P&Z Enacts Elderly Housing Rule Changes

By Andrew Gorosko

After a longstanding review, Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members have revised the town’s zoning regulations on multifamily elderly housing, adjusting those rules in seeking to balance the interests of the residents of such complexes, neighboring property owners, developers, and the town at large.

After discussion on November 1, P&Z members unanimously approved a set of rule changes that generally require larger construction setback distances around such complexes, thus creating larger undeveloped buffer zones between new complexes and surrounding residential neighborhoods.

P&Z members increased the buffer zones to reduce any adverse effects on neighboring residential properties posed by high-density, multifamily housing complexes for people over 55. Those increased separation distance requirements generally stem from pressure from Walnut Tree Hill Road area residents who have voiced complaints about their proximity to the Walnut Tree Village condo complex on Walnut Tree Hill Road in Sandy Hook. That complex, located at 26 and 14 Walnut Tree Hill Road, is being expanded from 80 units to 190 units. The revised rules approved by the P&Z do not, however, apply to the current expansion of that condo complex. 

Also, P&Z created a new formula to set the minimum building separation distances within an elderly housing complex, based on a sliding scale, with the minimum separation distance between buildings being 30 feet. Until now, the minimum separation distance between buildings had been 40 feet. P&Z members earlier had been considering making the minimum separation distance 50 feet.

P&Z additionally decided to maintain a current requirement that all living space in a housing unit in an elderly housing complex be one level. The intent of single-level living space is to allow elderly residents easy access to all areas of their home, thus letting the residents “age in place.”

P&Z member Lilla Dean said this week that the revised regulations would allow elevators to be used in elderly housing complexes to provide older residents with easy vertical access to the single level where they would live. In effect, a two-story complex could be constructed, but living space for any one housing unit would be limited to a single level within that two-story structure, she said. Storage areas for housing would be allowed on another level, she said.

Ms Dean has shepherded the P&Z’s longstanding review of its elderly housing regulations.

P&Z plans to conduct future public sessions to gauge public sentiment on whether there is support for allowing living areas on multiple levels in elderly housing complexes, she said.

If there is public support to allow multiple-level living, the P&Z might then liberalize its regulations to allow it, she said. Such a housing unit design might involve townhouse-style construction.

 

Implications

It was unclear this week what implications P&Z’s revised elderly housing regulations might have for Ginsburg Development Corporation’s proposal to construct an 84-unit condominium complex for people over 55 on a 40-acre site, north of Mt Pleasant Road in Hawleyville, on the Bethel town line.

The town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) has endorsed Ginsburg’s proposal, terming it a form of local economic development.

In September, at Ginsburg’s request, P&Z approved the developer’s two proposed changes of zone for the site, thus altering the property’s “residential” and “professional” zoning designations to an “elderly housing” designation. P&Z members said they consider the site a logical place to construct elderly housing.

P&Z members, however, turned down Ginsburg’s parallel proposal, which sought to modify the town’s elderly housing zoning regulations to allow the specific type of condo complex, or “active adult community,” that the developer wants to build.

Through its requested zoning rule changes, Ginsburg had sought to allow living space on three levels, and to allow buildings in a complex to be as close as 20 feet apart.

Ginsburg’s spokesman on the development proposal was unavailable for comment this week on whether the firm would drop its proposal for a Hawleyville condo complex, or place the project on hold, in the hope that P&Z eventually will modify its zoning regulations to the extent that the firm could build the type of condo complex that it has in mind.

The site at 178 Mt Pleasant Road is adjacent to a municipal sanitary sewer line, which would make high-density development on the physically difficult site possible.