They envision customized condos, spaced-out units, trees, a recreation path, and a kayak and canoe rack along the Contoocook River. They picture young, working couples looking for a bedroom community, wanting to settle down and purchase their first home.
“They” are developer Chris Dolloff, builder Joe Spain and Realtor Maleeka Lloyd, and their sights are set on One Riverside Place, a 38-unit condominium community under construction in Boscawen. The project has been a long time coming: it was initially approved by the town in 2007 and the land was subdivided several years prior.
Just as building has recently gotten under way for the housing development, the Boscawen planning board is in the midst of updating the town’s master plan. A public hearing will be held next week on the “Population and Demographics” chapter of the plan, which considers how the town may better plan for its future given recent trends in the numbers, age and income of its residents.
The general trend, according to a draft of that population and demographics chapter, is that Boscawen residents are getting older. There are also indications that recent population growth hasn’t come from growing families per say, but people migrating in.
“One of the goals we’ve talked about many times is providing an opportunity for our children to live here,” said Boscawen Planning and Community Development Director Alan Hardy in a phone interview last week. “To afford to live here.”
That’s in line with One Riverside Place’s aims, according to its real estate agent, Lloyd, of Ruedig Realty. During a site walk last week, she explained that the prices of the units – starting at $215,000 – are aimed at first-time homebuyers.
“The price points are right,” she said.
First, though, the units need to be erected. Located on 10 acres off East Street by Penacook Family Physicians, the development is currently covered in rooted up rocks, dirt piles, heavy machinery and foundations laid in clearings bordered with trees. Framing is expected to begin next week, and by September or October, the first condos should be ready for purchase, sitting along yet-to-be built roads: Shoreline Drive and Kayak Lane.
A wooded recreation path will also be built around the edge of the development, running alongside the Contoocook River. The entire project is expected to take about a year and a half to complete.
Dolloff, who is the developer and the founder of Cityside Management Corp., said, “This is just a beautiful site.” He and Concord builder Spain had a vision, he said, to build condominiums there, to put in some new housing stock into an area with a lot of aging townhouses.
This project is part of what Spain called a “resurgence” of construction in the capital region since the Great Recession. One Riverside Place is one of two housing projects underway in Boscawen – Red Oak Property Management is also preparing to build 12 housing units in the area behind Ross Express trucking company on North Main Street.
Hardy, the town’s planning and community development director, said the project was approved last year and the land has been cleared.
While Boscawen will facilitate in what ways it can for housing projects to attract young people to the area – Spain commended the town for its assistance with One Riverside Place – Hardy said the town, like all other municipalities, is dependent on the market and investor confidence to see these kind of projects come in.
The apparent current investor confidence is positive, he said, though he added, “Can we create that? No. The market drives what’s going to be built.”
What Boscawen can do is design its ordinances to encourage the type of development it wants, and those ordinances are guided by the town master plan, which Hardy called a “living, breathing document.”
While local population and demographics are currently under consideration, the town’s imminent 50 additional units will most likely figure into the update of the master plan’s housing chapter, too.
“Housing is one we haven’t taken up yet,” Hardy said.
The public hearing on the “Population and Demographics” Master Plan chapter is scheduled for Tuesday. The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Boscawen Municipal Complex.
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)