'Stacked flats' coming to Wood Avenue

A site on the west end of downtown Winslow, once proposed to become a hotel, will instead be the site of an apartment and townhome cluster under a plan from in-town development specialist Rod McKenzie.

McKenzie, who built the Winslow Mews on Wyatt and the Courtyards on Madison, wants to put eight condo/apartments and seven townhomes on the one-acre lot at the corner of Wood Avenue and Winslow Way, according to applications on file with the city.

“This will be in-town luxury townhouse living that we think will make a good transition to the residential neighborhood across the street,” McKenzie said.

The complex calls for four apartment buildings along Winslow Way. The four, which will actually be two duplexes, will each contain two “stacked flat” units – one-story units above and below.

Each of the units will have two bedrooms and one bath, and be about 900-950 square feet. Each will have a deck. Two tandem parking spots in an underground garage will be provided for each unit, McKenzie said.

Six of the units will sell at a market price of under $200,000, McKenzie said. The other two units will be designated “affordable,” and either sold or rented to people whose incomes fall within city guidelines.

The detached townhomes along Wood Avenue will be three bedroom, two-and-one-half bath units, McKenzie said. Each will have an outdoor courtyard, visible from the master bedroom and the dining area. Each of the homes will also have a large “studio” – a finished single room over the garage, accessible by stairway from the main living area. Maximum building height will be 28 feet.

The units will be roughly 2,400 square feet each, McKenzie said, and will sell for between $500,000 and $525,000.

While much of the heavily wooded lot will be cleared, the townhomes will be set back far enough from Wood Avenue to save a substantial number of trees and provide a visual buffer.

“Each of them will have their own front yard, and will be heavily landscaped,” McKenzie said.

At zone’s edge

The site is the westernmost end of Winslow’s so-called mixed use town center, the zoning area targeted for maximum density. Land on the west side of Wood is zoned residential, at a much lower density of eight units per acre.

Architect for the project is Charles Wenzlau, who also designed the San Juan Building at the east end of Winslow Way. He is also the architect for the Winslow, a mixed-use project on the corner of Ericksen Avenue and Winslow Way on the site of the old Doogals restaurant, and for McKenzie’s other downtown projects.

Construction should begin by the end of the year, McKenzie said. The builder has not been chosen. The units will be marketed by McKenzie’s wife Barb, through the island’s Coldwell Banker realty agency that the couple owns.

A former owner of the site had proposed a Wenzlau-designed hotel on the one-acre site. That plan was abandoned last year and the site was sold to McKenzie, who determined that a hotel was not economically feasible.

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