Government

ZBA Roundup: Officials OK Variances for Second-Story Addition, Deck on 1905-Built Green Avenue Home

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The owner of an Orchard Drive home told officials Monday that he’s found a way to work with a neighbor who had voiced opposition to his plan to install an aboveground oil tank within the side yard setback. So long as the tank at 100 Orchard Drive is painted and housed within an enclosure that’s less than six feet high, the opposing neighbor is OK with it, Michael Abrahams told the Zoning Board of Appeals at their regular meeting, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center. Abrahams said he spoke to his neighbor on the phone but had no documentation of their exchange. ZBA Secretary Jeanne Rozel said she would be more comfortable if the board had something written from the neighbor, and the item was continued to a future meeting. During its Aug.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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Police have told an out-of-town man to keep his 5-year-old female golden-doodle out of the dog park at Waveny until he gets the animal spayed. The dog (her name is Amber) is in heat and on a recent weekday evening her owner upset other Spencer’s Run users when he got angry about male dogs in the park trying to mount her. We’re hearing that the man grabbed the male dogs and yanked them off of his fetching female, as though it was their fault. Officials say that if the out-of-towner returns with the dog un-spayed, he’ll be ticketed and his PIN number to enter Spencer’s Run revoked. ***

Though the property owner at the Bank of America building on Elm Street could not be reached for comment after town officials blasted the condition of the planters out front, he appears to have taken at least one major step toward addressing the problem. Within days of a meeting of the Plan of Conservation & Development Implementation Committee that saw some members refer to the area as a “non-garden,” a crew appeared in the morning to install new flowers, topsoil, gravel and plants there.

News

Zoning Officials to Bayberry Road Man: Make Do with a Smaller-Than-Planned Patio

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Calling a planned pool-and-patio overly large in that it would encroach on two setbacks as originally proposed, zoning officials have instructed a Bayberry Road man to re-think the project and land on something more reasonable. Plans for 179 Bayberry Road call for a 16-by-36-foot pool and L-shaped patio off the back of the 2005-built, 6,000-square-foot house. A special permit is needed for the project because, as originally conceived, it would encroach on 35-foot-setbacks (see page 58 of the Zoning Regulations here, 2-acre zone) by about four feet on the northern side for the length of the pool-and-patio, and by about eight feet on the eastern side, according to plans filed with the Planning & Zoning Commission. Homeowner Matthew Savino told the Zoning Board of Appeals on May 4 that the patio is sized to accommodate outdoor seating and a grill, and the pool placed away from the 2.5-story house so that it can get as much natural light as possible. ZBA member John Kriz called Savino’s request “a big ask.”

“You just want a large patio,” Kriz said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center.

Government

Zoning Officials OK Variance for Addition over Garage at South and Hawthorne

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Town officials Monday night granted the owners of a Colonial on South Avenue a variance to build an addition above their garage. When the 1953 home at 344 South Ave. sat in the A Residence Zone, its front yard setback was 30 feet—now that figure is 35 feet in the 1/3-acre zone, officials say—a change that makes the structure legally non-conforming. Owner Gregory Carlon told the Zoning Board of Appeals at its regular meeting that the garage itself—and by extension, proposed addition above it—are over the setback boundary by very little. “We are doing renovation of our house and we are not tearing the house down, we are just trying to add two bedrooms upstairs and we seem to be over by a few inches,” Carlon said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center.

News

Condo Sales Surge in New Canaan

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New Canaan in 2014 saw what experts are calling a record number of condominiums and cooperatives sold, and those that came in at above-asking price increased ninefold over the prior year. In 2014, New Canaan saw 79 condos sold (the figure includes 10 non-MLS sales)—a 25 percent increase from the prior year, according to a local Realtor who’s been tracking MLS and non-MLS sales data since 1989. And among those 79 units, nine were sold above asking price, compared to just one in 2013, said Jeanne Rozel of Halstead Property, a New Canaan resident for 40 years. They’re statistics that Rozel said “shocked” her when she compiled the data. “I can’t figure this out,” Rozel said.