The longtime owner of a now-vacant restaurant site wants to build a mixed-use project on the Hampton Falls property. 

The 12 Lafayette Road site was, for many years, the site of Joseph Faro’s Faro Garden’s restaurant. Now, he hopes to turn the overgrown land across from the Hampton Falls Inn and a short drive from Seabrook’s retail center and Exit 1 on Interstate 95 into condominiums and a new restaurant.  

Faro recently appeared before the town Planning Board for a voluntary, pre-application design review consultation on a project that would bring 164, age-restricted units to the 11.54-acre site, along with 18,300 square feet of retail space and a 140-seat, 11,400-square-foot restaurant space. Allen & Major is the project architect. 

According to the Portsmouth Herald, the different uses would be concentrated in three, 5-story buildings. The project received positive feedback from some officials, the paper reported, but its scale created concerns. Its fate also appears tied to that of a sewer-access agreement between Hampton Falls and neighboring Seabrook. 

Faro is the father of prominent Seacoast restauranteur, businessman and developer Joe Faro, who’s in the process of finishing Rockingham’s huge Tuscan Village development.