by Cate Hewitt
GROTON — Town officials unveiled conceptual plans on Thursday for the 77-acre Mystic Education Center site that, if realized, would revitalize the long-fallow property into a village-style development with a variety of commercial, retail and co-working spaces, along with about 750 residential units. The property is the former state-run Mystic Oral School, once known as the Whipple School for the Deaf, at 240 Oral School Road.
“There are a lot of moving pieces and it was everyone’s desire, including the developer, to come forward at the appropriate time and I think that time is now,” said Paige Bronk, the town’s economic and community development manager, to a standing-room-only audience of about 100 people at the Town Hall Annex.
Jeff Respler of Respler Homes LLC, the town’s preferred developer for the project, deemed the school buildings unsuitable for development into apartments and instead proposed transforming the 44-acre campus into a kind of updated New England main street surrounded by newly-constructed, market-rate residential apartments. The remaining 33 acres would provide open space with walking trails and a revamped boat launch on the Mystic River waterfront.
The project is part of the town’s response to a predicted increase in demand for “amenity-rich” housing specific to Electric Boat’s future younger workforce and to “closing the loop” on the 80 percent of Groton residents who commute elsewhere for work, said Bronk.