Planning officials said Monday night that they’re concerned that a plan to allow one-way entrance circulation on the east side of a proposed new Post Office on Locust Avenue with two-way traffic on the west side—as opposed to, say, a single entrance on one side of the building and exit on the other—will create safety hazards that could create liability problems for the town.
Proposed Post Office for 18-26 Locust Ave. in New Canaan. Rendering by James Schettino Architects
Specifically, Town Planner Steve Kleppin and members of the Planning & Zoning Commission say, two-way circulation could confuse drivers and lead to motorists traveling in opposite directions suddenly and unexpectedly looking each other somewhere on the property at 18-26 Locust Ave., not to mention motor vehicle backup, since there’s no turnaround space, and cars backing up into pedestrians’ paths.
Designating spaces directly behind the proposed building for Post Office workers and those expected to work in second-floor office space “would leave spaces on the west side of the building for patrons of the Post Office,” Kleppin said at a special meeting of the commission, held in the Douglass Room at Lapham Community Center.
“And if that was the case, then they [Post Office officials] wouldn’t need two-way on the west side, because those spaces north and south abutting the building would be occupied by stationary employees, as opposed to others coming in and out,” Kleppin said.
Site plan for what could be a new building that houses a Post Office on its first floor, at 18-26 Locust Ave.
The owner of 18 Locust Ave. and hopeful developer of the property, New Canaan’s Richard Carratu, explained that Post Office officials feel a single “loop” around the building would see traffic exacerbated by motorists continually circling in order to find a preferable parking space.
An attorney representing Carratu as the project’s applicant—Michael Sweeney, of Stamford-based Carmody, Torrance, Sandak & Hennessey LLP—conceded that the Post Office in some ways was “inscrutable” but that the federal agency based on its own experience takes “a fairly strident position on the way they believe their sites operate.”
“To be fair to them, they have a post offices around the country and at some point they develop their notion of the way it works, and the way they want it to work, whether it’s the best thing we think or not,” Sweeney said.
In the end, P&Z—while approving others parts of Carratu’s application to develop the site as a Post Office (to “re-zone” a strip of land planned for parking and for an exception to floor-area-ration requirements, for example)—decided to put off a decision on the full site plan until a peer traffic consulting firm issued a decision about the safety of the proposed one-way-on-one-side, two-way-on-the-other motor vehicle circulation proposal.
Parking officials on Thursday unanimously supported Carratu’s plan for a new Post Office downtown.
P&Z commissioners on Monday asked whether the applicant was concerned about people using the Post Office parking spaces instead of nearby metered spaces at Locust Avenue lot (yes, especially during the day, it would be an enforcement matter), how the applicant felt about what has been called the historic significance of the buildings (not strongly, since it’s been updated significantly through the years), what parts of the proposed building are “sustainable” (windows and roof, for example), whether the dormers serve a purpose (no, they’re purely aesthetic) and whether changing the circulation could free up more parking spaces by making more narrow the would-be two-way traffic lane (probably, but the Post Office needs the site plan approved as-is).
The traffic expert hired by the applicant—Neil Olinski of Cheshire-based Milone & MacBroom—said that one-way circulation “makes a lot of sense” but also noted that the Post Office was insistent on making the west-side traffic lane two-way.
Asked by P&Z commissioner Bill Redman how it would affect Olinski’s findings that the site is safe and workable if motorists in fact “looped” around an all one-way circulation pattern (as the Post Office suspects), the transportation planner said there would be “some good and bad associated.”
“If somebody cannot find parking the first time around, then they may well circle around, causing more traffic in the street,” Olinski said. “We analyzed it with the two-way and honestly I don’t think there would be a significant change in our in findings.”
He added that “most patrons of a post office are in and out in five, 10, 15 minutes—it’s very high turnover.”
A peer review likely will be completed this week and Sweeney and Carratu are expected to come before P&Z for full site plan approval at the group’s regular meeting on Tuesday, May 26.