P&Z Divided On Condo Plan

By Andrew Gorosko

Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members are considering a developer’s requests for modified zoning regulations and for two changes of zone, which if approved by the P&Z would allow the developer to submit a proposal for an 84-unit Hawleyville condominium complex for people over 55.

Thomas Gissen, executive vice president of Ginsburg Development Corporation (GDC), June 7 asked P&Z members to modify the town’s elderly housing (EH-10) multifamily zoning regulations to allow attached housing for the elderly to have second stories, and also to allow the buildings containing those multifamily units to be positioned closer together on a site than currently allowed by the zoning regulations.

GDC also is seeking two changes of zone for a 40-acre parcel in Hawleyville, which would change the site’s two current zoning designations to EH-10 zoning. The site at 178 Mt Pleasant Road lies on the north side of Mt Pleasant Road, directly adjacent to the Bethel town line. It currently is largely zoned R-2 Residential, which requires a minimum two-acre lot for single-family house construction. A small section of the 40-acre parcel, which is directly adjacent to Mt Pleasant Road, has P-1 Professional zoning, intended for professional office space.

In a lengthy and complex discussion June 7, P&Z members appeared divided while discussing the request to allow second stories on multifamily housing for people over 55, with some members favoring it and others opposed. GDC also wants to create walkout basements, an architectural feature which the P&Z has opposed in the past.

The steep, wooded, rocky site is considered a difficult property to develop.

In a report to the P&Z, Elizabeth Stocker, the town’s community development director, writes, “The…  site has diverse terrain, wetlands and some flood hazard areas, which make the development of the property a challenge.” 

Earlier this year, GDC had proposed building up to 125 condo units at the Hawleyville site.

The Hawleyville project is the second development proposal which GDC has submitted for Newtown.

In May, citing neighborhood opposition, plus questions about the availability of municipal sewer service, GDC dropped its proposal to build 110 condominium units for people over 55 on Mt Pleasant Road, near Taunton Lake. That site, which is owned by the Grossman family, lies west of the Taunton Lake Drive neighborhood.

After it dropped plans for the Taunton Lake project, GDC focused its efforts on the Hawleyville condo proposal.

GDC plans to meet with the town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) June 19 in seeking to persuade the EDC that its Hawleyville proposal constitutes “economic development,” Mr Gissen said.

GDC would need Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) approval to connect to the municipal sewer system. The town built the Hawleyville sewer system last year to stimulate economic development along Mt Pleasant Road. The Homesteads at Newtown, an elderly housing complex which lies east of the GDC development site, is the first user of that sewer system, which discharges wastewater at the Danbury sewage treatment plant.

 

GDC Proposal

 Mr Gissen presented schematic drawings for the proposed 84-unit condo complex at the June 7 P&Z public hearing.

“This is an ideally suited site for EH-10 housing,” he said. Rezoning the site to an EH-10 zoning designation is consistent with the town’s 2003 Plan of Conservation and Development, he said.

“We are providing a housing alternative… other than the single-family [house] subdivision,” he said. There is a great local need for such development, he said.

Current EH-10 zoning regulations require that multifamily buildings be separated by at least 40 feet. Revisions to those regulations, which the P&Z is now considering, would increase that separation distance to 50 feet. But GDC is proposing that the building separation distance be reduced to 20 feet.

Mr Gissen said GDC is seeking to build a complex with relatively closer and relatively shorter buildings than the P&Z’s regulations would allow.

Besides wanting second stories on the condominiums, GDC wants to build walkout basements in the proposed complex. The P&Z’s EH-10 regulations do not allow walkout basements.

The proposed complex would allow senior citizens to “age in place” with the benefit of  “bonus rooms” beyond those allowed by the single-story designs currently permitted by the zoning regulations, according to Mr Gissen.

The second stories proposed by GDC would be relatively smaller than the first stories of the units, he said. Second stories would allow space for home offices and provide places for grandchildren to stay, he said.

Mr Gissen said the 55-to-64 age group is the fastest-growing local age group. Census data indicates that there will be a local market for housing such as that proposed by GDC for the next 25 years, he said.

Frank Fish, a land use planner for GDC, told P&Z members the proposed condo complex would generate about $500,000 annually in local property taxes, without the need to place children in public schools.

P&Z member Lilla Dean questioned the economics of such a complex. Ms Dean pointed out that local people who would move to such a complex would vacate local houses into which families with children would move. The children in those families would require public education, she noted.

“We believe this [complex] helps your tax rate, and helps [to] moderate tax increases, to some extent,” Mr Fish said.

Traffic

The site is on a major road and would not contribute much traffic to that road, Mr Gissen said. “Active adult communities” help the local tax base without producing much traffic, he said.

Michael Galante, a traffic planner for GDC, said the site provides excellent regional access and has excellent traffic sight lines. Mt Pleasant Road in that area currently carries about 11,000 vehicles daily, he said. There is sufficient traffic capacity for added traffic at intersections in that area, he said.

Traffic studies indicate that the proposed complex would add about 60 morning peak-hour vehicle trips to the current 760 morning peak-hour trips for a total of 820 trips, he said. The complex would add about 75 afternoon peak-hour trips to the current 940 afternoon peak-hour trips, for a total of 1,015 trips, he said. The site is an “appropriate place” for the development proposed by GDC, he said.

In 1999, Avalon Bay Communities, Inc., a major apartment developer, had proposed building 304 rental apartments at the site, but Avalon dropped plans to do so in October 1999, after encountering a stumbling block in getting WPCA approvals for sanitary sewer connections.

 Andrew Green, an engineer for GDC, said a 12-inch-diameter public water main which was extended last year to The Homesteads would need to be extended another 1,500 feet to reach the GDC site. The GDC site now has access to electricity, telephone, cable television, and natural gas lines on Mt Pleasant Road, he said. GDC would regulate the flow and quality of stormwater leaving the site, he said.

A sanitary sewer line runs past the site, Mr Green said. A sewage pumping station, which is designed to handle 150,000 gallons of daily sewage flow, stands nearby, he added. Only the 3.5-acre section of the site which is zoned P-1 Professional is within the town’s sewer district, he said. The remaining 36.5 acres of the property in the R-2 Residential zone is outside the sewer district.

Mr Gissen said the WPCA would have to approve the GDC project as an “economic development” project to provide sewer service to it.

GDC will seek a sewer use allocation from the WPCA, he said. Mr Gissen suggested that Newtown could purchase additional sewage treatment capacity from Danbury and GDC would then pay Newtown for that treatment capacity. Whether such an arrangement is possible is an issue for the WPCA to consider, he said.

“This is sort of a chicken-and-egg thing, with sewer and the like,” he said.

Of the proposed complex, Mr Gissen said, “This meets the needs of the town’s own growing population.” The site is on a good road near commercial land uses, he added. The project constitutes economic development and is in the best interests of local taxpayers, he said.

“We are set back well from the road. The visibility of this site is extremely limited,” Mr Gissen said. The project is consistent with maintaining local rural character, he added.

 P&Z Chairman Daniel Fogliano, however, questioned whether 109 condo units on a 40-acre site is “rural” in nature. At that point in the session, it was unclear how many units GDC was proposing for the site. Mr Gissen later said the “working number” for the project is 84 units.

Public Comment

Resident William Denlinger said he supports GDC’s proposal for minimum 20-foot building separation distances between multi-family buildings. Mr Denlinger asked P&Z members to consider GDC’s proposal to allow EH-10 housing to have more than one level. Keeping residents on only one level is not necessarily good planning, he said.

Dr Morton Silberstein, the developer of The Homesteads at Newtown, said it would be good to allow more than one level in EH-10 housing. It does not promote senior citizen health for EH-10 units to be on only one level, he said.

Mary Burnham of Walnut Tree Hill Road said the P&Z appears to be facing a dilemma concerning whether it should continue restricting EH-10 housing to a single level. The matter poses a “philosophical question,” she said. Does the P&Z want to allow condominiums, as such, in town, Ms Burnham asked. If the P&Z allows two-story EH-10 housing, what would stop developers from seeking two-story multi-family housing complexes for people who are under age 55, she asked. Building the proposed GDC  complex on Mt Pleasant Road would worsen local traffic problems, Ms Burnham said. “If they [GDC] don’t get a sewer hook-up, what’s the alternative?” she asked.

Joe Humeston of Jeremiah Road asked P&Z members to endorse the GDC project. Mr Humeston said he does not want to continue maintaining his current residence as he ages, adding that he would like to remain in town as he gets older, living in a complex such as the one proposed by GDC. Mr Humeston said he was disappointed by the withdrawal of the GDC condo proposal for the site near Taunton Lake.

Philosophical Questions

Mr Fogliano said altering the EH-10 housing regulations, as has been requested by GDC, would affect all EH-10 zones in town.

Mr Fogliano said that years ago, P&Z members made a policy decision not to allow condominium development in Newtown. But the complex proposed by GDC essentially amounts to condominiums for the elderly, he said.

P&Z member Robert Poulin said the town needs to retain its senior citizens as they age, and should accommodate their desire for multifamily housing on more than one story, stressing that the P&Z should seriously consider the GDC proposal.

Ms Dean observed that the complex that GDC proposes is not truly “elderly housing,” but is rather housing for older adults who have no school-age children living with them.

The use of EH-10 zoning, as proposed by GDC, is very different than that for complexes such as Nunnawauk Meadows, she said. The P&Z created EH-10 zoning in the 1970s, tailoring it to the needs of Nunnawauk Meadows, a rent-subsidized, one-level elderly housing complex on Nunnawauk Road for low- and moderate-income senior citizens.

Ms Dean noted, though, that the specific development plan proposed by GDC for the Hawleyville site has “merit.”

But, she added, “We have said we don’t want condominiums, and these just sound like condominiums to me. I don’t know if this fits an EH-10 proposal.”

The GDC proposal is not “elderly housing’ as such, Mr Fogliano said. The proposal is simply a use of modified EH-10 zoning regulations by GDC to accomplish particular design goals, he said.

The P&Z’s EH-10 regulations are intended to allow the frail elderly to age in place, Mr Fogliano said. The federal government, however, has required that such regulations apply to people as young as 55, he noted.

Although such a project would not help maintain local “rural character,” it would help the tax base, he noted.

P&Z member Anthony Klabonksi said the 2003 Town Plan of Conservation and Development urges that the town be diverse, but the P&Z cannot seem to find out how to express that diversity.

The town needs developmental diversity, such as the GDC project, to generate property taxes to offset governmental costs, he said.                

“Times are changing,” Mr Klabonski said.

On that note,  Mr Fogliano said he opposes GDC’s proposed zoning regulations changes.

Mr Poulin said that whether the P&Z acknowledges it or not, the type of housing which it allows under the EH-10 regulations amounts to condominiums.

If there were a way for the P&Z to tailor the zoning regulations to apply to only the 40-acre Hawleyville site, then the GDC proposal might be workable, Mr Fogliano said.

Mr Poulin asked why the P&Z should not approve a project such as the one proposed by GDC.

Developmental diversity is a key issue, Mr Klabonski said.

At that point, Ms Dean and P&Z member Robert Taylor said they understand the value of keeping EH-10 housing on one level.

“We believe this is a good plan. We believe this is a good plan for this site,” Mr Gissen of GDC said. “If you feel this is a good [land] use, we’d come in with a site plan rapidly,” he said. “We think this is an ideal location,” he said.

Linda Silberstein, a developer of The Homesteads at Newtown, said that with good planning, the site proposed for development by GDC could maintain its rural quality.

“It’s a big issue. I can’t answer [it] right now,” Mr Fogliano said.

“Ruralness is in the eye of the beholder,” said P&Z member James Boylan, in musing on what constitutes rural, versus semi-rural, versus simply “hidden from the road.”

At an upcoming meeting, P&Z members are expected to act on GDC’s proposals for modified zoning regulations and for the two requested zone changes for the Hawleyville site.