Downsizing doesn’t mean giving up the finer things. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Just take a look at the new breed of condos
For years “condo” had a certain 1970s ring to it, calling to mind leisure suits and aviator glasses, stewardesses and divorcees, swinging singles and pool parties. When friends or acquaintances moved in, it usually meant they were between marriages … and homes. Condolences were in order.
These days, however, “condo” has come to mean space and comfort. Nearly a dozen luxury condominium and townhouse developments have gone up in Westport and Fairfield in the past three years. More are planned in the area.
The new condos appear to be most in demand among the khaki, polo shirt and Top-Sider set. “There’s a strong demand for luxury condos right now,” says Victoria Fingelly, sales manager at Nicholas H. Fingelly Real Estate in Southport Village. “They may have had a negative image ten years ago, but there’s a new breed of condo today. There’s plenty of money, and there are many more people in the second-home market.”
What people with money are seeking and finding in this buyer-driven, high-end market is extreme ease of ownership: low maintenance, high-quality construction and materials, generous rooms and detailing, and the kinds of appointments and amenities associated with three- and four-star hotels.
In short, new local developments like Terra Nova, Stone Ridge, and Southport Green are not only up-styling the condo image and maximizing the benefits of the building form, they are also amounting to a condonation of luxurious, guilt-free, community living.
The New Condo Owner
A large part of what’s driving the current, high-end condominium market are baby-boomers. Now in their fifties and early sixties, many boomers are also becoming empty-nesters. As the last of their children fly the coop, they’re at the height of their earning powers and free at last to live anywhere, and any way, they want.
Mike and Judy Guthman raised two children in a 4,000-square-foot house on two acres in Fairfield. They lived there for a quarter of a century. Three years ago, Mike, a human resources consultant, began thinking about retirement and the possibility of moving, though not necessarily to a condominium. “I don’t think we ever thought about condos,” he says, “but if we did, it was probably vaguely negative.”
That changed one day in 2004, when Guthman stepped out of Sally’s Place, the music store in downtown Westport, and spotted the sales office for Terra Nova, a then brand new condo development in Westport on the Norwalk line. Gated and gorgeously landscaped, the community was offering fifty-four Colonial-style townhouses with nearly as much space as the Guthmans had but with a more open, adult-oriented floor plan, and plenty of amenities and options: mahogany floors, nine-foot ceilings, large spa tubs, a small library and French doors between the master bedroom and sitting room.
Units at the development were selling so swiftly, the floor plan Guthman liked — the three-bedroom, 3,400-square-foot (including finished basement) — had sold out. A week later, on a Sunday morning, the couple got a call from the Terra Nova broker to say that a similar unit had suddenly become available. By that afternoon, Mike and Judy were proud condo owners.
“We absolutely made the right decision,” he says now. “This isn’t Gray Haired City. It’s a nice mix of demographics — empty-nesters, singles, couples with young children — and much more of a neighborhood than the two-acre zoned part of town we left.” More empty-nesters and professionals are following.
Late last summer, another Fairfield couple decided to leave their spacious contemporary home for a single-level, 2,300-square-foot, Georgian brick townhouse in Southport Green, the exclusive, expensive new community at the edge of Southport Village. Although their unit wasn’t yet built, they went to contract for the right to move in once it is.
“I think we’re attractive to certain buyers, those who are used to a high-quality standard, because they feel they’re in the right place,” says Stuart Baldwin, managing member of Southport Village Partners LLC, developers of the community. “The units are representative of the quality that the home buyers are coming from.”
Judging by the numbers of condo and townhouse communities recently built or under construction, and the speed at which they’re selling, baby-boomers and empty-nesters should have plenty of company in condoland.
Location Schmocation
Unlike single-family homes, location, no matter how many times Realtors repeat the word, doesn’t mean squat when it comes to luxury condos and town houses (condos tend to be attached to other condos, townhouses are unattached).
What’s surprising is how the newest, most luxurious, and most expensive units sit on some fairly rough locations. Most of them, in fact, are within a stone’s throw of the Post Road, I-95, the Metro-North railroad tracks — or all three.
One reason is that those sites happen to be some of the only sizable building lots left in suburbia. Another is that even triple-deficit locations no longer matter. Opulence and security have a way of smoothing the edges. Once safely past the gates and guardhouses, and once inside the units themselves, the rudenesses of everyday toiling life fade from sound and sight.
What takes more getting used to is the loss of autonomy that comes with community living. “You have to change your attitudes about what you can make decisions about,” says Guthman. “Before, you did what you wanted to do. Now, there are sets of rules that limit what you can do.” Like changing the shrubbery around the units, something Guthman wants to do. Instead, there’s a landscape committee to handle those kinds of issues. “I don’t have to make any decisions about the lawn, I don’t have to worry about it,” he says, sounding relieved. “The lawn here is much better than mine used to be.”
Gems in the Rough
In the fall of 2003, Munson Builders held an open house for Pequot Landings, a twenty-seven-unit cluster of townhouses on the site of the old Pequot Motel in Southport. Aside from the virtue of being across the street from the S&S Dugout, the old-time, mom-and-pop Southport eatery, the development is on the Post Road, half a block from I-95 and two blocks from the railroad tracks. At the time, the asking prices — beginning at $750,000 for a 2,300-square-foot, two bedroom unit — seemed outrageous.
And yet the three-story units, which resemble narrow Colonial homes nestled inside a stockade, have a lot going for them: nine-foot ceilings, gas fireplaces in the living and dining rooms, ground-floor patios and upper-level decks, multiple baths, extra-insulated walls, and Argon gas–filled windows to muffle the sounds of traffic. But the real gems in condoland — and the best at insulating life there from the outer world — are two new luxury developments at opposite ends of Fairfield and poles apart in terms of style and tone.
Stone Ridge condominiums opened in 2004 on the site of a former factory near the junction of King’s Highway Cutoff and King’s Highway East, near the bottom of Black Rock Turnpike and across from the future Fairfield Metro Center, which is currently under construction. From the street, the complex might be mistaken for ’20s office buildings. But inside the stone walls and main security gates, the inner courtyard resembles a private street of refurbished Manhattan brownstones (as opposed to Fairfield County green and white Colonials), with three-story bay window projections, limestone cornices, and egg-and-dart stone moldings.
“It isn’t traditional Connecticut,” says Maggie Smith, a broker with the Higgins Group in Fairfield. “It’s metropolitan New York, and a level of sophistication that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The units overlook a thruway and a parking lot, but it doesn’t seem to matter.”
Eventually, residents here will have direct access via a footbridge. Such proximity may well be a part of the development’s draw. For the time being, however, the major appeal of Stone Ridge is the level of appointments, amenities and services. Like fancy SoHo apartments, the one-level units have a fresh, spacious, airy feeling that is enhanced by eight-foot-high doors, ten-foot ceilings, an open kitchen of honed limestone countertops and Viking appliances, and expensive, hotel-quality bathrooms. One of the two furnished models available for viewing, decorated in black and white by Toronto interior designer Norma King, is only 1,700 square feet but seems larger. It is a stately condominium.
Stone Ridge also provides the kind of group massaging the new condo crowd is coming to expect. The Ridge, the community clubhouse, features a fitness center; a handsome club room triples as a library and game and TV room and can be reserved for private functions. The full-service concierge accepts deliveries when tenants are away, arranges for dry-cleaning pickup, and makes restaurant reservations.
The condos at Stone Ridge range from 1,200 to 2,000 square feet, and from $565,000 to $1 million. The furnished model mentioned above is listed for $850,000; undecorated and unfurnished, the cost is $650,000.
“When they first came on the market two years ago, we thought it was going to be hard for them to sell at $600,000 and $700,000,” says Maggie Smith. “But they are the most gorgeous interiors I’ve ever seen, and the first two phases of the project have sold out.”
Meanwhile, the visionary and ambitious project known as Southport Green has been rising on a four-plus acre site, wedged the between I-95 and the railroad tracks, on the outskirts of Southport Village.
The mixed-use complex of townhouses, penthouses, single rooms and office space comprises twelve buildings of varying, local architectural styles — Georgian, federal, Colonial — around a common green. Included in the layout are a day spa, an inn and the relocated local restaurant La Colline Verte.
“This is intended to be a traditional neighborhood development, a village within a village, and something that respects the vernacular architecture of Southport, with a mixture of uses just like [the town] itself,” says Stuart Baldwin, a Southport resident and investor in the project. “It’s designed to be pedestrian- friendly, with sidewalks connecting the buildings, in the way the village itself is people-friendly.”
Baldwin and partners are offering twenty-eight private residences: eight one-and two-bedroom units priced under $1 million, and townhouses ranging from $1.7 million for a 2,150-square-foot unit, Single-Level unit to $3.25 million for a 4,100-square-foot, two-story townhouse. In addition, there are rooms and suites available at the Southport Village Inn in the price range of $350,000 to $450,000.
Typical of the “townhomes,” as they’re called here, is the model house for the community, sited at the center of the project. The three-story, 4,100-square foot Georgian townhouse features front and back colonnaded porches, a two-story entry foyer with winding staircase, three bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, including a spa master bath, a private courtyard, and a loft office, exercise room or kids’ quarters. The material and appliances are top of the line: Carrera marble, Wolff cooktops, SubZero appliances, Klaff’s custom cabinets, and Waterworks sinks, tubs and faucets. Soni Christensen of Design East Interiors styled and furnished the house largely with pieces from the Southport Legacy line.
What Southport Green is really offering, of course, is an alternate, microcosmic version of Southport itself, with buildings that are similar to those found nearby in the village, only newer, more comfortable and manageable, and more accessible to contemporary amenities. For all its charm, most of Southport is within earshot of I-95. But the large block of mixed-use buildings and underground parking garages that form the north wall of Southport Green, adjacent to the turnpike, act as visual and sound barriers.
Market Outlook
No one in real estate is willing to venture a guess as to how the market will perform this spring. But unlike the rest of the residential housing market, prices at the best of the condo and townhouse developments in Westport and Fairfield have held steady and, in some instances, have continued to climb.
Sales at Pequot Landings have been steady. As of last fall, five townhouses remained. Three-quarters of the seventy condominiums at Stone Ridge have sold as of this writing. By late last summer, all 15,000 square feet of office space at Southport Green had been leased and 25 percent of the residences had gone to contract, all while the development was in the early stages of construction. And at Terra Nova, all fifty-four units quickly sold out shortly after being listed in 2004; as of last fall, four condominiums had come back on the market, including a 3,500-square-foot unit for $1.3 million that initially sold for $850,000.
Even older, upscale condo communities — like Lansdowne on the Post Road in Westport or The Meadows on former marshland off South Pine Creek Road in Fairfield — are going fast when units come back on the market.
Will supply exceed demand, as happened in the single-family market late last spring? Will prices for luxury units drop to the point where it would be stupid not to buy one? More important, could you be a condo dweller this year? |
Email this page
Print this page
del.icio.us
digg
