Government

New Accessory Dwelling Proposed for Hemlock Hill Road Property

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The owners of a 3.82-acre property in northern New Canaan are seeking permission to replace two garages, including one with a two-bedroom apartment above, with a single new, smaller structure that includes a dwelling on the second-floor. The two-bedroom apartment at 81 Hemlock Hill Road would be located above a new three-car garage, according to an application filed on behalf of the property’s owners by architect Dan Radman of RADMANarchitects. The property includes a 1935-built, 10,000-square-foot home, tax records show. According to the application, the two freestanding garages currently on the property have a combined coverage of 1,627 square feet, while the new structure would be about 1,211 square feet. “In lieu of an additional pool house, we have decided to include a bathroom with shower, as well as additional storage areas, into this new garage, thereby consolidating two potential accessory structures into one,” the application said.

Government

Divided P&Z Approves October Wedding at The Glass House

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Despite concerns voiced by a Planning & Zoning Commission member who lives near The Glass House, the appointed body last week voted 4-2 to allow the organization to host a wedding this fall on its Ponus Ridge campus. Dick Ward, a P&Z commissioner who lives on Winfield Lane, .3 miles from the National Trust for Historic Preservation site, said approval of the Oct. 4 wedding “would, in my opinion, create perhaps an unnecessary and perhaps dangerous precedent, on two levels.”

“One is it’s been our longtime practice that financial considerations are not a criteria to support a Special Permit or an amendment to a Special Permit,” Ward said during P&Z’s regular meeting, held Aug. 25 via videoconference. “And it’s pretty clear that the request is based on a financial concern and I don’t think we want to open that door.

Dan Radman

P&Z Chairman: Town Will Hold Public Meeting Nov. 20 on Proposed Cell Tower in Northeastern New Canaan

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The town will hold a public meeting next month to gather input on an application for a proposed cell tower on private property in northeastern New Canaan, officials said Tuesday night. A joint public meeting is to be held at 7 p.m. on Nov. 20 regarding the application for an 85-foot-high “monopine” tower at 183 Soundview Lane, according to Planning & Zoning Commission Chairman John Goodwin. The meeting will be run jointly by P&Z and the Board of Selectmen, and will include representatives from wireless infrastructure consulting firm Homeland Towers, which put together an application with AT&T that is to be filed with the state agency that oversees telecommunications, Goodwin said during the Commission’s regular meeting, held at Town Hall. It will mark the first time P&Z holds such a meeting since adopting regulations last year whereby those submitting applications to the state Siting Council “are strongly encouraged” to meet with P&Z to review the need for the facility, alternate sites and the location of schools “and places of public assembly” nearby (see page 166 here).

Charlie Schmidt

P&Z Calls for More Details on Oenoke Ridge Road Residential Retirement Building

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Town officials on Tuesday night called for those proposing a new residential retirement building on Oenoke Ridge Road to include details in making their formal application later this summer in areas such as building materials, colors, elevations, lighting, noise-generators, sustainability and renderings such as a 3-D computerized model that will provide a sense of scale. Members of the Planning & Zoning Commission during their regular meeting also asked representatives for Waveny LifeCare Network to provide details on landscaping materials and retaining walls. Commissioner John Kriz said he was concerned that “The Oenoke”—a 70-unit building of one- and two-bedroom apartments that residents would buy into as part of New Canaan’s “Continuing Care Retirement Community”—would loom over its neighbors and “cast a shadow,” and asked that Waveny “be sensitive” to the historic nature of the abutting New Canaan Historical Society property as well as the “well-attended” St. Mark’s Church on the northern side. Kriz asked that the architects use fieldstone “as opposed to something else,” for example, and avoid using aluminum siding.

Dan Radman

‘These Are Our Pets’: Applicant for Proposed Sanctuary Barn Makes Case to P&Z; Another Neighbor Objects

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After hearing from an Oenoke Ridge Road man that a neighbor’s plan to install a barn and pens for rescued pigs, goats and sheep was insufficient and potentially a health hazard, town officials on Tuesday night called for more time and an expert’s perspective on the proposal. The Planning & Zoning Commission continued the application filed on behalf of Laura Holson Boswerger of 1770 Oenoke Ridge Road. 

A Wilton native who met her husband at a wildlife sanctuary in Africa and has volunteered at the Animal Care Centers of New York City and Woodstock Farm Sanctuary in High Falls, N.Y., Boswerger purchased her four-acre property in northern New Canaan in October after researching its ordinances on keeping farm animals, she told the Commission during its regular meeting. After consulting with an expert from the Woodstock sanctuary, Boswerger put together a plan to rescue four slaughterhouse-bound pigs, goats and sheep and to build an approximately 2,000-square-foot barn where the 12 animals could live, creating separate paddocks that would run out of the structure. Under New Canaan’s Zoning Regulations, such an accessory structure larger than 1,000 square feet requires a Special Permit from P&Z, and Boswerger applied for that permit through her attorney—David Rucci of New Canaan’s Lampert, Toohey & Rucci LLC. 

One neighbor lodged objections to the plan with the Commission that Boswerger addressed during the hearing (more on that below), and another resident of the area—Joseph Gerardi of 1745 Oenoke Ridge Road, which is across the street and one property over—told P&Z that what’s proposed would not be “safe, sanitary, aesthetic and comfortable” for the animals. “These animals, they need pasture areas that rotate because of parasites—animals get sick and if you don’t rotate the let-out areas, it is not healthy for them,” Gerardi told P&Z during the public hearing, held in the Town Meeting Room at Town Hall.