Artist housing contributes to New England Village

All 17 houses in the new Artists Village in East Haddam, Connecticut, will be completed by the end of this year, providing improved accommodations for actors, technicians, writers, and others associated with the Goodspeed Opera House, a much-loved musical theater overlooking the Connecticut River between Hartford and Long Island Sound.

Six of the houses, designed by architect Patrick Pinnell, with working drawings produced by Maier Design Group and David Arai, are positioned along a crescent-shaped village green that Pinnell has created from what had been a parking lot. The other dwellings are on scattered sites within walking distance of the green and the Opera House.

The $5.5 million development, first reported in the March 2010 New Urban News, is part of an effort to bring additional vitality to the picturesque village center. Dan McMahon, marketing director of Goodspeed Musicals, says he and General Manager Harriet Kittner together directed a planning process that went on for a year and a half.

He credits Pinnell with leading the musical theater organization away from the idea of erecting a single, dormitory-like building with 65 bedrooms and toward constructing a collection of individual houses and townhouses instead. Breaking the project into a series of dwellings has proven to be much more in scale with the historic district and is expected to be much more comfortable for residents.
Actors “are here for up to four months,” McMahon said. “They want to stay in a home, not a hotel room.” The houses contain either three or six bedrooms, each with an attached private bath. Kitchens and living areas are shared, which brings people together and helps nurture a tight-knit company, McMahon says.

The projects incorporates techniques to conserve energy and preserve the environment. Among them, says Pinnell: “The access lane and parking behind the green are permeable paving, with a gravel reservoir underneath which stores stormwater (including from the house downspouts) for slow release into Succor Brook.”