BIDDEFORD —Imagine pickleball in the morning, taking your dog by the local dog park in the early afternoon, then maybe a dip in your neighborhood’s pool. In the evening you can hang out by one of your development’s fire pits. What’s more, total peace and quiet — no teens or kids around.
It would be “everything that a senior would like to have,” said Matthew Chamberlain, the applicant proposing the Hidden Hills Manufactured Housing Park in Biddeford.
Hidden Hills is a proposed 195-unit, age-restricted manufactured housing park that would sit on a South Street parcel in Biddeford near the Maine Water Company. Homeowners would be 55+, though people above the age of 40 would be allowed to live in the community that Chamberlain says will come with plenty of amenities.
The development is currently before the Planning Board, who gave Chamberlain preliminary site plan approval for the project in December 2022. Chamberlain has submitted his final application, but the Planning Board will likely ask him to modify it during his next appearance before the body, which will happen early in the new year, according to Planning Board Member Alexa Plotkin.
On Dec. 6, the board met with the applicant for a workshop to discuss, among other things, how much capital Chamberlain will put towards sidewalk construction in and around his park, a sticking point between the two parties. The board met Wednesday, Dec. 20 for a closed door session with the city solicitor, which Plotkin said clarified what the Planning Board will require of Chamberlain in the way of sidewalk construction for his application to secure final approval.
Chamberlain, for his part, is bullish that the project will move forward.
“If I gave you an analogy — wheels down, flaps down,” he said Dec. 13. “We’re just about on the ground.”
Chamberlain, a longtime real estate professional, sees his development as filling a very specific need in Biddeford: as adults in the city grow older, they will want to leave their current homes, but not Biddeford itself. His park of homes in the 1,500-1,700 square foot range would allow them to stay in the community while enjoying amenities like tennis courts, a gym, and a community center all on 164 acres of land.
And importantly, this migration of older residents will ease the housing pinch in Biddeford, according to Chamberlain. “Every person who puts their house on the market, that’s another piece of inventory,” he said, but if “nobody moves, nobody builds, there’s no cycle of inventory.”
In his view, any new development in the city is positive. “Let’s face it, any housing is good housing, whether it’s a million dollars or the lowest possible end product.”
Hidden Hills is not the only development in the pipeline that aims to increase the overall housing stock. Adams Point, an affordable housing development on Adams Street, is slated to break ground soon; a 250-unit apartment complex of workforce housing on Barra Road is already under construction; and the preliminary application for a 447-unit residential and commercial space on Diamond Street from development mogul Tim Harrington was given Planning Board sign off over the summer.
According to Chamberlain, Hidden Hills will not be an affordable housing project in that it tethers prices to a certain percentage of area median income. But the state of Maine lists manufactured housing as among the listed types of “affordable housing” and tends to be more affordable for home buyers.
Manufactured homes are units that are pre-built in a factory and then installed on a plot of land. They are considerably less expensive to build compared to “stick built” homes, dwellings that are constructed on site. Manufactured homes are subject to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development standards, which regulates their design and other features.
Though they’re still used in everyday parlance, “mobile home” or “trailer” are technically outdated terms for a manufactured house, which HUD officially renamed in federal documents when the department began enforcing greater scrutiny over prefabricated homes in the 1970s.
Before Chamberlain can build his paradise for the 55+ community, he will likely need to adjust his final application, pending some additional Planning Board direction around sidewalks.
Chamberlain’s final application, which he was given a six-month extension to complete and submitted in September, was quite different from what the board originally reviewed in his preliminary application, according to a letter from the City Planner David Galbraith dated Nov. 28.
The letter highlights, for example, that the applicant originally intended to dedicate Waterworks Drive, which he owns, to the city, but no longer. Giving the road to the city was crucial for clearing a hurdle that stipulates “any mobile home park expected to generate average daily traffic of 200 trips per day or more shall have at least two street connections with existing public streets.”
That discrepancy and others prompted a Dec. 6 Planning Board workshop to discuss the project, by which time Chamberlain had reversed course on Waterworks Drive and said he would still give it to the city — but the two parties were at an impasse over how much Chamberlain would put towards sidewalk construction on South Street.
The Planning Board discussed Chamberlain giving a “fee-in-lieu” contribution to sidewalk construction on South Street, instead of building the sidewalks himself, which due to structural realities of the road and topography would be quite costly.
At the meeting, Galbraith said the city is suggesting $320,000 from Chamberlain for sidewalk construction. Chamberlain countered that he would give $80,000.
After going back and forth for over an hour, the Planning Board decided to reconvene with the City Solicitor Harry Center on Dec. 20 to ask about what the Planning Board can require Chamberlain to build if he wants to move forward with the project.
Planning Board Member Alexa Plotkin said Dec. 21 that the meeting went well and the Planning Board now has a clear understanding of “the expectations for interior sidewalks, the sidewalk situation on Waterworks Drive, and the sidewalk situation on South Street,” which they will relay to Chamberlain so he can amend his application.
Before Chamberlain was keen on building a manufactured housing park for the 55+ community, he and his then co-owners of South Street Village LLC wanted to build a village-like community that would include mixed residential development and commercial enterprises. The development would have included 566 units, which was first pitched in 2020, and required the approval of a new zone.
South Street Village LLC did not get approval for the contract zone, and so the group switched gears to a manufactured housing park instead in 2021. Chamberlain has since bought out the two former co-owners, Chico Potvin and Paul Vose, at the beginning of this year, making him the sole owner of the LLC.
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