Senior Housing: $10M senior housing complex coming to Horseheads
Completion of project expected by fall 2010
A Buffalo-area building company is buying 16 acres in the village of Horseheads and will break ground next month for a $10 million, 120-unit senior citizen apartment complex.
The same company — Calamar Inc. of Wheatfield, N.Y. — is also scouting potential sites near Ithaca’s Cayuga Medical Center for a similar project, the company’s Assistant Senior Services Director Samuel Reeder said.
Calamar has a senior housing complex near its corporate offices, with another under construction on an adjoining parcel. The company is also building in Omaha, Neb., and is negotiating land deals in Utica and New Hartford, N.Y.
The Horseheads project has been approved by the village’s planning and town boards and Reeder said the company’s next step is obtaining a building permit. Construction should be completed by fall of next year.
The housing complex will be located near the intersection of Sing Sing Road and Broad Street, said Art Ambrose, of RealtyUSA.com. Ambrose brokered the deal for the Horseheads project and said he’ll also accompany Reeder on his Ithaca visit this month.
“The deal hasn’t closed yet, it was subject to the project being approved,” Ambrose said. “But now that it’s been approved by the village, they are saying ‘Let’s get the deal done.’”
The one- and two-bedroom apartments will be rented at $775 and $900, respectively, and will not be subsidized by the state or federal government.
Redder said company research has determined there are adequate housing opportunities for senior citizens in the low-income and high-income brackets. Those in the middle brackets, however, represent an underserved population.
“We found that there are many seniors who are just over the income limits for subsidized housing who need a clean safe place to live,” Reeder said. “We’ve already made an impact in western New York. We needed to find out where else we could do projects and Ithaca and Horseheads just popped right up as a logical sites.”
Horseheads Village Mayor Donald Zeigler said Calamar approached the village with its proposal about two months ago and that it’s a good fit for the village.
“The rents are in the right price range,” Zeigler said. “The parcel has been vacant for a long time and it’s a good use for the location. In our comprehensive plan for the village, the people expressed a need for a variety of housing. They wanted a good mix of rental prices and this falls in with the plan.”
By G. Jeffrey Aaron for Star Gazette
