P&Z: Grace Farms ‘Auction Items’ Events May Violate Conditions of Approval

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Town officials on Tuesday are expected to decide whether Grace Farms may host a dozen events planned as auction items for the organization’s annual fundraiser in October.

In approving Grace Farms for its amended Special Permit last year, the Planning & Zoning Commission specified that the Lukes Wood Road organization may not host so-called “Sustainability Events,” where space is used by commercial entities to generate revenue.

Yet raising funds by auctioning off specific events at Grace Farms—planned events include cooking, baking, cocktail, March Madness and college football parties—may amount to the same thing, meaning they would be prohibited under the approved permit, P&Z members said at their most recent meeting.

“This sounds like the equivalent of renting the property out for a kids’ dinner, kids’ party and everything else, except that it’s through a charity,” Commissioner John Kriz said at P&Z’s July 31 meeting, held at Town Hall. “Somehow that is stressing more of a distinction than a difference. This is renting the property out, which is one of the key things that neighbors objected to. So the mere fact that this is through a charity auction, does that make a difference at all?”

Ultimately, P&Z decided to put off a vote on Grace Farms’ request until its Aug. 28 meeting, to be held at 7 p.m. in Town Hall. 

The Grace Farms benefit is to be held Oct. 13. 

The planned auction events at Grace Farms range in size from seven to 50 people. Commissioner Bill Redman asked during the P&Z meeting whether attendees would count toward the total allowable people at Grace, under the conditions of Special Permit approval (see page 10 here).

Chairman John Goodwin said Grace Farms is approaching a “fine line” in its request.

“Are you renting it out or are you just raising funds for your foundation?” Goodwin asked.

Kriz said the organization is “raising funds by renting it out.”

“If you let the space and I write you a check and say, ‘Mr. Goodwin here, I’m going to rent the space for my child’s party,’ versus ‘Here, I’m going to give you a donation, which I won through a silent auction and now I can have my kids’ party’—the event is the same thing. Simply because the payment is different, somehow that changes the nature of the event? I think it’s something for us to think about, is my point.”

Goodwin said that Grace Farms may take the position that it’s not renting the facility out—rather, it’s hosting a dinner as sponsor.

Kriz noted that P&Z denied Grace Farms on the organization’s request to rent out its facility for photo shoots, and said that the auction events themselves do not appear to reflect its mission.

“It’s not like you are having a football party where it’s a fellowship event for the church,” Kriz said. “I could kind of see that. Kids baking birthday party? how is this keeping with some of their mission issues? I don’t see it.”

Goodwin answered that Grace Farms may say that it must raise money to carry out its good works.

Grace officials in a July email to then-Interim Town Planner Keisha Fink said that the auction items “are similar to the ones we requested” in 2017.

“Would it be possible to obtain administrative approval to offer these items in advance this year so that we could include them in our program which we would like to send to the printers fairly soon,” Krishna Patel of Grace Farms said in her July 10 email, obtained by NewCanaanite.com. “I have included our new General Counsel, Barbara Gould, who will be involved in this process moving forward.”

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