Image courtesy of Toll Brothers

A cluster of nearly 50-year-old office buildings near Long Island Sound in Stamford is slated to lose one of its number to a housing redevelopment.

National homebuilder Toll Brothers secured approval from Stamford land use officials for its plan to turn 700 Fairfield Ave. and 0 Cummings Point Road into a townhome complex.

The 8.56-acre parcel hosts a large parking lot, plus an office building built in 1979. The 2-story complex was once home to Playtex. The company moved to North Carolina around 20 years ago to consolidate with other parts of its parent underwear-making company.

It’s not clear just how much space was available in the 145,538-square-foot building when Toll Brothers secured development rights – the firm signed a 36-month contract to buy the site from its owner on Jan. 22 – but current owner Realview of Connecticut only paid $1.88 million for the property in 2012, city property records show.

Plans approved by the Stamford Zoning Board earlier this year show 56 townhomes with ground-floor, two-car garages along a loop road. A clubhouse with a pool is also indicated on the plans.

Research by brokerage Cushman & Wakefield put Stamford’s overall office vacancy rate at 29.7 percent at the end of the first quarter, with 3.99 million square feet of direct vacant space and almost 600,000 square feet of additional vacant subleasable space, plus another almost 600,000 square feet of available space in Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan combined.

The brokerage estimated overall asking rent for Stamford office properties of all classes at $40.52 per square foot.