Brian Alves reached back in time to his teenage years attending concerts by Aerosmith and Huey Lewis and the News at the Coliseum — as he gave reporters a tour of the shiny new mixed-use building that has risen from the ex-venue’s ashes, complete with 200 apartments, ground-floor retail space, a pool, a gym, and a common room buttressed by a “real life plant wall.”
Alves works for Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, the Norwalk-based developer that, in partnership with the Fieber Group and KDP, just finished building “Phase 1A” of the Coliseum-site redevelopment at 275 Orange St.
On Monday morning, after a celebratory press conference and ribbon cutting, Alves gave reporters a tour of the apartments and amenities that are now open in the first building to rise atop the grave of the Coliseum rock and hockey arena and convention center. That complex was blown up on Jan. 20, 2007, leaving the 3.5‑acre block bordered by Orange, State, George and MLK Boulevard empty ever since…