Grace Farms for 16 months has exceeded its town-approved uses, and now that the organization’s leaders intend to withdraw an application—under consideration since September, to allow for ongoing and non-permitted activities at their Lukes Wood Road site—officials should instruct them to come into compliance straightaway, according to an attorney representing some neighbors of the facility.
The Planning & Zoning Commission in 2013 approved a an amended special permit for Grace Farms as a religious institution, and its neighbors now “respectfully request that the Commission demand that [Grace Farms] immediately come into compliance with the terms and conditions” of that permit, attorney Amy Souchuns of Milford-based Hurwitz Sagarin Slossberg & Knuff said in a memo sent Friday to the town planner.
Grace Farms’ “long-standing, continuing, material and well known” violations, combined with its “woefully inadequate submission, cannot be even implicitly blessed with this [P&Z] Commission’s patience,” according to Souchuns.
“Therefore, the Commission must take long overdue action to address these violations with clear directives to the [Grace Farms] Foundation following any withdrawal and during the pendency of a new application.”
Grace Farms is scheduled to come before P&Z during a special meeting Tuesday night.
Reached through a spokesperson, Grace Farms Foundation President Sharon Prince issued the following statement when asked about the matter by NewCanaanite.com:
“In order to allow more time for all parties to work collaboratively together toward a beneficial plan for the town of New Canaan, Grace Farms and neighbors, we temporarily withdrew our amended special permit application on Friday evening, January 20th.
“The Planning & Zoning Commission has retained a new independent planner to conduct a study of Grace Farms Foundation’s application. We support this decision and appreciate the work that the town planner has invested in forming an optimal long-term solution, in consideration of all. Once this work is complete we will resubmit a permit application.
“In the interim, we will work with the Commission, neighbors, and public to achieve the best possible long-term solutions.
“We continue to be heartened by the public outpouring of support for our application and Grace Farms.”
(See reader letters regarding Grace Farms here.)
Souchuns said in her letter—sent Jan. 20 to P&Z Chairman John Goodwin and copied to the first selectman, town planner and town attorney—that she learned in conversations with the town planner of Grace Farms’ intention to withdraw its application.
In it, the organization had been seeking to add seeking to add two new uses—as a club/organization and philanthropic/charitable agency.
Yet, according to consultant Donald Poland of East Hartford-based real estate strategy firm Goman + York, Grace Farms’ application for those uses is “inconsistent with the goals, objectives, policies or recommendations of the Plan of Conservation & Development.”
“The conflicts created by institutional uses in residential zones are well documents in the [POCD] and the existing uses—legal or not—and intensity of such uses on the Grace Farms site, exemplify the problems of encroachments and impacts on neighboring properties,” Poland said at P&Z’s Dec. 20 public hearing, held at Town Hall.
“More importantly, the intensity of use existing on the Grace Farms site today foreshadows a future of increased intensity and perpetual encroachments and impacts on neighboring properties. The only way to adequately address the intensity of use and to avoid continuous future enforcement issues, is to simply limit the intensity of use permitted on Grace Farms.”
During the same hearing, Souchuns reviewed a history of the successive permit approvals for Grace Farms (see a timeline here) and said the conditions placed on the organization’s permit four years ago “were tailored specifically to the operations of a local community church.”
“The commission never contemplated a scenario in which the entire 80-acre site would be transformed into a multipurpose venue with retail space and frequent programming attractions that is open to the general public six days a week,” she said.
Souchuns said that Grace Farms, under the New Canaan Zoning Regulations, may only maintain “one principal use on the property” rather than the three its application seeks.
She also presented a comprehensive breakdown of Grace Farms’ reported attendance/visitor figures versus actual usage based on those who visit the popular site for reasons other than scheduled events.
While Grace Farms reported annualized attendance figures of about 67,428, Souchuns said, the actual attendance is about 166,904 for its first year of operations—projected to go to 429,584 in five years, with 10 percent annual increases and proposed new uses for the site included.
In Friday’s letter, Souchuns said that Grace Farms has wasted people’s time with a poorly conceived and executed application.
A withdrawal with the prospect of a future application “only serves to reinforce the long-standing tactic of the [Grace Farms] Foundation’s leadership to stonewall and obfuscate rather than compromise and/or make adjustments to its planned institutional usage programming in a manner compliant with the Zoning Regulations,” Souchuns said. “It also begs the question as to what the Foundation will submit as its ‘new use’ other than the uses that have already been outlined in the current application.”
Grace Farms also has demonstrated a “continued disregard of clear” directives from P&Z, she said.
The town planner last summer requested that Grace Farms stop scheduling programming events pending its new application, but the organization has continued to do just that.
Saying that a 2015 as-built survey of Grace Farms deviates from the approved site development plan, Souchuns also calls for an audit of the property.