Date: Fri 05-Mar-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

Don-Shirley-Lawrenson

Full Text:

Lawrensons Will Move On Leaving A Long Record Of Service

(with photo)

BY ANDREW GOROSKO

Donald Lawrenson reflects on his tenure of 23 years on the Conservation

Commission, including more than a decade as its chairman, and he admits he

misses being a member of the agency. But he also looks forward to the time

later this year when he and his wife, Shirley, will move into a planned

retirement community in a suburb of Phoenix.

"I miss the Conservation Commission. I've been involved for so long. It's a

part of me," Mr Lawrenson said this week at his Shut Road home in Dodgingtown

where he has lived for more than 30 years.

But he added "It's time to move on to other things, time to move on to

Phoenix. It's time for me to leave."

Shirley Lawrenson resigned last year as the Republican registrar of voters, a

post she assumed in 1994. She formerly was chairman of the town's Commission

on Aging.

Mr Lawrenson, a Republican, recently left town volunteer service as chairman

of the Conservation Commission, an agency which has played an increasingly

important role in local land use planning as a succession of high-density

development applications have been submitted to the commission for wetlands

development reviews during the past several years.

About 10 years ago, the complexion of development submissions began changing,

Mr Lawrenson said. Before that, there had been a surplus of good, buildable

land. But the amount of such land decreased and developers started maximizing

how much they could build on sites, resulting in a "cookie cutter" approach to

residential development, Mr Lawrenson observed.

The real estate market and economics have changed in the past several years,

he noted. "There's all kinds of pressure for density and utilization of the

land," he said.

Examples of high-density development include: The Homesteads at Newtown, a

planned 298-unit housing complex for the elderly in Hawleyville; Walnut Tree

Village, an existing 80-unit age-restricted condominium complex in Sandy Hook

whose developers want to expand it to 213 units; Riverview Condominiums, a

49-unit condo complex now under construction in Botsford; and Newtown Village,

a 96-house development proposed for Sandy Hook which was rejected by the town

in 1997, but is now under legal appeal by the developers.

"There's a couple of real important issues that are right up at the moment,"

Mr Lawrenson said. He lists Walnut Tree Village expansion proposal and a

proposal from business owner Judith Volpe to commercially develop a lot just

north of Sand Hill Plaza. The Volpe property is at 224 South Main Street, on

an environmentally sensitive site in the town's aquifer protection district,

across South Main Street from United Water's public water supply wells.

Developing land that's less desirable has meant land use applications which

are more technically complex, involving more engineering work and the presence

of lawyers, Mr Lawrenson said. Such applications also tend to be more

controversial than those which were submitted to the Conservation Commission

in the past, he said.

"Newtown is in the 'prime loop' of development," he said.

Mr Lawrenson said he doesn't see an end to the increasing density and

complexity of development applications until it becomes more economical to

develop areas farther away from lower Fairfield County, such as Southbury and

New Milford.

Misnomer

"The Conservation Commission is misnamed," Mr Lawrenson observed. "It does

most of its work as the town's inland wetlands authority," he said. Although

the panel is the agency which gets the first look at many development

proposals, its responsibilities are actually very narrow and limited, he said.

In the popular mind, the Conservation Commission has much more authority than

it truly has, he said.

Working with Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Commission members, Conservation

Commission members, during the past several months, helped develop a series of

proposed new aquifer protection regulations, Mr Lawrenson said. Those proposed

regulations would greatly expand and more explicitly state the rules by which

the P&Z protects groundwater quality in the Aquifer Protection District (APD),

an area that generally follows the course of the Pootatuck Aquifer.

Five years ago, the Legislative Council designated the Conservation Commission

as the town's aquifer protection agency. In that capacity, the commission will

eventually be responsible for enforcing environmental safeguards in the

wellhead areas of public water supply systems, such as United Water's wellhead

across South Main Street from Sand Hill Plaza. The Conservation Commission's

service in that capacity won't start, however, until the state promulgates its

long-awaited wellhead protection regulations, after which the Conservation

Commission will locally enforce those regulations or some stricter version of

them.

Mr Lawrenson says he believes the Legislative Council was misguided in naming

the Conservation Commission as the town's aquifer protection agency, adding

those duties would be more appropriately handled by the P&Z.

Advice

Mr Lawrenson has some advice for current and future members of the

Conservation Commission.

"Stay involved. Stay active. Know the applications. Know the land. Know the

law. Do your homework. Get new blood on the commission that's willing to work

as hard. There's no easy answers."

The task facing the Conservation Commission and other local land use agencies

is keeping future development compatible with how the town has developed thus

far, Mr Lawrenson said.

"I'm pleased with the way the town has developed to this point," he said.

He points to one high-density project as an example of appropriate development

-- The Homesteads at Newtown. Situated on a 60-acre rear lot at 166 Mt

Pleasant Road in Hawleyville, the planned 298-unit housing complex for the

elderly dovetails with the town's long-range planning for that area, Mr

Lawrenson said.

The Homesteads project was the "ideal application" for the former sand and

gravel mine, he said, terming it "an example of some very appropriate

development."

He observed, though, "I think the Walnut Tree Village plan needs to be scaled

back," saying the positioning of new buildings on the Walnut Tree Hill Road

site and their physical appearance are important considerations in such a

development. A balance must be struck between the nature of a site and its

utilization, he said. The expansion plans for Walnut Tree Village have

continued to change over the past year in response to town concerns over the

development proposal, he observed.

Retirement

Mr Lawrenson retired from General Electric Capital Corp. about one year ago.

He was an accountant on the comptroller's staff and was responsible for

publishing financial data on the company provided to organizations such as the

US Securities and Exchange Commission. A GE employee for 38 years, Mr

Lawrenson became very familiar with reading and interpreting rules and

regulations, a skill which served him well while on the Conservation

Commission, he says.

"It certainly helped me in being the chair of the commission. Somebody had to

keep the thing as a cohesive agency," he said.

Of his long tenure at GE, he said he was one of the last groups of employees

who "married" a company for their entire careers. "I loved work, but

retirement is wonderful," he said.

Retirement allowed him to spend more time handling Conservation Commission

matters, he said.

"I think the GE monogram is just kind of tattooed on my forehead," he quipped.

"Now they send me a check not to work."

Retirement allows you to do what you want to do when you want to do it, he

said.

"I get to sleep late. I get to read the paper in the morning instead of two

days later," he said.

A computing aficionado, Mr Lawrenson enjoys exploring the Internet and digital

photography.

In several months, after they sell their Shut Road home, the Lawrensons plan

to move to a the retirement community known as Sun City West, outside of

Phoenix, Arizona. They have lived in that area before. They have friends and

family there. Mrs Lawrenson grew up there.

The Lawrensons also are planning a vacation trip to China.

The couple has two grown sons, Kenneth and David. Both graduated from Newtown

High School in the early 1980s. Both achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

Mrs Lawrenson said she and her husband have made many friends in Newtown who

they will miss when they move west.

To recognize his many years of work for the town on the Conservation

Commission and also on the P&Z, the state legislature has presented Mr

Lawrenson with a citation for outstanding service.