The local developer planning to build a 102-unit apartment complex at Weed and Elm Streets—with 30% of those units designated as “affordable” rentals, under the state’s definition—says he is planning to break ground in the fourth quarter.
Arnold Karp of New Canaan-based Karp Associates and principal of the limited liability company that owns a 3.1 acre lot at 751 Weed St., said his team is “working with plans with the architect who is based in Vienna, Va. and we are hoping to have buildable plans and groundbreaking in the fourth quarter of this year.”
“If everything goes well, we are hoping to break ground and dig through the winter and to be framing by springtime,” Karp said when asked during an interview about the project’s timeline.
Denied by the New Canaan Planning & Zoning Commission, the affordable housing project at Weed and Elm takes advantage of a state law widely known by its statute number. Under 8-30g, in towns where less than 10% of all housing stock qualifies as affordable, developers who propose projects where a certain number of units are set aside to rent at affordable rates may appeal to the state after a local P&Z Commission denies their applications. New Canaan received three such applications when its moratorium lapsed in July 2021, at Weed and Elm, Main Street (20 units) and Hill Street (93 units).
P&Z denied all of them and the applicant appealed in each case.
The state Superior Court sustained Karp’s appeal at Weed and Elm and on Hill Street, while denying the Main Street appeal. (A more recent 14-unit 8-30g proposal on Parade Hill Road was denied by P&Z and is under appeal.)
Karp said the project at Weed and Elm is estimated to take 18 to 20 months to complete “depending on when we start in the winter.”
He continued: “Again, we continue to hear from people that we are not going to be building. We are just waiting for the plans. It takes a certain amount of time, but this building will get built as designed and occupied accordingly.”
Karp said that talks among his team, neighbors and the town to create smaller condominium projects at Weed and Elm Streets, and on Hill Street, did not yield a compromise.
“So now on both projects we will build exactly what got approved by the state,” he said.
The state Appellate Court on Sept. 16 denied the town’s attempt to have that court take up the Hill Street case after the Superior Court’s decision to uphold Karp’s appeal.
“Like the Weed Street neighbors, the Hill Street neighbors are out of luck—they have exhausted all of their legal remedies and they have been turned down by the court and so we are free to build there,” he said. “We are working on plans for that building, also.”
On Hill Street, Karp said he is in the process of obtaining blasting permits—a process he predicts “will take us to the second quarter of 2027.”
“We are going to build it,” Karp said of the Weed and Elm complex. “These buildings are financed and we are just waiting for plans. Anyone who has built a building of this type knows that these plans take a lot of time to draw.”
On the one hand, it’s a business decision. On the other, there’s no good reason to accept a dime in charity, do business or socialize with principals and firms who are clearly hostile to New Canaan. When the legislature leaves a community powerless to fight zoning busting laws, communities need to get more creative. Make the developers a pariah. If you live here, don’t buy the product. If you’re a real estate agency, flex against developments that are widely opposed. Boycotts against bad actors and affiliated firms can affect significant economic and social leverage, and act as a brand builder. First select-persons and mayors can seek authorization to band together to financially support higher court appeals to delay and complicate undesirable proposals, rather than fight and lose individual cases by economic capitulation. Private equity can develop funds so that communities can meet minimums and better solve the problem through preferred municipal development. 8-30g developers are hoping against hope that residents will accept that they’re out of luck, and their greed won’t be punished. Punch back.
Dave –
Your frustration is absolutely justified and shared by the vast majority of New Canaanites, but it is aimed in the wrong direction.
New Canaan has done everything possible to avoid the 102-unit 8-30g project getting built. Mike Dinan has endlessly chronicled in the NewCanaanite the efforts by the Board of Selectmen, Town Council, the Planning & Zoning Commission, the Board of Finance (and its alter ego, the Water Pollution Control Authority), and groups of neighbors to fight this development. We have spent a lot of money developing Town-controlled affordable units which allow us to achieve moratoriums under 8-30g which provide a respite from new 8-30g applications. Our town’s strategy, established through a bipartisan ordinance in 2023, is to continue to seek successive moratoria ad Infinitum.
In the context of Weed Street, Town officials spent years trying to negotiate a compromise solution to reduce the size of the project to fit the context. What has been lacking is a developer willing to truly work with the community. Instead, he has wielded 8-30g as the cudgel that the legislature intended it to be and leaving lots of damage in his wake.
Here is some good news … my educated guess as someone with years of experience in financing housing developments (albeit in other countries) is that the proposed 8-30g development on Weed Street is not currently viable. Other residents with local housing development experience have reached a similar conclusion based on their own independent research and analysis. The reason for the latest noise is that the developer is feeling stuck and this is yet another effort to scare up a compromise (Does anyone else recall “Decision Deadline – May 22nd”?).
So who is to blame? Clearly, it is the Democrats in Hartford. They passed 8-30g in 1989 and have maintained control of the legislature ever since. They currently control all of the statewide offices including the Governor, Attorney General and Secretary of State and they have supermajorities in both Senate and General Assembly. Over the past decade alone, they have rejected dozens of Republican-led attempts to repeal, modify or improve 8-30g.
And it is only getting worse. In the last few years, the Democratic supermajority has proposed a series of much more onerous housing bills which would further undermine local control. They have used underhanded legislative procedures like “dummy bills” to avoid public comment and the normal committee process. While some of the worst proposals have faltered as even the Democratic supermajority could not corral enough votes for a bare majority, others have passed and become law.
Yet there remains an interesting disconnect on housing policy in New Canaan. Lots of my friends and neighbors will howl about how onerous 8-30g or the new housing bill are for New Canaan, but then they will happily donate to and vote for Democrats in state elections. How does this make sense?
Let me be absolutely clear – only Republicans can push back on the Democratic leadership in Hartford who are hell bent on “changing” our town through aggressive housing bills. This is not a partisan political point … it is everyone’s lived experience over decades. If you are looking for a fairer fight, vote Row B in November.
Chris Wilson
Couldn’t agree more Dave Leopold!
I agree….hope its a financial loss!
A tax break for all New Canaanites as these 102 apartments will generate a lot more tax revenue than the $3.5M that the prior single family home generated. And of course, the 30 apartments designated as affordable should benefit the numerator towards 8-30 compliance.
Karp’s comments are breathtakingly arrogant and needlessly incendiary. He won. The projects are proceeding. Yet instead of showing even minimal respect for the community in which he lives and does business, he chooses to taunt his neighbors as being “out of luck” and boast that he’ll build “exactly” what was approved.
That isn’t confidence. It’s contempt.
Perhaps Karp should remember that a court ruling can compel a town to accept his development. It cannot compel residents to respect him, support his business, refer clients to him, or forget how gleefully he antagonized his own community once he got what he wanted.
If he intends to be this openly combative, New Canaan should have a very long memory.
How did our town officials let the 830-g moratorium lapse in July 2021?
It happened during former First Selectman Kevin Moynihan’s tenure. Simply put, the town was unprepared to apply at the time the prior moratorium ran out in 2021—didn’t have the requisite HUE points lined up. Some in government blamed outside factors such as the pandemic in delaying the redevelopment of Canaan Parish, however, the Housing Authority made it known that they’d run into financing difficulties with that project in April 2019, nearly a full year prior to the pandemic. The town planner at the time was scapegoated and let go in 2022. More background here. Here’s how town officials were looking at the situation back when the first moratorium was won in 2017 (under former First Selectman Rob Mallozzi).
When the comments say the town ran into “financing difficulties” we should be perfectly clear. Governor Lamont put the state on a “debt diet” and reneged on its bonding commitment to New Canaan for this 100% forever affordable project at Canaan Parish. After which, New Canaan leaders were forced to reapply to get a Federal Government funding and that did extend the development process significantly. Then the pandemic hit as well and there were construction shut downs and supply chain delays for getting the Eversource hookups.
In addition, I recall it was challenging to find anyone with experience in the state that knew how to apply for a moratorium. So few municipalities (14 in total) have ever sought and obtained a moratorium since the law passed. We are one of a handful (6 in total) that has had more than one moratorium. There are currently 4 towns under a moratorium (New Canaan, Orange, Waterford and Fairfield) No other municipality to date has obtained a third moratorium, which we will be seeking to apply for before the expiration of our current moratorium, which is August 26, 2028.
To see the CT Dept of Housing’s moratorium history report, link here:
https://portal.ct.gov/doh/-/media/doh/moratorium-history-8-22-2025.doc?rev=a551e2c4bb4c49a689a77549f3705a27&hash=356A54479252F58D2EDEF3846CB49CB1
Most interesting to note for New Canaan from this report, is that the DOH denied New Canaan’s application for a second moratorium (dated 7/21/2022) by changing their policy interpretation that any HUE points from remaining affordable units built prior to their most recent moratorium cannot be used towards any future moratoriums. Ironically, the DOH approved Brookfield’s moratorium application on June 7, 2022 which also used the very same holdover units. But when New Canaan applied just one month later in July, DOH denied the application which included holdover units that were now no longer permitted. It was New Canaan’s State Rep and Deputy Minority Leader, Tom O’Dea in a subsequent legislative session that worked with the House Majority Leader, Jason Rojas, to raise a “friendly amendment” to once again allow the HUE points from Holdover units to be used towards future moratoriums. He also “talked the amendment” with fellow legislators to make crystal clear for posterity what was the legislative intent with the fix proposed in the friendly amendment.
Also interesting to note is how many moratorium applications have been denied by DOH, forcing the towns to reapply for their moratorium. With a drawn out process which requires public comment periods, and 90-days to get an approval from the DOH, it takes at least another 3-4 months before anything can be approved. This application process is clearly broken, as all municipalities should know from the state how many HUE points they have in hand and once you have applied, towns should have a temporary freeze 8-30g projects – Fairfield had multiple (13) 8-30g projects – even on the same lot – submitted to their P&Z while waiting for moratorium approval. The state should be an ally to municipalities looking to create affordable housing, not an adversary. New Canaan has the distinction of being the only municipality that had to reapply 3 times to get its second moratorium approved by the DOH. Hopefully, we will apply well in advance of the expiration to ensure we don’t fall out of our moratorium.
By July 2022 the 8-30g application at Weed & Elm had already been filed with the town, so a moratorium would not have changed anything at that point, at least not at that location.
8-30g is nothing more than the Democratic controlled legislature in Hartford to re district. Especially in SouthWestern Ct/ Fairfield County. We know the plan = grant the undocumented the right to vote / and or allow voting without id, give them housing and the Democrats are in power in perpetuity. Why due you think the Biden administration opened the Borders and flooded the country with 30 million more undocumented? Add Lamont’s sanctuary state policies and Rios’ ( a carpetbagger) 8-30g legislation and guaranteed One party rule forever.
Good bye hard work, earning what you desire and goodbye American Dream.
🥲
When I vote I always wip out my driver’s
license. But when I voted in the leaf blower referendum. I told them I had
no ID so they said I would have to fill
out a form stating that I was who I said
I was. I then gave them my license.
But did get a copy of the form.
I assume we were an ID required State
But was wrong.
It seems to me that it would be real
easy for the state to produce a total
of these forms given out for each election.
I don’t think there would be that many
In New Canaan.
But wonder how many in Bridgeport,
Hartford,New Haven or Stamford.