York Village: first unit sold!

The first home at York Village, the controversial "senior" housing development on Belknap Mountain Road, has been sold almost four years after the project was originally proposed and a year and four day after the first units went on the market.

Jerry Gagnon of JG Realty said yesterday that along with the sale a second unit is under contract, contingent on the sale of the buyer's existing home. "They always say that once you have your first sale, everything starts popping," he said, only to quickly add that market conditions were very challenging. As a senior housing development, under town ordinance at least one resident of each home must be 55 or older.

Because of that designation the project was allowed a much higher unit density that would normally be permitted for single-family housing.

"We've advertised in southern New Hampshire to empty nesters," Gagnon remarked, "but every prospective buyer has something to sell and sales are very slow."

Originally priced from $325,000 to $345,000, the 1400-square foot, two-bedroom ranch with walk-in basements is listed at $299,900.

Gagnon said that four units, along with the meeting house, have been built and another three foundations have been poured. He said that the lender to the project has specified that when the first four units have been sold, the next four can be built. "We projected it would take two years to sell out," Gagnon said, "but that was when the market was much stronger." He said that JR Realty's sales have dropped 40-percent in the last year. "We missed the market at York Village," Gagnon remarked.

For three years, while the real estate market was booming, the project was mired in the planning process as a determined group of abutters and neighbors sought to scuttle it, insisting that the 17 units were excessive for the 9.3-acres remaining of the Pearl York farm and therefore would have adverse impacts on the neighborhood. In July 2005, after five months and eight public hearings, re-hearings and deliberations, all marked by vociferous and determined opposition, the Zoning Board of Adjustment found that although the project met all the other necessary conditions, it was "overwhelmingly offensive to the neighborhood" and denied it the special exception required for senior housing in the single family residential zone.

Bryan Johnson, the Vermont-based developer, appealed in Belknap County Superior Court where in April 2006 Justice Larry Smukler ruled that the ZBA erred in ruling the project "offensive" because it would not be sufficiently visible to offend abutters and neighbors. But, the Planning Board did not finally approve the project until October, after unravelling whether it was a subdivision or a condominium by deciding that it was a condominium and stipulating that the association must maintain a buffer to hide the development from its neighbors.