The company that built the successful Shaker Heights active adult community in Enfield is looking to complete a similar but larger 55-and-older housing project about 3 miles away.
Mannarino Builders has begun putting up 42 detached condos on three Brainard Road properties that have been targeted for development for more than two decades.
Two years ago, Robert Mannarino’s company took over another developer’s long-stalled proposal to build senior apartments on the site, and switched it to condos instead. But changes in the market since then have made it more feasible to sell the units as deed-restricted to owners 55 and older, the company told town planners.
“Presently we’ve invested a lot of money into the development,” Mannarino told the Planning and Zoning Commission earlier this winter. “The road is paved for phase one, the berm is built, the plantings are done, we’ve done a lot of sidewalk.”
Mannarino’s plan is to build units along a new road he’ll construct off Brainard Road just east of George Washington Road in northern Enfield. Mannarino last year paid Washington Associates $1.7 million for the three parcels, which make up roughly 19 acres, according to town records.
In 2005, a developer got zoning permission to build senior apartments on the site but never followed through. Mannarino bought the land 20 years later and switched the plan to Brainard Gardens, a complex that was to include 42 condos available to any buyers.
But Mannarino, who has built housing developments in South Windsor, Suffield, Granby and Simsbury, later concluded that marketability would be better if the complex was age restricted. The name was changed to Stonebridge Commons.
He’s now looking for zoning commissioners to authorize deed restrictions in the multifamily housing zone rules that apply to the site. Commissioners informally agreed that they anticipate approving his request when he formally presents it later in the winter or spring.
Each home would be 2,000 to 2,300 square feet and include individual garages.
Initially 17 are being built along Liberty Lane, a new street off Brainard Road. Liberty will at first end in two cul de sacs; as the second phase is built with 25 additional homes, Liberty will be extended through the property to connect with Brainard to a second spot.
Mannarino said many potential buyers are older homeowners who plan to buy with the money the receive from selling their current houses.
“That frees up a house to be bought. There is something to say for it as far as families getting into housing,” Mannarino said.
“I’ve been doing this for 35 years: single-family residential homes, custom homes, residential developments and communities like this,” he said.
Mannarino invited commissioners to see the 37-unit Shaker Heights active adult living community he recently completed in the town’s Hazardville section. That was another initiative that had stalled under a previous developer.
“We finished that. I know that project was there for a very long time. It was very difficult, we took over a mess up there,” he said. “If you get a chance to drive up there you’ll see the nice job we did.”
Owners at Shaker Heights share the cost of lawn maintenance, grounds maintenance and snow removal.
His company’s portfolio of more than 15 residential projects includes Cutler Ridge and Stone Crossing in South Windsor, Redstone Farm in Suffield, Simsbury Pines in Simsbury and others.