The company proposing a redevelopment of most of the Canton Village retail complex this fall is looking to start by demolishing several storefronts and houses near Route 44 to make room for two new mixed-use buildings with 36 apartments or condos.
The property owner, based in Orange, is looking for town permission to tear down several buildings as the start of the first phase of a large-scale redevelopment that documents indicate would ultimately create about 100 apartments on the property.
Canton Village Realty LLC has spent more than $4 million to buy most of the shopping center and two adjoining properties. It’s looking to replace the entire east side of the plaza along with a section that fronts Route 44.
Canton Village Realty wants the first phase of work to replace two vacant houses and the Applegate Farm Market building. Applegate opened there about five years ago in the site that previously held a McDonald’s outlet.
The plan is to use the Applegate property, which is just south of the main entry drive for the parcel, for a coffee shop with a drive through lane. On the far side of the entry drive, Canton Village Realty would put up a pair of three-story buildings. At each one, there would be commercial and retail businesses on the ground floor and apartments on the second and third, according to the company.
The company hasn’t publicly provided details about the size of the apartments or the planned leasing rates.
But for the first phase, it proposes 14 apartments in the first building, which would measure about 24,000 square feet. There would be 22 in the second building, which would be roughly 34,000 square feet.
“So between these two you’re looking at almost 60,000 square feet of new buildings, along with the coffee shop,” Chris Pawlowski of Shelton-based C & K Engineering told town zoning commissioners over the summer.
“There’s going to be medical (offices), commerical, retail, restaurant, cafe use, you name it on the first floor, then two floors of apartments above,” Pawlowski said.
Earlier this year Canton Village Realty proposed to demolish the entire eastern half of the plaza and replace it with new retail, a restaurant and 72 apartments. Much of that idea is intact, but the plans show to the zoning commission indicate a total of about 100 apartments. The rest would be built in a later construction phase; two additional three-floor, mixed-use buildings are envisioned at the southern end off Dowd Avenue.
The new plan is larger than the original partly because it includes land to the north that Canton Village Realty bought more than a year after paying $2.7 million for a large section of the plaza. In the spring of 2026 it paid $1.45 million for two properties that can increase the size of the project’s footprint.
Most of the western half of the property would be untouched because it’s in the hands of other owners. That includes At the Rooftop, a restaurant that went through extensive reconstruction after Mikado moved out. Also unaffected is the popular Larsen Ace Hardware store.
C & K Engineer said in its zoning memo that construction would run from the spring of 2027 through fall of 2028. The Planning and Zoning Commission was scheduled to hear details about the first phase this week, but that presentation has been delayed until Nov. 18.