To the Editor:
The “struggle” that the Planning & Zoning Commission apparently manifested at its last meeting concerning the size of Waveny’s proposed construction, as reported, is entirely justified and should result in denial of the applications. The plain fact is that Waveny’s proposed project, requiring no less than three separate applications, all of which need to be accepted, to approve the proposed construction would do significant violence to the zoning regime in New Canaan by destroying the look and feel of the Oenoke Ridge gateway to New Canaan.
That is true because, despite Waveny’s repeated and misleading efforts to downplay the utterly disproportionate size of this structure vis-à-vis the Oenoke Ridge neighborhood, one fact stubbornly resists camouflage: Waveny’s proposed structure would be the third largest building in town, behind the High School and the middle school, both of which structures are on much larger plots. By contrast, the gigantic edifice Waveny proposes for Oenoke Ridge would be shoehorned onto a sliver of land, dominating nearly all of the 1.6 acres on which it is projected to sit. Waveny’s “heart” may be in the right place concerning developing such a project, but the building it hopes to build is decidedly planned for the wrong place.
Waveny has attempted to leverage its historic reservoir of goodwill to impose this gargantuan, multiunit building, of breathtaking density, onto a sliver of land in an otherwise purely residential neighborhood for its own economic benefit, and it has done so by routinely and shamefully diminishing the motivation, extent and commitment of the opposition. Ours, and the opposition of the over 1500 New Canaan citizens who signed an opposition petition, is not opposition to the concept of senior housing; anyone suggesting otherwise is flatly wrong. Few doubt the desirability of such a facility; we however abhor Waveny’s intransigence respecting its proposed location, one which generated the opposition, especially given the projects breathtaking size.
There is, however, a ready solution to accommodate all legitimate interests, were Waveny open to compromise. If, as appears to be the case, that there is in fact a widely-held community interest in development of such a facility as Waveny now proposes, let the Town, through its committed and dedicated elected officials, huddle with Waveny’s Board to find an acceptable site for such a facility, a site for which most New Canaan citizens could support the proposed construction.
The bottom line is simple: if Waveny cares as much about New Canaan as a whole as it mouths in its marketing campaigns trying to promote this facility, and not its financial bottom line, Waveny should withdraw the current application and, with Town help and assistance, find a solution that all New Canaan can support. Such an approach would give meaning to the promise Waveny supposedly made before this application, but failed to redeem: work to secure community support for its actions before launching such a divisive application.
Surely this is not too much to ask of an institution that purports to care about our community as a whole.
Very truly yours,
Frederick L. Whitmer