Photo by Lester Smith
Viewed from the west, the first floor of the first building of The Hamlet reveals its interior layout. With only three buildings in this phase, the full build-out of The Hamlet is planned to offer 166 units, many of them “affordable,” by State definition.
Construction has begun on a large complex of apartments and townhouses in the southeastern corner of Suffield. With local planning begun on March 2015, one large apartment house is now being framed and two more are planned in the first phase. Fully built as planned, there will be a total of 166 apartments and town houses, over half of them “affordable,” under the definitions and with the help of the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development through the Competitive Housing Assistance for Multifamily Properties (CHAMP) program.
The 31-acre site is on the south bank of Stony Brook, behind house lots along the east side of East Street South and abutting the Suffield waste water treatment plant and the Windsor Locks Canal on the east. The access road is listed as 898 East Street South. Because of the topography, the buildings are not expected to be visible from East Street South.
Previously zoned R-25, the parcel was converted to a HOD (Housing Opportunity Development) zone in the planning for this project, allowing Suffield zoning regulations to be ignored in favor of state codes encouraging affordability. (In the eyes of the State, Suffield has not reached its quota of “affordable” housing.) “Affordable” housing must be dispersed within the complex and generally indistinguishable from the market rate units.
“Affordability” comes in several levels, each based on a family’s income compared to the area median income (AMI) of the municipality. The Hamlet expects to have some units available to families making 60% of the AMI and others to families making 80%. According to Google, Suffield’s AMI is based on the Hartford County area, where the AMI for a family of four is currently $89,700, and 60% of that is $53,820.
Named The Hamlet and originally proposed by Mark O’Neal of Hamlet Homes, LLC, the project was transferred in 2016 to Dakota Partners, Inc., a large Waltham, Mass., development company experienced in building and operating such facilities. Phase 1, now under way, will have three, 36-unit, three-story apartment buildings, each with nine two-bedroom units and one one-bedroom unit on each floor, providing what the developer describes as “quality workforce housing opportunities for Suffield residents.”
The subsequent three phases of Dakota’s plan will incorporate more rental apartment houses and other buildings with individually owned town houses.
Hamlet will be operated by HallKeen Management, a very large Boston-based company. Dakota expects that leasing will begin in the summer of 2018.