WESTBROOK – A health-care real estate firm has secured new funding for a stalled Stroudwater Street nursing home and elderly housing project, and executives said this week that they now hope to break ground by the end of this year.

Daniel J. Maguire, managing partner of Sandy River Co., a Portland-based firm that develops property for the health care industry, met with the Westbrook Planning Board Tuesday night to announce an updated proposal for the project known under the umbrella name of Stroudwater Landing.

Maguire said the firm plans a multi-phase project, which will begin with a $13 million, 50-bed unit geared toward caring for patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions. Maguire said the plans come in the wake of new funding secured by two Maine banks for the proposed unit, which will be called Avita of Westbrook.

The proposal represents new life in a project that has had little progress since 2007. During Tuesday’s presentation, Maguire described the history of the project, which began with the opening of Spring Brook, a 146-unit nursing care and assisted living complex, in 1992.

That complex, he said, sits on one part of a 65.3-acre parcel at 449 Stroudwater St., which also touches part of Spring Street, and is adjacent to the Animal Refuge League. In 2005, Maguire and his company secured a zoning change, which cleared the way for building a complex with housing for residents age 55 and older, which, as recently as 2007, was in high demand, he said.

“It was a service that people really wanted,” he told the board.

But the housing crash brought the entire project to a halt, leaving nothing on the property at all for years, except for the existing Spring Brook complex. The market, he said, simply dried up.

“It’s still very much stopped in its tracks,” he said.

The lack of funding, coupled with a lack of a clear vision and market for the property, he said, hampered development until 2010. At that time, a new trend developed in health care, responding to needs of patients with Alzheimer’s and similar dementia-related disorders, a category Maguire called “memory care services.”

After successfully creating a similar housing unit in Needham, Mass., Maguire said, he hopes to repeat his success with his new proposal for Stroudwater Landing, and this time, he has new financial backers, whom he described as “two Maine banks.”

If he succeeds, Maguire said, the memory care services complex will be followed by phase two, a 120-unit independent and assisted-living apartment complex, and phase three, a 44-unit complex of duplexes and triplexes, all marketed toward seniors. Right now, Maguire said, he only has funding for the first phase.

Part of the original proposal, Maguire said, included the construction of a road that would connect Spring and Stroudwater streets. Maguire said the first part of this new project would include partial construction of that road.

Planning Board members took no action on the proposal Tuesday, but discussed the project in a public workshop. Board Member Michael Taylor suggested additional signals or turn lanes on Spring Street be a part of the project.

“I’m just kind of concerned because at certain times of the day, there’s a lot of traffic on that road,” he said.

Fellow board member Dennis Isherwood encouraged Maguire to consider building the entire road now, as part of the first phase of the project. The road, he said, would spur interest in the property, both from tenants and investors.

“I think if the road goes through, you will build a phase two and a phase three,” he said.

Rene Daniel, the board’s vice chairman, said he has been excited at the project’s potential from the beginning.

“A lot of things about your project turned a lot of us on,” he said. “I’m really glad to see some banks in Maine finally realized the importance of what you’re doing.”

City Planner Molly Just said the project does not need any changes in zoning, just a site plan subdivision special exception amendment, which will address the changes to the project since it was first conceived. The board will address such an application at a future meeting.