Assisted Living Complex Proposed For Church Hill

By Andrew Gorosko

A Massachusetts firm is doing preliminary planning work on a proposal to build a 78-unit assisted living apartment complex for the elderly on Church Hill Road in The Borough.

Scott Cohen, project manager for Benchmark Assisted Living of Wellesley Hills, Mass, said Tuesday the firm is considering building an approximately 50,000-square-foot, wood-frame building on a vacant, wooded five-acre parcel on the north side of Church Hill Road, just east of the intersection of Church Hill Road and The Boulevard. The site is across Church Hill Road from Starbucks Coffee.

Mr Cohen said the privately-held Benchmark has an option to buy the property at 37 Church Hill Road from Pepper Partners Limited Partnership. Mr Cohen estimated construction costs for such a two-story complex at approximately $6 million. He did not disclose the price for the real estate.

In a November 12 letter to the Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) Benchmark seeks to learn whether it would be allowed to connect to the municipal sewer system for waste disposal.

 Public Works Director Fred Hurley said Tuesday the property is in the town’s sewer district and has access to sewers. A lateral sewer line was extended to the parcel when the sewer system was constructed, he said. The volume of sewage that an assisted living complex would discharge into the sewer system is not an issue, he said. The 78 apartments proposed by Benchmark would not discharge as much wastewater into the sewer system as typical residences, Mr Hurley said.

 “They’re going through the step-by-step [process that] they need to get financing,” Mr Hurley said of Benchmark’s sewer query to the WPCA.

 Borough Zoning Official Jean St Jean said she has received several queries during the past several years from firms interested in developing the Church Hill Road property for various uses including a medical building and a professional building, but those projects never materialized.

“We do a very community-oriented project,” Mr Cohen said of Benchmark’s desire to locate its facilities in the center of activity and not on the edge of town. Each Benchmark project is built to be “site specific” and is designed to fit into the particular place it is built, he said. “We like to build close to the center of activity… We want to be part of the community,” he said. “We think it’s an ideal site,” he added.

Besides its interest in developing a Newtown site, the firm either has existing facilities or is in the process of building or planning facilities in Southington, Newington, Mystic, East Lyme and Shelton.

The firm provides “housing for seniors who can no longer live on their own, but don’t need nursing home care,” he said.

Like most assisted living complexes, the facility being planned by Benchmark would provide specialized housing for people with memory loss problems, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, Mr Cohen said. Perhaps 20 units in the proposed complex would be designated for such a use, he said.

Very few of the residents living in such complexes drive, he said, adding that Benchmark provides transportation for people who live there. Staff members and visitors would generate traffic to and from the site.

Mr Cohen said Benchmark may be ready to submit a development application for the site to Borough zoning officials next spring. Construction of such a complex would take less than one year.

Greg Anderson, Benchmark’s communications director, said, “We’re very early in the [development] process. There’s still a significant amount of work to do.”

 “It’s on our ‘radar screen’ for 2000,” he said. He described the proposed complex as “a combination of senior housing and personalized services in a residential environment.”

The single-building complex would include private apartments with kitchenettes and private bathrooms. Round-the-clock assistance would be provided to residents who need it, he said. Three meals would be served daily in a dining room.

Benchmark provides quarters for its residents on a rental basis, he said. Such quarters typically range from $2,500 to $4,000 monthly in the senior housing industry, he said.

Mr Anderson stressed that facilities such as the one envisioned by Benchmark do not provide skilled nursing care and do not administer medication to residents. He estimated that a total of 85 people might live in the 78 apartments. The units typically are a mixture of studio apartments, one-bedroom apartments and two-bedroom apartments.

 “Benchmark is a market-driven, site-specific company,” he said, terming the site “a beautiful location in the center of activity.”  “We build to fit the neighborhood and the community that it’s in,” he said.

Becker and Becker Associates of New Canaan, one of the three firms competing to redevelop the state-owned Fairfield Hills, is in an alliance with Benchmark to create assisted living apartments at Fairfield Hills. The state has yet to select a firm to redevelop Fairfield Hills.