Courtesy Brayton Construction
By Jill Nagy
Developer Bill Brayton is expecting to break ground soon on a six-unit luxury apartment development at 61 Lawrence St., in Saratoga Springs.
It will be built by his company, Brayton Construction Inc. in Albany. He said he is waiting for one last approval from the city before beginning work.
The project is called Hidden Fountain Commons.
The development will consist of a three-story, 3,420-square-foot building, with four two-bedroom apartments and two three-bedroom apartments, built in a Victorian-style building with a wrap-around porch. He plans two retail spaces on the first floor and 29 parking spaces.
Hidden Fountain Commons will be a high-end development, with rents in the $3,000-4,000 per month range. The building will be equipped with security cameras and an elevator.
Brayton expects construction to take about one year. Crissley Architectural PC of Syracuse did the design work.
Previously, the lots were vacant except for the former Hidden Gardens Store, a garden and home furnishings store whose previous owners moved their operation to South Carolina. For now, the store is closed but it may be reopened in the future, the developer said.
“It’s been a real learning experience,” Brayton said of his first foray into Saratoga Springs real estate development. In fact, it was a year-long process as he combined three lots into one tax parcel, arranged to relocate a storm drain and remedy a small incursion into an alley, among other matters.
As a developer, Brayton said, he used to do $20 million worth of work a year, much of it fast-track retail development, at locations from Maryland to Maine. He was responsible for bringing Billy Beezs, an entertainment facility for children, to Crossgates Mall in Colonie and Guilderland. The current owners of that mall, Pyramid, reinvented Crossgates as an entertainment center as well as a shopping mall, he said.
More recently, last December, he completed the conversion of a former convent in Rensselaer to apartments.