Business

P&Z Approves Weed Street Subdivision, Mixed-Use Building on Cross Street

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Town planning officials on Tuesday approved a pair of closely followed land use applications—one for a 2-lot subdivision on Weed Street that includes a conservation easement connecting two New Canaan Land Trust properties, and another for a mixed residential-and-commercial structure on Cross Street that’s designed to accommodate future New Canaan Post Office needs. What follows is a summary of each item. Both were approved by the Planning & Zoning Commission at the group’s regular meeting, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center. Weed Street
P&Z on six conditions (see below) approved the 2-lot subdivision at 929 Weed St., a 9-acre property whose current structure—a Midcentury Modern—will remain, while two additional lots will be carved out. As part of the subdivision, the property’s owner is granting as a conservation easement along an approximately 425-foot strip of land that connects two parcels long ago given to the New Canaan Land Trust: One that backs up (eastward) into the woods and connects eventually to the New Canaan Nature Center, and another that includes wetlands and fronts Weed Street itself.

Government

Town Attorney’s Advice on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries’ Plans: Wait and See

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Though local planning officials may want to position New Canaan so that the town can control whether a medical marijuana dispensary can set up shop here can do so, the best strategy for now may be to deal with an application if and when it arrives, the town attorney has said. Connecticut has licenses six dispensaries in the state so far—including one in Fairfield County (Bethel)—and in each case the municipality where they’re located readily agreed to the new business’s arrival, Town Attorney Ira Bloom said at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Planning & Zoning Commission. Though there is no indication that the state will grant more licenses any time soon, “that could happen at any point in time,” Bloom said at the meeting, held in the Sturgess Room of the New Canaan Nature Center. “So I think so some degree we are in a wait-and-see period in the state of Connecticut, in trying to assess what is going to happen, whether more licenses are granted or there is a change to the law or whatever,” Bloom said.

Government

P&Z to Cross Street Developers: You Must Convince Us ‘of the Size and Intensity of This Proposal’

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Though New Canaan should have mixed residential-and-commercial structures on Cross and Vitti Streets, and a newly located Post Office also would be a desirable “anchor tenant” there, the architects of a plan that would accomplish both must give the town and public time to work through concerns surrounding parking, building height and density, officials said Tuesday night. Those behind the proposal at 16 Cross St. must convince the Planning & Zoning Commission “of the size and intensity of this proposal,” Chairman Laszlo Papp said during the first public hearing on the project. “That is what you have to [do in order to] convince the commission to give a favorable” decision, Papp said during the hearing, held in the Sturgess Room at the New Canaan Nature Center. Several of those in attendance spoke in favor of plans for the 3.5-story structure—with 7,000 square feet for businesses on the ground floor (half intended for a Post Office) and 14 apartments above (11 two-bedroom units at 1,050 square feet and three studios at 560) with 54 parking spaces below—calling the proposal a creative way to solve multiple problems at once, such as creating housing near the village center and breathing new life into a largely neglected piece of the downtown.

Government

Lawyer: Post Office Commitment to Cross Street Hinges on Site Plan Approval

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[acx_slideshow name=”16 Cross Street Proposed Mixed Use Structure”]

The Post Office won’t agree to move to a proposed new space at 16 Cross Street until the town green-lights the larger project proposed for the site, correspondence shows, a combination of new uses and a site plan whose approval process will kickstart with Tuesday’s meeting of the Planning and Zoning Commission. In an email sent Oct. 20 to Town Attorney Ira Bloom, a lawyer representing property owner 3M Capital Trust LLC said “the project is a mixed use development and it is the goal to have part of the first floor used as the new home for the New Canaan Post Office.”

“The USPS apparently does not want to enter into detailed negotiations or an agreement until the project is approved,” Stephen Finn of Stamford-based Wofsey, Rosen, Kweskin and Kuriansky said in the email, on file at P&Z. “The project will most likely require at least a couple of meetings before the [P&Z] Commission but for obvious reasons we are hoping to proceed as expeditiously as possible.”

That’s because, or at least partly because, the current Post Office spot at 90 Main St.—though timely, in that it provided a New Canaan location at all, after the Post Office watched its lease at Pine and Park expire with no apparent plan for the future—has been problematic (traffic, parking, hassle). Plans filed Oct.

News

Town Approves Two-Lot Subdivision of 4.76-Acre, Wooded Parcel on Hill Street

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On conditions that one of the two homes planned for a thickly wooded property near Route 123 shift away from neighbors and that vegetation now screening those neighbors remains as a buffer, town planning officials last week approved the two-lot subdivision of a sloping 4.76-acre parcel on Hill Street. Early-stage plans call for two homes on “Lot 72” of Hill Street, a windy road of 10 modest houses and condos that runs just above and roughly parallel to Route 123 for about 500 feet. It dumps into Brushy Ridge Road. The short segment of Hill Street that gives access to the oversized parcel known as “Lot 72” is wedged between numbers 11 and 37 and includes wetlands almost immediately off the street. Officials this summer approved a driveway across those wetlands, though representatives for neighbors objected to the overall plan, saying new construction would exacerbate runoff, lower property values and do little for the area’s aesthetics.