🔒Storrs Center’s condos break ground

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Site work is underway on 42 luxury condominiums, the latest — and perhaps final phase — of the mega Storrs Center development adjacent to UConn's campus.

Westchester, N.Y., developer LeylandAlliance LLP just recently sealed the deal for construction of the Main Street Homes project with its announcement of a $6 million credit line for its Main Street Homes-Storrs LLC unit from Rhode Island's Washington Trust.

LeylandAlliance CEO Howard Kaufman said demand already is outpacing its ability to ramp up construction of the first units, due to be ready for occupancy by early 2016. All 42 units are slated to be built and sold by late that same year.

“This is the first for-sale residential product at Storrs Center,'' said Kaufman, whose firm is a minority partner with Centerplan Development in recasting Harford's Downtown North, or “DoNo,'' section into a mix of office, retail and apartments/condos, anchored by the new Dunkin' Donuts ballpark under construction for opening next spring.

Twenty-three of Main Street Homes' floor plans are pre-sold, Kaufman said. Prices for units ranging from one- to three-bedroom flats and townhouses start at $269,000 to as high as $530,000, Kaufman said.

It is, he said, more confirmation that Mansfield's residents, business and college-student body have fully embraced Storrs Center. To date, he said, the mixed-use development's approximately 600 apartments are occupied, and most of its 166,000 square feet of retail space is leased.

“It's a huge success,'' Kaufman said.

The $220 million project has involved a massive private-public partnership, two separate development companies, a financing package that mixes taxpayer money with private equity and bank loans, a relocation of a small business cluster and redevelopment around wetlands.

Moreover, the project was assembled throughout the 2008 financial crisis, which led to the nation's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

All of the condominium units, Kaufman said, will be contained in eight separate buildings on four acres that architect Union Studio, of Providence, R.I., has designed. The units will average 1,510 square feet in size.

A ninth structure, a three-story mid-rise to be called The Leyland Building, will house 10 flats that residents can access through garages and elevators at the building's rear, Kaufman said.

The Leyland is patterned after a similar structure at another LeylandAlliance development under construction in Warwick, in Orange County, N.Y.

Main Street's residences will feature nine-foot ceilings, wall-to-wall carpet, gas fireplaces, premium cabinetry and countertops and stainless steel appliances.

Common area amenities will include a 720-square-foot community center, parking garages and walking trails.

Middletown's Yankee Heritage Inc. is the “horizontal'' contractor, laying down paving, curbing, water-sewer line and other site infrastructure. Middletown's Centerplan Construction, an affiliate of DoNo's majority development partner, Centerplan Development Co., is the “vertical'' building contractor.

With Main Street Homes underway, Storrs Center is effectively down to its final four acres available for further development, Kaufman said, adding it's unclear when or whether they will be developed.

Deal Watch wants to hear from you. E-mail it, along with contact information to: gseay@HartfordBusiness.com.

Gregory Seay is the Hartford Business Journal News Editor.

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