Veterinary Hospital Proposed For Mt Pleasant Road

By Andrew Gorosko

A proposal to construct a veterinary hospital at 164 Mt Pleasant Road (Route 6) is scheduled for Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) review at a Thursday, January 21, public hearing. The session is slated for 7:30 pm at the Newtown Municipal Center at 3 Primrose Street at Fairfield Hills.

Applicant Claris Construction, Inc, of Newtown is seeking P&Z approval to modify an existing special permit to construct a 16,502-square-foot single-story building, which would contain a veterinary hospital and associated services. The project’s working name is Newtown Veterinary Hospital.

Last July, the P&Z approved a developer’s proposal to construct a two-story 28,380-square-foot mixed-use commercial building, which would hold retail space, offices, and a restaurant, at the same site. That applicant was Acme Realty of Scarsdale, N.Y.

The proposal submitted by Claris Construction would supercede the previous P&Z approval for the site.

The property is on the north side of Mt Pleasant Road, directly east of the driveway that leads to The Homesteads at Newtown assisted-living complex. The land is in a B-2 (Business) zone. The 3.2-acre site holds a vacant dilapidated single-family house, detached garage, and shed, all of which would be demolished to make way for new construction. The sloped site is lightly wooded and has stone walls.

In a December 17 letter to the P&Z, engineer John F. McCoy, representing Claris Construction and Acme Realty, wrote, “The proposed [veterinary] building has a similar ‘footprint’ to the original plan, but is only one story and requires less parking.”

Thus the currently proposed development would require fewer parking spaces behind the building, meaning that there would be less physical disturbance to the site, he adds. The site would have 78 parking spaces, plus a loading area. The project approved by the P&Z last July would have had approximately 130 parking spaces.

In a memorandum to the P&Z, Assistant Town Sanitarian Edward Knapik writes that the proposed building would be served by a public water supply and by municipal sewers. Consequently, he recommends that the project be approved.

Mr Knapik makes some recommendations on how the garbage generated by tenants in the proposed building should be stored for pickup.

In February 2009, the earlier mixed-use commercial project received a wetlands protection approval from the Inland Wetlands Commission (IWC). A prime concern among IWC members was the quality of the stormwater that would be discharged from the site to a nearby wetland, with the goal of preventing any additional pollution from entering that wetland, which lies south of the site.

The revised project, which is less intensive in terms of the site’s physical disturbance, would require another IWC approval. It also would require a formal approval for a sewer connection from the Water & Sewer Authority (WSA).