Buyers Eyeing Camp Avenue Condos
as published by The Stamford Advocate, 06/02/2006

Stamford real estate developer Randall Salvatore has received binders for 135 of the 170 condominiums his company plans to build off Camp Avenue in the city’s Springdale neighborhood.

Right now, potential buyers can see only renderings of future townhousestyle homes. Salvatore’s company RMS Construction LLC, has begun site preparation work, excavation and construction of retaining walls.

Salvatore said foundation work will begin in a couple of weeks and the first occupants of the Village at River’s Edge will move in by the end of this year. He said he expects to finish the project by the end of next year.

Last week, RMS Camp Avenue, LLC closed on the 9-acre condo tract from an affiliate of longtime Stamford developer Frank Mercede & Sons Inc. Salvatore said his firm paid $25.15 million for the property, on which Mercede operated a rock-crushing business for many years. RMS has been marketing the units for the past eight weeks, Salvatore said.

His future return on investment can be seen in the asking prices for the two and three-bedroom units, $4000,000 to mid-$600,000.

To comply with a city housing ordinance, 17 of the townhouses will be sold at below-market rates to buyers who earn less than half the Stamford area’s median income. Salvatore said buyers of those affordable units have not been chosen. The affordable units must be owner-occupied, but there are no restrictions on the number of owners who can buy their units as investments and rent or resell them, RMS Construction officials said.

Salvatore said young home-buyers and people with adult children provide demand for the homes, some of which will have their own elevators within the unit. “A lot of buyers want to be near the (Springdale) train station,” Salvatore said. “There is a big demand for this type of product.”

The demand persists despite a rising number of condos for sale in Stamford. As of Wednesday, 382 condominiums were for sale in Stamford, up from 195 at the end of May 2005, said Herb Mehlman, president of Mehlman Properties Inc. residential real estate in Stamford.

The number of condos on the market rose from 123 in January 2005 to 240 at the end of last year, largely because of new construction, Mehlman said. Some buyers prefer the privacy of the attached garages and private entrances that condos in the Village at River’s Edge will have, which adds to demand said Barbara Hickey, a broker at Juner Properties residential real estate in Stamford. “I don’t see it as a saturation of the market,” Hickey said of Salvatore’s Springdale project. “We have been needing (this type of townhouse) for a long time.”