Mystic Coogan Farm Senior Living Proposal Discussed

Stonington’s Economic Development Commission held an information meeting, Thursday evening, on the proposed planned for a subdivided lot of 18 acres of the 63-acre Coogan Farm in Mystic.

At the meeting a resident who said he was in the 65-plus age range described his social life as including many 50-somethings. He said he cannot recall a time when any of them asked, “By the way, when are you going to the home?”

But the senior housing and assisted living facility developer Joe Mastronunzio of BROM Builders crunched the numbers; in eight years, more than 35 percent of the population of Stonington will be over 50.

Mastronunzio addressed the nine-member Economic Development Commission, and dozens of residents, business owners, other stakeholders and even a number of individual members of other town boards Thursday night, laying out the plan and fielding questions.

“There is a significant need and [it] will only increase,” Mastronunzio said. “It’s our hope that this project will meet that need for many years to come.”

And that combined with a plethora of other “attractive” factors including having a Mystic-area zip code, means the demand for “active senior adult” housing is going to increase and keep increasing, he said.

Plus, Mastronunzio said, the town’s own Plan of Conservation Development anticipates that type of land use—and his project fits the bill, is in the right zone, complies with regulations, will bring jobs, employ local business during construction phases and provide the town with hundreds of thousands in tax revenue when it’s fully built out—with no children to educate.

The plan calls for a two-phase, possibly 10-year start to finish, based on any number of factors including market dictates. Phase I, which would begin in spring 2012 pending all approvals and last 12 – 14 months, would see a sub-phase first where 95 memory care and assisted living units would be built followed by a second sub-phase with 30 additional units,  acute care and assisted living, two and three bedroom rental units, which residents would rent, not purchase. The building design would replicate brownstone buildings—which the town Architectural Review Board “enthusiastically” supported, Mastronunzio said, and include “first class landscaping to make it as elegant as possible.”

The second phase, projected, if the market allows, to begin three years after the first phase has been completed, would include 120 independent and perhaps assisted living one and two- bedroom units in three story buildings. None of the facility would be visible from Greenmanville Road (Rt. 27), Mastronunzio said.

BROM signed a contract to buy 18 acres of the undeveloped 63 acre Coogan site, on the market for years for $7.5 million.

The town came out in support of the plan through a press release to Stonington Patch last week wherein it said the project would have a “significantly positive impact” for Stonington. Thursday it voted to support the plan, save for chairman Blunt White who recused himself saying he’d worked with some of the people involved in the project. He did however say that the assisted living facility, as a rental-only development would not just bring in “so much dough,” but would “fill a niche” by offering rental assisted housing for seniors.

BROM will partner on the construction of the facility with a national contractor, the release said.  The operator will be Morningside House, a privately held company with senior living facilities in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Of the 18-acre site, a portion of it will not be developed. 

The Inlands Wetlands Commission will visit the site this Saturday, Nov. 19 and will address the plan at its December meeting. The Planning and Zoning Commission set Jan. 17, 2012 as the on both the subdivision request and special use permit for the two-phase construction.