Fairfield Hills—

Five Town-Owned Houses Auctioned For More Than $1.6 Million

By Andrew Gorosko

The town’s auctioning of five compact vacant houses on Mile Hill Road South at Fairfield Hills on April 30 drew wide interest, attracting about 60 people to the auction site during intermittent showers and producing more than $1.6 million in revenue.

The auction produced $1,628,000 in sales. The combined asking prices for the houses had been $1.25 million. Thus, the auction generated $378,000 more than the town-set minimum bids for the properties.

“I’m very pleased at the outcome of the auction,” said First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal. The money generated by the sales will be used by the town toward the environmental cleanup of the Fairfield Hills core campus, he said.

The town bought the 189-acre core campus and many buildings there from the state for $3.9 million last August. Fairfield Hills, a former state psychiatric hospital, closed in December 1995.

The five houses sold by the town on April 30 formerly were occupied by Fairfield Hills workers.

In the past, town officials had expected that such an auction would produce approximately $1 million, Mr Rosenthal said. “It certainly exceeded expectations,” he said.

The house sales will provide residences for people, will generally improve the town, and will specifically improve the Mile Hill Road South neighborhood, the first selectman said.

At the auction, Dr Victor Araya of Bridgeport and Lynn Hallquist of Stratford purchased the house, barn, and garage at 2 Mile Hill Road South for $325,000 in the competitive bidding. The minimum bid for that property had been set at $270,000 by the town. That property includes more than 2.5 acres.

The town-set opening bids on each of the other four houses was $245,000. Those properties range from 0.66 acres to 1.24 acres.

Peter Reilly of Newtown purchased 6 Mile Hill Road South for $331,000.

Patrick Kelley and Jennifer Barillari, both of Newtown, bought 8 Mile Hill Road South for $317,000.

Kristina Halili of Newtown purchased 10 Mile Hill Road South for $332,000.

Douglas Patrick, Peter Traglia, and Mark Kopec of Oxford bought 12 Mile Hill Road South for $323,000.

Several of the buyers plan to renovate the houses for resale to others.

At least one house will be refurbished for eventual occupancy by the buyers. Mr Kelley and Ms Barillari, who plan to wed, will be renovating the 8 Mile Hill Road house for use as their future residence.

“We hope to renovate it and live in it,” Mr Kelley said this week. They also may expand the house to increase its square footage.

Mr Kelley said that he plans to do as much of the renovation work as possible with builder Rich Barillari, who is his future father-in-law.

A brief tour of the house at 2 Mile Hill Road South, which was purchased by Dr Araya and Ms Hallquist, indicates that the buyers will have their renovation work cut out for them, considering the deterioration taht the house has experienced since Fairfield Hills workers vacated it years ago.

The five auctioned houses are located on a contiguous strip along the west side of Mile Hill Road South, just south of that street’s intersection with Wasserman Way.