Andy Montelli
Title: Founder, Post Road Residential
Age: 57
Experience: 31 years
After working for large multifamily developers in Trammell Crow and Fairfield Residential, Andy Montelli set up shop in Fairfield with his own firm, Post Road Residential Inc. Since its founding in 2011, the company has developed four residential complexes in Connecticut and two in Massachusetts totaling nearly 1,900 units. In December, Montelli cut the ribbon on its newest project: the first phase of the 215-unit Heirloom Flats in Bloomfield.
Q: Why was 2011 the right time to form your own development company?
A: I’d worked for other people for 25 years and I thought I’d gotten good at what I was doing. It was time to take a shot and start company that was focused on doing really great urban development projects. There was an opportunity to do something a little bit different. We decided to take the opposite approach as the big development companies that focus more on production. I thought there was a different model, creating projects that were memorable and good investments for our partners. And that’s worked out really well.
Q: What’s the history behind your brand-new Heirloom Flats project in Bloomfield?
A: A local entrepreneur did something that no real estate guy would ever do: he assembled a group of 17 single-family homes and they were all contiguous. He was going to develop a 20- or 30-unit project and hold onto it as a long-term investment. With the town’s encouragement and desire to see the adjacent downtown redeveloped, he just kept going. He got conceptual designs approved for a 430-unit project and realized that it had gotten a little bigger than what he wanted to build, so we started talking. We purchased the first (215-unit) phase of the site, which is now opening. We got our plans through and brought on the Carlyle Group as a partner and Citizens Bank to finance it.
Q: Who’s the target demographic?
A: There’s like 10,000 jobs within 2 miles of this site – four large insurance company campuses – so we have this large group of Millennials who are working there. Our site is a suburban site that has urban amenities, and that’s one of the things that’s so cool about it. We’re next door to a great gastropub, you can walk to eight or nine restaurants within five minutes, and a movie theater. It’s a walkable site in an area where you really don’t have that, probably more walkable than most of the projects in downtown Hartford. We’ll have a core of Millennials here. We’re also going to have a lot of retirees. We do a really tremendous job on our amenity packages: 16,000 square feet of interior space with a 22,000-square-foot outdoor courtyard. If you’re divorced and looking for an environment where there’s going to be a social engagement, we’re good at providing that. We always have a keg of beer on tap. You can go in and pour yourself a beer on the house, anytime. We work on event programming for our customers and think about that a great deal.
Q: You’ve worked with Daren Bascome of Boston-based branding agency Proverb on several of your projects. How important is a distinctive theme for each property?
A: Branding is our secret weapon. Look at farm-to-table restaurants. They’re publicizing which farm grew the greens, which dairy produced the cheese. People care about these things now. Why wouldn’t they have the same interest in where they live and the history of what was there and the story behind it?
Daren at Proverb helped us tap into those stories and create communities that are more authentic. So many people are trying to find generic names to apply to each of their communities across the country and trying to create company brands. We’re not into that. We think it’s more important to create brands that are centered around each community.
Q: Will you be looking for transit-oriented development sites near the CTfastrak stations and those on the new Hartford line commuter rail service from New Haven to Springfield?
A: We’re looking to where our customers want to be. Connecticut doesn’t have that sort of transit mentality. Aside from Metro-North, we don’t really have a great series of transit nodes. In Connecticut, you tend to look more toward job centers and near retail amenities. Those have become two of our most important indicators about whether a site makes our cut or not. If we can find those sites, even if they’re brownfields, we’re interested in them.
