Even as the legal battle between developer and the Greenwich P&Z drags on in court, construction has started at 275 Mason Street Chilston Court, estimated completion date 2028, and another unit, 275 No. 41, priced at $7.995 million, is reported under contract.*

As a condition for its approval of this project, the P&Z has required that 24 of the 74 units be set aside for “moderate income” buyers, and those units must be essentially the same size, with the same finishes, access to all building amenities, and share a common entrance with their multi-million dollar neighbors. I think I understand the dynamics here: the P&Z is pretty much powerless to block an 8-30g project, brought to us by Hartford Democrats, and has essentially said to the developer, “okay, if you’re going to cram a seven-story, over-sized monstrosity on us, you’ll have to jack up the price of the full-priced units to subsidize the cheap ones”.

That’s not a problem for the developer, because the people who comprise the intended market for these things don’t concern themselves with petty cash, and if they have to pay $10 million instead of, say, $7 million, well, O death, where is thy sting? Proof of this price indifference is shown by the fact that the project is already 40% sold, even as the jackhammers and bulldozers are still digging holes in the ground.

I’ll lose no sleep over the plight of these buyers, and wish them well; I do wonder at the fairness, however, of essentially passing out free luxury condominiums to 24 lucky people while others in their same income range must content themselves with much smaller, much more spartan quarters in Old Greenwich Commons or Windy Knolls and pay far more for the privilege. How does that make sense?

He’s building $10 million [and $19.99] condos in Greenwich. Even he didn’t expect this response.

GREENWICH — The record price for a condominium sale in Greenwich stands at $6.7 million, paid for a residence at the Modern on Field Point in central Greenwich.
That record appears likely to be broken — perhaps many times over — as a new luxury condominium development takes shape on lower Mason Street.
Prospective buyers have been putting down deposits for homes at Chilston Court, where developer Joshua Caspi said many units are priced at $10 million or more.
“We have more than a dozen units in that range, $10 [million] plus,” said Caspi, who is developing 78 units now under construction at 275 and 290 Mason St.
The response has exceeded his expectations.
“I didn’t expect the strong response," Caspi said at the project's sales office. "We're getting close to selling almost half the project," he said, with 40 percent of the units under contract.