A local developer is proposing that a 29.2-acre parcel in Hattertown, which lies southeast of Castle Meadow Road, be subdivided into nine residential building lots for single-family house construction.

Michael D’Amato of Oak Ridge Drive, doing business as MD57 Castle Meadow LLC on August 22, received a wetlands/watercourses protection permit for the project known as Sunset Ridge at 57 Castle Meadow Road from the town land use agency.

Mr D’Amato sought that permit through the land use agency’s short form application process. Under that process, development applications for sites with minimal wetlands issues can be reviewed by land use agency staff for regulatory compliance and not be the subject of a public meeting or public hearing before the full Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC).

The Sunset Ridge site has two relatively small wetlands, both of which would be situated more than 100 feet away from any development at the property, according to Steve Maguire, the town’s senior land use enforcement officer.

On Tuesday, September 4, the developer submitted plans for the proposed subdivision to the Planning & Zoning Commission (P&Z) for review. The P&Z has scheduled a public hearing on the application for September 20. Nearby property owners will be formally notified of that hearing by mail.

The development site currently holds a house, a detached garage, a barn, five sheds, a garden, and a tennis court. The sloped property is largely wooded and has some fields. The site lies across Castle Meadow Road from the Newtown Forest Association’s Hattertown Pond Preserve, which is comprised of about 120 acres of open space, including Hattertown Pond.

Town subdivision regulations require that subdividers donate at least 15 percent of their parcel to the town as open space land designated for passive forms of recreation, such as nature study and hiking. In the case of Sunset Ridge, that would amount to at least 4.38 acres of open space.

The developer of Sunset Ridge, however, is seeking to have the P&Z instead approve receiving a “fee in lieu of open space.” If approved by the P&Z, the town would then receive a payment to be used toward its acquisition of open space land elsewhere.

The site lies generally southeast of Castle Meadow Road. It is bordered by the backyards of residential properties on Jet Brook Road to the southwest and the backyards of residential properties on Castle Lane to the northeast. The land is in a R-2 (Residential) zone, in which there is a two-acre minimum lot size.

Maps on file at the land use agency indicate that Sunset Ridge would be served a dead-end street about 700 feet long known as Maranello Drive. The road would terminate at a turnaround circle. The mapping indicates that one new driveway would intersect with Castle Meadow Road. The lots in the subdivision would be served by individual domestic water wells and septic systems. The site would hold a water quality stormwater basin to regulate the flow of stormwater off the property after storms.

According to calculations submitted by the developer, the subdivision would create 65,685 square feet of impervious area, or about 1.5 acres of surfaces that would shed water.

J. Edwards & Associates LLC,of Easton is the surveyor and civil engineer for the project.

The Sunset Ridge proposal is the largest local residential subdivision project in terms of the number of building lots since the Turkey Ridge project, a subdivision on the northern corner of Toddy Hill Road and Turkey Roost Road, which gained P&Z approval in July 2017. Turkey Ridge has 11 lots on 28.5 acres.