As its resubmitted application goes before the Planning & Zoning Commission this week, Grace Farms is seeking to redefine parts of the town’s approval in ways that would allow for more people than the town body had envisioned on its vast campus.
A key piece of P&Z’s heavily conditioned September approval calls for Grace Farms to limit how many times it may have large numbers of people on its site—for example, one condition specifies that it may have 500 to 1,200 people on the site no more than six days per year.
In a proposed rewrite of those conditions, Grace Farms is seeking to apply those limits to guests at specific events, rather than total people on site. As such, those visiting Grace Farms for reasons not tied to the events—for example, to walk the property, view its celebrated River Building, eat lunch in its cafeteria, work in the library or sip tea—would not count toward the limit.
The changes would “clarify” that P&Z’s limits apply “to identified/planned events, as intended, and not to non-event daily usage by church or Foundation staff, or general public visits, which are monitored by the availability of parking on site,” according to Grace Farms’s proposed changes.
Grace has re-filed its applications for an amended permit and changes to the New Canaan Zoning Regulations at the request of Town Attorney Ira Bloom, in order to address part of a lawsuit filed by neighbors.
Specifically, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Smith Ridge Road residents Timothy Curt and Dona Bissonnette, the post-hearing legal notices of P&Z’s decision last year were “defective, incomplete and misleading” and also failed to meet the requirements of state law or the town’s own zoning regulations. P&Z also failed to file a copy of the regulation change with the Town Clerk prior to the effective date of the amended regulation, according to the complaint.
Though the town would “contest these claims in court,” one way to address “the alleged procedural defects now and thereby reduce the risk of a court later overruling our position and requiring re-filing and new hearing, after the full effort and expense of the administrative appeal process” will be to re-file, Bloom said in a Nov. 20 letter to an attorney representing Grace Farms.
Grace Farms itself filed a lawsuit following the approval, saying it was “statutorily and classically aggrieved” by the approval in that it “imposes conditions on activities and events of the [Grace Farms] Foundation that are not reasonably supported by substantial evidence in the record before the Commission about the [Grace Farms] Foundation’s operations and how they protect the health and safety of visitors and the neighborhood.” In its appeal, Grace Farms also said the town’s decision “imposes at least one condition that constitutes an invalid penalty under law” and “imposes limitations on religious activity on the site, that, upon information and belief, were not intended, and that are in violation of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 … and the Connecticut Religious Freedom Act.”
It appears from Grace Farms’s proposed changes that the reference to religion has to do with a condition restricting Grace Community Church’s use of the overall 75-acre site to the hours of 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The organization in its “redlined” or proposed new version extends that to 11 p.m., noting that “no changes were sought in the application or discussed by the Commission for Church activities; also, to avoid impact on religious activities.”
The organization also is seeking to undo a condition requiring that four ‘Guided nature tour route’ signs be rewritten as ‘Guided nature trail route ONLY,’ saying the change is not needed because “each guided nature tour is led by a foundation employee.”
Grace Farms also is seeking to cut from 90 to 45 days the time that security footage from video cameras on the property be preserved for the town to inspect in order “to make the retained video period consistent with the installed security camera system and security industry recommended best practices.” Instead, Grace Farms proposes adding this language to the condition: “In the event an incident occurs or a complaint is made about activity on the site, pertinent footage from video cameras shall be identified and copies in order to be preserved for future use as needed.”
P&Z is scheduled to take up the Grace item at a special meeting to start at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Town Hall.
Asked about the proposed changes, Grace Farms officials through a spokesperson said in a statement that they are “either to correct typos (number of seats in the Sanctuary, for example) or to make clarifications to what we understood had been discussed and approved.”
“Our only goal was to reaffirm what was said during the hearings,” the statement said.
It isn’t clear how many public hearings P&Z will dedicate to the re-filed application. It’s already spent more than one year on Grace Farms, whose activities were brought to New Canaan attention in May 2016, about six months after the organization opened to the public, when the town planner said at a public meeting that he had fielded concerns that Grace was overstepping what was allowed under its zoning permit. The town planner ultimately agreed with that view, leading to an application for a revised permit.
A new argument that’s expected to be made at Tuesday’s meeting by one neighbor of Grace Farms is that P&Z’s chairman, John Goodwin, should recuse himself from participating in the new hearings due to a conflict of interest.
Specifically, according to a document filed with P&Z by Curt on behalf of himself, Bissonnette and another set of neighbors—Paul and Danita Ostling—Goodwin’s “actual financial position and career prospects, given his current and active role as a managing director at Morgan Stanley, gives rise to the actual, potential and perceived conflict of interest.”
According to the executive summary of a 40-page memo supporting that view, Morgan Stanley is a “global investment bank with an existing client relationship and numerous other potential entanglements with Bridgewater Associates, L.P., the world’s largest hedge fund and the company at which Robert Prince, a co-founder, board member and manager of Grace Farms Foundation, is Co-Chief Investment Officer.”
“Mr. Goodwin has an actual or potential conflict of interest which may significantly impair his ability to fairly and objectively preside over the applications by Grace Farms Foundation.”
Goodwin declined to comment when reached by NewCanaanite.com, saying he would address the matter at a public hearing.
Asked why he was only bringing forward his concern regarding the chairman’s professional life now, Curt said in an email that “the extent of the conflicts outlined in the letter were not previously known to us.”
“The onus is on the commissioners to recuse themselves when conflicts exist. Ordinary citizens cannot be expected to police town agencies and their commissioners.”