Homesteads Assisted Living Complex Opens In Hawleyville

By Andrew Gorosko

After several years of planning and construction, The Homesteads at Newtown, a 100-unit assisted living rental complex for the elderly, has opened in Hawleyville.

The Homesteads received its license as an assisted living facility from the state health department Tuesday, allowing it to open for business Wednesday, said Linda Silberstein of The Homesteads at Newtown, LLC. Mrs Silberstein and her husband, Dr Morton Silberstein, a retired geriatric psychiatrist, developed the project on a 60-acre site at 166 Mt Pleasant Road.

Based on the grand list of October 1, 2000, The Homesteads is the town’s third highest taxpayer, with a tax-assessed value of $10.29 million. The highest taxpayer is Connecticut Light & Power Company at $17 million. Sand Hill Plaza is the second highest taxpayer at almost $14 million.

Before receiving its state license, The Homesteads had received a town certificate of occupancy for the residential use of the assisted-living building and also received a town sewer use agreement. Both town approvals were required before the 95,000-square-foot building could open for business.

“I’m doing handsprings,” Mrs Silberstein quipped, expressing her happiness at the facility’s finally having opened after a long planning and construction process.

Elderly residents have started to move into the building, she said.

Mrs Silberstein and Dr Silberstein were at The Homesteads on Wednesday afternoon, checking as staff members made some last-minute adjustments to the premises.

“We’re so excited. It’s really been so central to our lives for so long,” Mrs Silberstein said.

 “There’s been great demand. We’re very pleased with the level of demand,” Mrs Silberstein said of interest among area elderly residents in moving to the facility.

“We’re open and waiting with open arms and open hearts,” she said.

The Homesteads plans to have a grand opening within a month, welcoming the public to the complex, she said.

Although it was initially planned as a 298-unit complex containing 100 assisted-living apartments in a residential building, 160 congregate housing units, and 38 condominiums, the developers are now formulating revisions to those plans, which the town approved in 1998.

Due to changes in market conditions, the firm now intends to submit revised plans for review by the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z), Mrs Siberstein said.

The revised plans likely will eliminate the 160 congregate housing units and replace them with an as-yet undetermined number of condos, she said.

Mrs Silberstein said the firm plans to submit the revised plans for P&Z review this spring.

The 38 condos, which already have been approved by the P&Z, are now under construction. Some of those units are scheduled to open in June.

The Homesteads construction project spurred the extension of sanitary sewers and a public water supply to Hawleyville. The presence of those two public utilities is expected to encourage additional development in the area.

The assisted living complex provides studio apartments, as well as one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. Residents will be provided with help performing the activities of daily living. Residents with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia will live within a separate 20-unit wing of the complex equipped with facilities designed for their particular needs.

Assisted living facilities are intended for the frail elderly who do not require supervised medical care. An assisted living setting is intended to maintain an independent lifestyle for the elderly for as long as possible.

Although the Homesteads project moved through the town’s land use review process generally smoothly, the one stumbling block the project encountered involved Pocono Road residents’ resistance to plans to extend an emergency accessway from the site to Pocono Road. To address those concerns, the P&Z placed certain conditions on the construction and use of the emergency accessway.