Fairfield Hills Housing Discussion Postponed

By Andrew Gorosko

Town land use officials have postponed plans to publicly discuss the controversial topic of creating zoning regulations that would allow multifamily housing as a permitted use at the town-owned Fairfield Hills campus.

That subject drew stiff opposition from residents when it was the subject of two Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) public hearings held last spring.

P&Z members had been planning to again discuss the Fairfield Hills housing issue at their December 1 session, but such plans have been postponed, P&Z Chairman Lilla Dean said this week.

George Benson, town director of planning and land use, said this week that no new proposed regulations concerning allowing housing at Fairfield Hills have yet been formulated. Such proposed rules would have been the subject of a public hearing.

“There’s no urgency to it at this point,” he said.

When P&Z members discussed the topic at an October 20 session, they decided to withdraw from consideration a set of proposed regulations on allowing Fairfield Hills housing which had been under intermittent discussion since the public hearings on the subject last spring. P&Z members decided on October 20 to formulate a new set of proposed rules on the subject for discussion on December 1.

The proposed rules under discussion last spring were suggested by the P&Z in response to a New York City developer’s conceptual proposal to convert the multistory 188,880-square-foot Cochran House at Fairfield Hills into a 160-unit apartment complex.

That unnamed developer, however, never submitted a land use application for such a project.

Mr Benson said he expects that the conversion of Cochran House into a 160-unit apartment building likely will not happen.

Before the P&Z again would discuss the Fairfield Hills housing issue, P&Z members would study the details of the Fairfield Hills Master Plan Review Committee’s (MPRC) recent report, he said.

Ms Dean said she expects the P&Z would again discuss the Fairfield Hills housing issue in the spring.

“There is no urgency for this,” she said.

Ms Dean said that instead of creating regulations that would allow a housing complex with as many as 160 units, the P&Z likely would consider allowing a maximum number of units ranging from 50 to 75. She suggested a type of mixed-use development in which the ground level of two-story buildings could be used by businesses for office space or retail space, and the upper level would hold residential rental apartments.

An area containing vacant apartments such as Washington Square at Fairfield Hills might lend itself to use a mixed-use plan, she said.

P&Z members will be reviewing the MPRC report to learn how it relates to the 2004 Town Plan of Conservation and Development in terms of the housing issue, she said. The MPRC report indicates that there is a lack of public interest in creating housing at Fairfield Hills.

Last April and May, the P&Z conducted public hearings on proposed zoning rule changes that would allow Cochran House to be converted for use as an apartment building, provided that at least ten percent of the dwellings there are designated as “affordable housing.”

Those proposed zoning rule changes also would have allowed the reuse of eight existing single-family houses at Fairfield Hills as affordable housing. Affordable housing, also known as workforce housing, is designated for moderate- and low-income families.

At the April and May P&Z public hearings, residents’ opposition to allowing housing at Cochran House focused on high-density housing there being an undesirable land use that would create traffic/parking problems, impinge on the use of adjacent youth baseball fields, and prevent the potential reuse of the land now occupied by Cochran House as future open space.

The current Fairfield Hills Adaptive Reuse (FHAR) zoning regulations do not allow housing at Fairfield Hills, a 186-acre former psychiatric hospital which the town purchased from the state for $3.9 million in 2004. The FHAR zoning rules are intended to permit the conversion and reuse of buildings in a manner in harmony with the campus and the surrounding neighborhood.