Historic Johnsonville for Sale for Just Under $3 Million

 
For Sale: Ramshackle 19th century village (sort of) set on 62 picturesque acres. Comes with a small pond, two churches - one of which was once used in the filming of a famous music video - and a restaurant. Can't be used for  high-density housing because there's not enough sewer, water capacity nearby.

Chozick Realty, Inc. of Hartford has listed the unique village of Johnsonville in Moodus, for just under $3 million.  The property is currently owned by an out-of-state investment company.

Chozick's listing for the property says, in part:

"The Village of Johnsonville is an assemblage of 8 contiguous parcels on 62 acres available for residential and or commercial development. The site offers diversity for development with permitted uses of single family, mutifamily to include market rate & affordable, senior housing, arts/entertainment centers, B&B, inn, restaurant/banquet facility and schools. $2,900,000"

Johnsonville was once a thriving mill village and later a tourist resort. It has sat empty since about the early 1990's when its former owner, Raymond Schmitt, got into a dispute with local zoning officials and closed the resort.

After Schmitt died in 1998, his heirs auctioned off all his holdings, including Johnsonville. In 2008 MJABC LLC, a hotel developer, bought the village with its odd and imported collection of 19th century buildings. The firm filed plans for a mixed-use development on the site that included 133 upscale, single-family houses and townhouses. The plans also called for a health club, recreation center, meeting hall and post office. 

The proposal, however, fell apart because of the high-density housing component in the plan and the lack of public sewers and water in the area.

In September of 2012, Johnsonville was featured on the National Geographic Channel show Abandoned in an episode titled “Connecticut’s Ghost Town.”  Johnsonville was most recently used as the setting for the filming of the Cuba Gooding Jr. movie “Something Whispered.”

In the 1990s Billy Joel filmed part of his "River of Dreams" music video at the village.