Construction has started on Moore Avenue in Brunswick in anticipation of a land deal between developer George Schott and the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority. Schott said 19 homes along McKeen Street will go on the market as soon as the deal is finished. (Darren Fishell / The Times Record)
Earlier this week, crews began work at the McKeen Street neighborhood in advance of a $3.35 million land deal with the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority (MRRA) that he said could close by the end of the month.
Currently, Schott owns approximately 700 housing units that are on former Navy land now owned by MRRA. The deal would give Schott the land underneath those units, allowing him to begin selling the properties. A unique lease arrangement forged by GMH Housing and the Navy before a 2005 Base Realignment and Closure commission voted to shut Brunswick Naval Air Station created the scenario in which the residences and land beneath them were conveyed separately as part of civilian redevelopment of the former air base and associated properties.
For the homes on the interior of the McKeen Street development, Schott said he would wait for an estimated $2 million in road and infrastructure improvements to be made so that the town of Brunswick could eventually take over management of the roads and sewer systems before those homes are sold.
In January, Schott said he had hoped to market the first 19 homes on McKeen Street and begin road and infrastructure work by this spring.
Crews out to do improvement work this week were a part of that plan, Schott said Thursday.
“We had the crews lined up to do the work, so we went ahead and did that anyway,” Schott said.
Earlier this year, MRRA executive director Steve Levesque said the deal could close by the end of January and said in February that final reviews by lawyers on each side of the deal were ongoing.
The deal includes properties on the former Navy base as well as homes in the Mariner Landing, Midway Terrace, Brunswick Gardens, Woodland Village and Station Quarters neighborhoods, which a housing disposition plan agreed to by MRRA and Schott indicates could go on the market sometime in 2014 or 2015.
For the McKeen Street houses, the plan is to sell the properties — at an estimated average price of $100,000 to $140,000 — in blocs of around 40 homes over a period of five to six years.
dfishell@timesrecord.com
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