Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
12 Horseshoe Road, Cos Cob, last asking $1.595, reports a contract. Nice, modern house (tough to get a good picture of it, though, if this listing and previous ones are evidence). Sold for $1.750 in the exuberant days of 2005, then sold again for $1.275 in the dolorous 2010s. Current owners did a very decent update job, and started at $1.800 in 2014. That didn't work, but this current price, or something like it, did.
Jesus Christ
So says the University of Minnesota. Apparently bows might suggest that there's something to celebrate this time of year.
An academic department at the University of Minnesota declared that “bows/wrapped gifts” are “not appropriate for gatherings and displays at this time of year.”
According a copy of the guidelines obtained by Campus Reform, UMN’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) encouraged its employees “to recognize holidays in ways that are respectful of the diversity of our community,” recommending a series of steps to take.
“Consider neutral-themed parties such as ‘winter celebration,’” the flyer suggests, adding that “decorations, music, and food should be general and not specific to any one religion.”
Wrapping paper?
A reader sent in this picture of a buck killed in Greenwich. I've cropped the hunter's face from the picture for fear that he'd be assaulted by the PETA folks, but it's obvious that deer here are thriving on a diet of thousand-dollar ornamental shrubbery.
Forget my previous suggestion of converting back country white elephants into executive sober houses: think hunting lodges instead.
Yummy
37 Calhoun Drive
37 Calhoun Drive has finally sold, for $5.925 million. Its owners tried selling it for $10.950 back in 2010 and, when that failed, took it off the market until 2013, when they returned at $11.950, with the result seen today.
There is of course nothing shabby about a nearly-six-million sale, but but why wait eight years if you've decided to move?
I declined to attend last evening's GAR Christmas Party at the Riverside Yacht Club due to a reluctance to be pelted with canapes by my colleagues (and I was warned that I would be), but I'll point out that, while I've discussed this property several times over the years, and poked fun at its inflated pricing aspirations, this past June I noted its last price reduction and suggested that it was approaching bargain status. Maybe that bit of publicity helped? Maybe the same is true of some other properties languishing on the market?
I'm told that at least one local branch manager has defended me to his troops when my name occasionally comes up during company sales meetings, saying, "Chris is telling our customers what we don't dare to — he's taking the bullet for us". That doesn't translate into coin in my pocket, mind you, but I'm glad that someone's noticed.
30 Andrews Farm Road, last asking $4.675 million, reports a pending sale. To my eye, it's a hideous assault on the senses, but someone obviously disagrees, and good for them. The place was originally priced at $6.475 way back in 2014, and I suppose this last price must have seemed like a bargain, and perhaps it is.
I'd have thought that maybe $3.750 might have been a reasonable price, but I'm sure it's going for far more than that. Hey, it's their money.
Maybe his and her blindfolds were included in the price?
Hop scotch to the pool
But so charming!
I was out showing houses yesterday (there are some good deals out there, once their owners accept reality), so no blogging. But there was certainly news:
At Tuesday’s P&Z meeting, North Greenwich Associates, LLC, represented by Tom Heagney, proposed a change in zoning for the shopping center and three other properties from the LBR-1 zone to the LB zone. The LLC is registered to Stanford Guy Sutton whose family has owned the property for 30 years.
The change would make additional permitted uses available, and allow greater FAR.
“Over the last four years, the shopping center has been completely redone,” Heagney said, adding that the property owners also replaced the septic system, which is in the front parking lot.
Mr. Heagney met with resistance on his request for the zoning change from LBR1 to LB.
The P&Z chair Richard Maitland said the current POCD encourages re-evaluating existing LBR zoning regulations, which would make the commission less inclined to change zoning.
The proposed zoning change would result in increased FAR, and the commission was reluctant to let that happen, saying they did not want to the see the buildings altered or added on to.
“It has to be within the existing building,” Maitland said.
“Banksville gets a portion of its character from those small buildings. That’s what makes it a village,” [Margarita Alban P&Z member from Cos Cob] said. “The shopping center being fixed up makes it look like a village center and I don’t want to risk losing those small buildings on the other side of North Street. It gives us that New England village feel.”
Heagney said his client had tried unsuccessfully, under existing zoning, to entice a supermarket to fill in the former IGA space, but with the current FAR the space was not attractive.
“They listed with three separate commercial brokerage firms,” Heagney said of his client. “They reached out to various regional and national smaller scale markets and found that even that 6,500 sq ft was too small for their use.”
The commissioners suggested that rather than rezone to LB, Heagney propose some different uses from Use Group 4, which includes funeral parlors, health centers, hospitals, walk-in medical clinics, homes for the aged, sanitariums or convalescent homes, indoor places of assembly, places of worship, print shops, newspaper establishments, radio and TV stations and schools.
Funeral homes and homes for the aged would both be excellent uses up there, because the lack of a place to buy groceries has killed the market for houses up at the end of North Street, and the current owners will surely die in place.
No one was proposing a 100,000 sq.ft. food bazaar, but a 6.500 sq.ft. food store is too small to be profitable, which is why the original IGA shut down. It's all very well that Ms. Alban enjoys her view of this "quaint village" when she makes an occasional drive-by, but she doesn't live there. Those who do probably don't appreciate her efforts to protect them from themselves.
Don't mess with this 2-year-old's sister.
While his sister participated in a wrestling match, a 2-year-old Indiana boy sprinted onto the mat to help her out.
The young Ryan Prendergast thought his 5-year-old sister Ruby was in danger, which caused him to run over and tackle his sister's opponent, according to HuffPost.
Car owner's darwin award
Two more luxury cars stolen from their clueless owners.
A 2016 Range-Rover was stolen from a driveway on the 500 block of Round Hill Road.
A 2016 Mercedes-Benz was stolen from a driveway on the 30 block of Cliffdale Road in the northwest corner of town. Both cars had keys inside them when they were stolen.
36 Brookridge Drive
Notwithstanding a reader's positive experience flipping a condo at 73 Pheasant Run (Weaver Street - I'll write about it soon), the general experience of Greenwich buyers who purchase a home, fix it up, and then try to sell it shortly thereafter has been negative. Case in point is 36 Brookride Drive, purchased in 2011 for $2.770, and reported as under contract today — current asking price, $2.495 million.
The purchasers, according to the listing, redid the kitchen and baths and added a new roof and a generator, then put it back in the market in 2013 at $3.475 million. I haven't seen the place since brother Gideon had the listing, and sold it, back in 2011, so I can't vouch for the improvements, but they obviously weren't sufficient to convince buyers to pay for them until now, a million dollars (less) later.
Nothing wrong with buying a house you like and fixing it up — in fact, as a buyer's representative I heartily encourage it, but my advice is to make those improvements as an "investment" in your own enjoyment of the property and not as a means to make a profit. The value of the land the house sits on may increase, but the house itself, including that new kitchen and master bath, will almost certainly depreciate.
A reworked kitchen (with countertop microwave) did nothing, even with the addition of an expired cow
Update: back in February, I wrote about this property after it raised its price from $3.150 to $3.250. I suggested at that time that increasing the asking price of a house that had failed to sell at a lower price was a dubious technique, and, at least for this home, that proved right.
Scoundrel Time
I retired from lawyering long ago and, despite my career shift to real estate, I'm no longer current with (brazen) thievery techniques, so I'm mystified how a trio of shoplifters could steal a dozen phones from the Apple store. When I've visited there, there's always been at least one "greeter" at the entrance, usually more, and the items on display have been cabled to the tables. Are there are phones, unchained, in the shelving to the left? Even if that's the case, where were those door-folks?
Bizarre.
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