Luke’s Development Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation seeking to provide neighborhood retail amenities, high-quality affordable housing and affordable office space in the Dixwell neighborhood and on Whalley Avenue, a major commercial corridor connecting the Downtown, Dixwell, Dwight, Beaver Hills, Edgewood, and Westville neighborhoods.

The clinic has represented St. Luke’s Development Corporation in connection with two real estate development projects. Josephine Jarvis Gray Senior Housing , completed in 2007, provides eighteen affordable units for elderly residents in New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood. The second venture, currently in the pre-development phase, will ultimately include 34 units of mixed-income housing as well as 6,000 square feet of commercial space. The clinic has represented St. Luke’s Development Corporation in purchasing and financing the acquisition of multiple parcels of land, reviewing leases with commercial tenants, procuring a complex array of land use approvals for the mixed-use development project, and securing state and federal subsidies.

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It’s incredibly important to defend the rule of law. But it’s also incredibly important that we think beyond the rule of law and how are we going to empower our local communities to ensure that that vision is what our government and our elected representatives are working towards each and every single day.”

Sameer Jaywant

Class of 2018