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05/06/2015 11:17 AMFirst a new parking lot, then a new residential development, and, finally, a rebuilt road with new sidewalks. During 2015 and 2016, three major construction projects will be underway on North Main Street, leading to a transformation of the transit-oriented neighborhood.
The first North Main Street project, already started, involves construction on a new 199-space train station parking lot. The new parking area is being built on a 3.6-acre site whose northern boundary is the train tracks and whose eastern boundary is North Main Street. The new state Department of Transportation (DOT) facility is being built by Dayton Construction, a DOT contractor, at a cost of $2,423,247.
Dayton’s heavy equipment had already started moving dirt and grading the site by the middle of March 2015. By the end of 2015, the contractor’s work will be finished and the parking lot opened to train patrons.
The second North Main Street project that will break ground in 2015 is the 186-unit Eastpointe at Saybrook Station residential development.
Earlier this month, the Zoning Commission approved Eastpointe, LLC’s, site plan application for this new development. As a result, Bill Finger of Eastpointe, LLC, now expects to start construction at the 10.78-acre property later the summer.
The current schedule calls for a 22-month construction process. That means that if the project remains on track, residents could be moving in to their Eastpointe rental units as early as June 2017.
Monthly rents for an Eastpointe apartment will vary, as the project was approved under affordable housing guidleines. Finger said that rent levels for the 80 percent of the units that are market-rate likely won’t be set until 2017, just before the buildings are ready for occupancy, but the rent levels for the 20 percent of the units that are deed-restricted as affordable are determined by a formula established by state statute.
“The affordable rents depend upon the then-HUD-published area median income (AMI). Based upon HUD’s 2014 published AMI for Old Saybrook, if units were being rented today, the maximum one-bedroom rent for an affordable unit would be $1,337 and $1,582 for a two-bedroom unit,” said Finger.
Since the Eastpointe residential development was approved for an Incentive Housing Zone, 20 percent of the rental units must be deed-restricted as affordable units.
Eastpointe development is already working with the DOT and its contractor, Dayton Construction, to discuss and coordinate construction activity in 2015 at the two abutting North Main Street sites.
Construction on the third project, a planned reconstruction of North Main Street itself, will not begin until 2016. At that point, the train station parking lot will be finished, and the Eastpointe development project will have been under construction for about six months.
By the middle of 2017, all three North Main Street projects should be substantially completed.