Government

‘It Seems Like It’s Overkill’: P&Z Denies Application for Tall Pillars and Gate Proposed for Jonathan Road Driveway

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Calling the taller-than-allowed pillars and gate proposed for a second entrance to a home in northern New Canaan excessive, planning officials on Tuesday night rejected a homeowner’s application to install them. The Planning & Zoning Commission voted 7-2 to deny an application to allow 6-foot-high pillars and a slightly smaller gate at 76 Jonathan Road. That property had been purchased (the ranch-style home there razed) and combined earlier this year with 65 Barnegat Road, now a 9.2-acre parcel whose main driveway already has a similar set-up. Making the two entrances match is a major reason for the property owners’ application, according to the attorney who represented them at P&Z’s regularly monthly meeting, held in Town Hall. Yet there’s “no reason for it,” commissioner John Flinn said by way of making a motion to deny the application (P&Z members Dick Ward and Claire Tiscornia cast dissenting votes).

Government

‘It Seems Like the Ancillary Uses Have Taken Over’: Town To Investigate Claims That Grace Farms Has Run Afoul of Permitted Uses

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New Canaan’s senior zoning enforcement officer will find out whether Grace Farms is exceeding the permitted use of its property—as suspected by some local planning officials and asserted by several neighbors—and, depending on the organization’s response, kick-start a process to resolve what has quickly become a sensitive and closely followed matter now before the town. What will result from Town Planner Steve Kleppin’s investigation is unclear—whether Grace Farms works with its neighbors on a mutually agreeable plan, seeks to modify its operating permit, faces fines or a cease-and-desist order, denies claims that it’s overstepping or changes its activities to conform to what’s been approved, officials said Tuesday night. For Kleppin, the situation is unique in that “it’s not like I’m investigating a complaint that somebody built a shed in their backyard and I go out and see the shed and say, ‘Here’s the shed.’ ”

“The only tricky thing is that if I start an enforcement action—I could do a simple letter stating that in my opinion you have exceeded [certain] conditions based upon this action and this action at an event held [on such-and-such a date],” Kleppin told members of the Planning & Zoning Commission during their regular meeting, held at Town Hall. “To proceed along that track and ultimately, if I were to issue, for example, a cease-and-desist order or proceed with another enforcement action, they can take an appeal to my determination to the Zoning Board of appeals. At which point, you [P&Z] are no longer in the process.

Government

‘Try To Have a Dialogue’: Following Complaints, P&Z Urges Talks Between YMCA, Neighbors

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Officials are urging the YMCA and neighborhood residents to communicate directly with each other and regularly, after some who live near the facility lodged complaints with Planning & Zoning that conditions of a major renovation, now underway, are not being met. Specifically, residents of eight homes on Surrey Road, Putnam Road and Danvers Lane told P&Z in a recent letter and in person Tuesday night that the Y now that construction is underway isn’t complying with conditions regarding sidewalk repair, safety monitors, screening, drainage and traffic. P&Z Chairman John Goodwin during the group’s regular monthly meeting that the town “can’t police everything” and asked the parties “to try to have a dialogue and see if you can’t work out a lot of these things.”

“My own personal take from reading the respective letters is that technically the Y has not done certain things, but on the other hand there is logic as to why they have not done some things here and now,” Goodwin said at the meeting, held in a Town Hall board room. P&Z in April 2014 approved the Y’s estimated $20 million project on 37 conditions (see meeting minutes here). Construction started about three weeks ago, and is expected to last about 18 months.

Business

‘A Village Feel’: P&Z Approves Site Plan for Pine Street Market

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With its curbside plaza finished in brick paving, its open-air space and a flexible parking plan that’s designed to allow for additional outdoor seating, as needed, the artisanal foods marketplace planned for 75 Pine St. is expected to transform the street’s “auto-centric” feel into something more pedestrian-friendly, the project’s architects say. According to L. Wesley Stout, principal at New Canaan’s Wesley Stout Associates, a landscape architecture firm, an eating option of some kind drives retail business today—coffee, prepared and take-out foods, “dine-ins”—a differentiator for retailers competing against Internet shopping. “What is remaking ‘Main Streets’ is food,” Stout said Tuesday during a public hearing before the Planning & Zoning Commission. “So places like this will be a huge success, to bring people into these places rather than just maybe stopping into your shop if you’re lucky,” Stout said during the hearing, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center.

Business

Parking, Traffic Concerns Arise as Forest St. Construction Nears

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As the start of a major construction project along the narrow, one-way stretch of Forest Street draws near, planning officials are urging those in charge to coordinate and communicate with police and merchants on matters of parking and traffic. Construction will start this summer of a three-story mixed residential-and-retail complex at 21 Forest St. The project will see two commercial spaces, seven residential units, a pocket park and 48-space parking lot go in where The Farmer’s Table (now across the street), Forest Street Deli and a long-vacant parking lot have been located for years. The street will be “shut down for hours at a time,” Planning and Zoning Commissioner Dan Radman said Tuesday at the group’s meeting. “You’re going to be staging, bringing steel in, and cement trucks and everything else,” Radman said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center’s Visitors Center.