FERGUS – An upcoming stacked townhouse development in north Fergus is meant to provide a certain type of housing that is in short supply but highly desired locally.
If that wasn’t clear enough, the development is already essentially sold out before work has hardly even begun, according to the developer.
Officials from Reid’s Heritage Homes, the builder of the townhouse development behind the New to You store at 950 St. David St. N., held a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the beginning of construction at the site they are calling Sunrise Grove.
Jennifer Muller, VP of sales, marketing and culture at Reid’s Heritage Homes, explained the site is made up of 112 total units of stacked townhouse developments with four different floor plan options with an aim to keep it affordable.
“It’s really important for us to make sure that this is something that anyone can purchase so we’re really ensuring that young families, young professionals, retirees, empty nesters,” Muller said. “With respect to our price point, that was the biggest factor to make sure that we were in the fives, that people could get into a home with at least two bedrooms.”
People seemed to have flocked to this development as it is almost sold out. Muller said they have 108 firm deals but they have held back four units to provide others an opportunity to buy there down the line.
Mayor Shawn Watters wasn’t surprised by this as he believed the community is moving away from being dominated by single family housing.
“It satisfies a need for a type of housing in the community for young families and older folks … it just tells you that there’s pent up demand for housing, not just in Centre Wellington but all over the place,” Watters said. “This development is ready to go and there’s people waiting to get in here.”
The next focus in the area for the mayor he said was to look at Highway 6 differently as developments like this one begin to come online and add more traffic to the already busy area.
“It’s now become a local road and especially with intensification, we need to think about that so it really is to facilitate traffic within the community,” Watters said, noting its used as a thoroughfare all the way up to the Bruce Peninsula. “It’s almost becoming antiquated for that and that’s why we’ve started very serious conversations with the ministry pertaining to looking at different ways of getting around Fergus.”
