‘This is my lucky day’: Developer behind proposed housing for Yarmouth happy with location

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When Tyler D. Nickerson saw the property that was available for purchase on Pleasant Street in Yarmouth – one of around 19 properties he was scouting ­– he couldn’t believe his luck.

“I drove around. Saw those lots,” said Nickerson, a property developer who lives in the Municipality of Barrington. “I couldn’t really understand why they hadn’t been purchased before. The location is ideal. This is my lucky day, I thought.”

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And it may prove lucky for others as well.

Nickerson and his company have made an application to the Town of Yarmouth to create a housing development at the Pleasant Street site that could see an overall total of 105 rental apartment units constructed within three buildings. The number of units could increase to 140 in total if a fourth building is constructed.

Currently both options are on the table. Each building would have 35 units in it.

An open house was hosted by the Town of Yarmouth on Feb. 11 to share more info about the application and the developer’s plans.

One obvious question people had is: What is the timeframe of the project?

Nickerson said if all goes well with the application and things move forward, he’d like to see a first building ready for occupancy in about a year and a half.

A DEVELOPING INTEREST

Nickerson has always had an interest in multi-family residential real estate.

He’s been involved in the seafood industry, but in an interview said he is at a point in his life where he enjoys pulling deals together and building things.

“I really just enjoy what I do. Getting up in the morning with a purpose to go do something, and coincidentally, at this moment in time, it’s a huge need,” he said, referring to the ongoing need for housing, both rental and long-term.

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He’s done some development in the Barrington area, which included a 24-unit housing development in the spring. And he’s thinking about other future development in the Barrington area.

But he’s also been interested in branching out further.

“We’ve still got a couple of projects in the queue there and I just started looking outward. Where’s the next opportunity?” said Nickerson.

He looked at Yarmouth and Bridgewater and decided to go the Yarmouth route, an area he’s quite familiar with given that he spends a lot of time traveling to and from the Mariners Centre.

“I’m here four nights a week for hockey. It’s not home, but it’s like a home for me,” he said.

WHAT’S PLANNED?

While there are still many detailed specifics yet to come, there was a lot of information shared at the open house.

Town planner Martin Beck walked attendees through the Grand Multip Properties Inc. application.

“The location obviously speaks for itself. It’s wonderful,” said Beck, noting it’s right across the street from the NSCC Burridge campus, is close to Meadowfields elementary school, is on the town’s transit route, and is close to an active-use trail and other town amenities.

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“We’re as a town, in many ways, quietly excited and looking forward to reviewing the application and moving the application forward to enable the development to occur in, hopefully, short order,” Beck said.

Beck said the application will likely be a combination of a development agreement and rezoning.

“In terms of the built form, nothing has been set in stone,” Beck said, but images that were at the open house and can also be viewed on the Get Involved Yarmouth website provide a sense of what the applicant is considering.

The development would include a mixture of market price and affordable housing rentals, with the split yet to be determined.

The height of the buildings would be three storeys. The parking situation is still fluid, but it’s the intention to provide at least a minimum of one parking space per unit. There would also be some accommodation for guest parking.

Each building would have 35 units in it, with accessible units located on the ground floors of each building. Elevators are not being considered as they would add millions of dollars in cost to the development.

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“The intent is to meet all of the accessibility requirements on the main floor of the buildings,” Beck said. “Roughly 10 to 12 units on the main floor, all of which would be accessible in terms of … things like heights of switches, width of door openings, space in bathrooms, and so forth.”

The units in the buildings would be roughly 670-square-foot, two-bedroom units. Beck said there will be discussions with the developer to see if there can be some variety added that could also incorporate one bedroom and/or bachelor apartments into the plans.

PROCESS MOVING FORWARD

The application will now come before the town’s Planning Advisory Committee. The committee will schedule a public participation meeting to seek more public input. Eventually the application will go to town council for a public hearing and an ultimate decision.

Beck noted as the process continues to unfold, it is at the development agreement and building permit stages where detailed specifics of the project will get ironed out and settled on.

One question that was raised at the open house was whether current town infrastructure, such as water, storm water and sewer, can accommodate a development of this size.

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“It’s a very good question,” Beck said. He said from a water perspective they know about the general pressures and readings at the location. The applicants’ engineer will examine this more closely.

“Most of the water relates to fire prevention and fire specific design aspects of the building,” Beck said. “The potable water where someone turns on a tap in the unit is usually not a problem. It’s having enough capacity and pressure should an emergency situation happen. That’s usually what is comes down to.”

In terms of sewer, the impact of a development like this on the town’s infrastructure will also be studied.

“We should know within the next four to six weeks. We’re pretty confident the upstream shouldn’t be a problem given how new Pleasant Street infrastructure is. It’s really about down the hill,” Beck said, saying they just have to make sure there is enough capacity.

“Things like that very much could kill projects like these,” Beck said. “We’re hopeful that they newness of what’s on Pleasant, together with before it gets to the Water Street pump station, is sufficient capacity to accommodate this.”

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Nickerson, meanwhile, is anxious to see the application move forward.

If things go according to plan, he sees the application process taking half a year to go through the steps, with construction of the first building taking one year to complete.

That would be followed by construction of the other buildings.

While, of course, as a developer a major part of the outlook is the financial gain you’ll make from a development project for yourself in the years to come, Nickerson said there is also a level of satisfaction knowing what you’re planning has the potential to help others.

“It just makes it that much better when you’re making people’s quality of life better,” he said.

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