$4.5 Million Agreement Between Keiser & CTA Construction for Senior Facility

Keiser Homes (Oxford, ME) and CTA Construction (Boston, MA) have announced that they have signed a $4.5 million contract to build a ninety-five unit, $20 million senior living center in Somerville, Massachusetts. The center, to be named Capen Court, will consist of one hundred and fifty-seven building modules and total more than 85,000 sq.ft. The project is being funded by the Somerville Housing Authority (SHA) and will be connected to a recently completed Visiting Nurses Association assisted living center that was also funded by the SHA.

“Keiser is excited about the Capen Court project," said David Cuttler, president of Keiser Homes. "It will showcase our strengths in engineering design and modular building to provide a beautiful and much needed building to the citizens of Somerville.”

Cuttler, a director of the Modular Home Builders Association of Maine, believes that the project will expose a number of people, from occupants and interested citizens to a wide array of tradespeople, to modular construction.

“When people see the quality of today’s modular buildings and understand the process, including the controlled production environment and the ability to schedule a completion date, they realize that modular building is an attractive alternative to site built construction.”

Cuttler is such a strong advocate of modular construction and its benefits that Keiser will be partnering with another modular manufacturer, New England Homes (Portsmouth, NH), in order to ensure meeting the aggressive schedule requested by CTA for the Capen Court project, while maintaining capacity for Keiser’s residential markets.

CTA Construction, the General Contractor for the project, will take delivery of the one-hundred and fifty-seven individual modules and supervise the setting and joining of those modules into one seamless building. While Capen Court will be CTA’s first experience with modular construction, Patrick Tompkins, a principal of CTA Construction, can already see benefits. “The use of modular construction falls right in line with CTA’s values,” stated Tompkins, “Cost savings, expediting schedules and providing innovative solutions to difficult requirements are philosophies we bring to every project.”

A twenty million dollar project is always a big deal, in today’s construction environment, it’s an even bigger deal. “Making sure the project is completed on time and that the customer is happy with the end result is imperative,” explained Tompkins, “Our agreement with Keiser represents about a quarter of the project value, but much more in terms of obvious deliverables – such as quality and timeliness.”

As part of the agreement and the construction process, Keiser will build a production model of the standard living unit designed for Capen Court. That model will be reviewed and approved by both CTA and SHA prior to Keiser beginning full production of the modules. Delivery of the modules is expected to occur in June and the initial setting and weather proofing of the one hundred and fifty-seven modules is expected to be completed in approximately twenty days. CTA expects to complete the Capen Court project by April, 2010.