Hunter Ridge—

Developer Offers Town $172,000 Payment Instead Of Taunton Pond Open Space

By Andrew Gorosko

In seeking to strike a compromise between the town’s desire to acquire open space land for public access to Taunton Pond and a developer’s desire not to provide such open space, the developer has offered the town a $172,000 fee in lieu of open space as part of the proposed 14-lot Hunter Ridge residential resubdivision off Mt Pleasant Road.

Whether, and possibly where, the developer would provide public open space land in the resubdivision has shaped up as the central issue in the Hunter Ridge project.

Developers David and Carol French, doing business as Hunter Ridge, LLC, propose the project for 30 acres on the south side of Mt Pleasant Road, just west of the Taunton Lake Drive neighborhood. Two proposed building lots would have shore frontage on Taunton Pond, which lies downslope from Mt Pleasant Road.

Another developer had received a subdivision approval for a project known as Rochambeau Woods for that site from the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) in 1970, but the property was never developed. The proposal pending before the P&Z is a “resubdivision” that would reconfigure that previous unbuilt subdivision.

At a July 21 P&Z public hearing, attorney Robert Hall, representing the developer, told P&Z members that the town approved a land use rule in 1974 that requires developers to provide at least ten percent of the area in a subdivision as open space. That rule did not apply to the site when it was approved for a subdivision in 1970, he said.

Mr Hall has maintained that the P&Z had an opportunity to acquire a small amount of open space at the site when the original subdivision was approved in 1970, but it did not, and thus forfeited any opportunity to acquire open space there.

“You might say this is your last chance to get open space on Taunton Pond,” Mr Hall said.

P&Z member Lilla Dean said that one reason open space is designated in subdivisions is to lessen the site’s overall construction density. Ms Dean said the 1970 subdivision approval for Rochambeau Woods bears no relation to the current proposal for Hunter Ridge.

P&Z Chairman William O’Neil told Mr Hall that P&Z attorney Robert Fuller maintains that the developer must provide the town with open space land as part of Hunter Ridge.  

A subdivider typically donates open space land to the town or to a private land trust. The P&Z currently requires subdividers to donate at least 15 percent of the land area in a subdivision as open space. Alternately, a developer may provide a fee in lieu of open space to the town. The town uses such fees to acquire open space elsewhere.

In recently reviewing the Hunter Ridge application, members of the town’s Open Space Task Force found that no open space had been donated as part of the 1970 subdivision, so the panel has recommended that the developer donate a proposed 3.2-acre building lot with frontage on Taunton Pond as open space land.

The other proposed building lot with pond frontage is 1.9 acres. Both of those proposed lots are “rear lots,” which would have driveways extending to them from the turnaround circle at the end of  the proposed subdivision road known as Dakota Drive.

In a June letter to the P&Z, Linda Shepard, chairman of the Borough Zoning Commission, wrote, in part, “We would like to see open space provided for this subdivision, preferably close to [Taunton Pond].”

In a June letter to the P&Z, George Benson, the town’s land use enforcement officer, wrote, in part, “The proposed [Hunter Ridge] resubdivision has to comply with the current subdivision regulations that include the 15 percent [open] space provision.”

At the July 21 P&Z hearing, Mr O’Neil pointed out that if public access to Taunton Pond were provided by the developer, all of the lots within the proposed subdivision would become more valuable.

Mr Hall responded that the town is not legally allowed to get any open space as part of the resubdivision, and even if such open space were designated, it would not provide public access to Taunton Pond.

“Open space may not be imposed on the Hunter Ridge subdivision… No open space can be required,” he stressed.

Compromise Proposed

Mr Hall then offered a compromise, in seeking to resolve the conflict between the town’s desire for open space access to Taunton Pond and the developer’s intent not to provide open space on the site.

While maintaining that no open space is legally required, Mr Hall said the developer would provide the town with a “fee in lieu of open space” equal to ten percent of the appraised value of the site. To establish that fee, the P&Z and the developer would have a mutually acceptable appraiser estimate the property’s value, he said.

Mr Hall said an appraisal that the developer has had performed indicates a property value of $1.72 million. That value would generate a sum of $172,000 which the developer would pay to the town as a fee in lieu of open space.

Mr O’Neil requested and received from the developer a time extension for the P&Z to consider the proposed fee in lieu of open space. The public hearing will resume at a future P&Z session.

“We’ve got an issue here,” he said.

In a July 20 letter to the P&Z, Mr Hall wrote that a $172,000 fee would be would be paid to the town in increments, as each of the 14 proposed building lots at Hunter Ridge were sold to buyers. Fourteen payments of $12,286 each would be made to the town as the lots are sold.

In another issue involving Hunter Ridge, engineer Larry Edwards, representing the developer, told P&Z members that the developer now proposes shifting the intersection of the proposed Dakota Drive and Mt Pleasant Road approximately 60 feet to the east of where it had earlier been proposed.

The modification comes in response to nearby property owners’ concerns about the potential for automobile headlamps shining into their windows in the nighttime, when vehicles exit Dakota Drive onto Mt Pleasant Road.

Dakota Drive, a proposed 1,400-foot-long dead-end road, would extend southward onto the site from Mt Pleasant Road toward Taunton Pond.

The development site is in the borough, but because the borough has no planning agency, the P&Z reviews such applications. The site has R-1 zoning, which requires minimum one-acre lot sizes.

In early 2001, Ginsburg Development Corporation Connecticut, LLC, had proposed building 110 condominiums for people over age 55 at the Mt Pleasant Road site now eyed for Hunter Ridge.

But in May 2001, citing strong neighborhood opposition to its condo construction proposal, plus uncertainty about the availability of municipal sewer service for the project, Ginsburg dropped its proposal to build there. Ginsburg is currently constructing a 96-unit age-restricted condo complex several miles to the west on a 40-acre site at 178 Mt Pleasant Road, known as Liberty at Newtown.