Mushak urges P&Z Commission to deny housing plan for Manresa Island

It would be crazy to build housing on Manresa Island, according to Planning and Zoning Commissioner Mike Mushak. Instead, the peninsula should become part of the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge.

“The idea of building housing there makes no sense,” Mushak said Wednesday. “… It’s not transit oriented development, it’s a mile and a half from the South Norwalk train station. The road that it would access on is completely in the 100-year floodplain on Woodward Avenue. Meadow Street is also in the 100-year floodplain; you only have one spot, Quintard Avenue, where you can get up above the floodplain but then you have to drop back down to Water Street and back into the floodplain.”

Property changed hands in October; new owner seeks new zoning designation

In October, Argent Ventures bought the 125-acre waterfront site and its massive defunct power plant from Norwalk Power, owned by NRG Energy.

Although Mayor Harry Rilling said the property would have probably cost $70 million for the City to purchase, Argent paid $4.6 million, according to Town Clerk Rick McQuaid.

That’s “the value that was assigned to the property for purposes of the conveyance tax,” Norwalk Director of Communications Michelle Woods Matthews. “As stated in the NRG release, the terms of the purchase were not disclosed (including to the City). Presumably, these undisclosed terms addressed the significant remediation and other costs associated with the property.”

In 2017, a Licensed Environmental Professional working with Fitzgerald & Halliday to do an economic impact analysis of the island and its mothballed power plant, said a “shallow excavation” of part of Manresa Island would cost $31 million. Lynn Willey of Tighe and Bond said it could cost another $29.5 million to remove coal ash from the rest of “AOC-1,” or Area of Concern 1. This would involve digging 4 feet down.

Although Argent Ventures won’t be able to build on the property for five years, given that the Connecticut Department of Transportation plans to build Walk Bridge components there and float them down the river to the construction site, it seeks a Manresa Island Overlay Zone as a new zoning designation for the parcel.

The proposal states that it is “an alternate development scheme” that allows “clustered housing and additional Accessory Uses that are complimentary and appropriate for a waterfront Development, including, but not limited to, Civic, Institutional and Marine Uses.”

Residential density would not exceed six homes per acre. A minimum 70% of the property would remain open space, with at least 90 acres preserved in perpetuity. Argent would pay $10 per $1,000 of construction costs into an affordable housing fund, under the proposal.

‘Worst mistake ever’

Argent would like to get the clustering aspect of its plan and the townhouse piece incorporated into the zoning regulations now, and wouldn’t mind if amenity concepts were omitted, Planning and Zoning Director Steven Kleppin told the P&Z Commission Wednesday.

The language allows them to return and seek a special permit for its modified layout, he said. It doesn’t award them density bonuses. If Argent were to attempt a conventional subdivision, the significant remediation needed on the northern parcel would be very expensive.

“Major infrastructure conversations” about the causeway and its flooding risks would also be part of the conversation, Kleppin said. Anyone who attempts to develop the property would need to send contaminated soil out by truck because some of it cannot be transported by barge.

Commission Chairman Lou Schulman asked if an overlay were approved could the Commission then deny clustered housing.

“If it’s a special permit, you have a very high level of discretion,” Attorney Mark Branse replied. “…If you feel that a proposed master plan is not meeting your objectives, you can deny it and yeah, they can appeal, but they’re not going to win.”

“This conversation is really upsetting me because I personally don’t think there should be any housing or development on this site,” Mushak said. A developer would need to remove four feet of soil and thousands of trucks would be “rumbling through a low-income minority community that already is suffering high asthma rates. This becomes an issue of environmental justice, it becomes an issue of social justice. And for what? To get a less than one percentage point, maybe one or maybe two, one hundredths of an increase in our grand list. To allow some very wealthy people to live on a contaminated site, which I’m not even convinced people would want to live there.”

After 15 years serving on Planning and Zoning Commissions, Mushak is calling it quits. His term ends Jan. 1.

“I am going to speak freely about my feeling about this because everyone knows that I have been supportive of development. Over my long career, I’ve been supportive of TOD, I’ve been supportive of smart growth,” he said. “The idea that this site would be developed in any way to create housing in such a dangerous location in terms of storm damage.”

The economic analysis said that removing the power plant would raise surrounding property values by 5%, he said. The peninsula is “one of the few intact coastal habitat blocks in the heavily developed lower Fairfield County shoreline and as a source of freshwater for species using the Norwalk islands and other surrounding habitats.”

Lawns and their fertilizers, driveways and streets, human activity would be counter to that environment and “I think if we pursued development of this site, in what we’re talking about with housing, I think it would be one of the biggest planning mistakes the City would ever make,” Mushak said.

New Jersey took a 200-acre site in Cape May that was polluted and turned it into a birdwatcher’s delight, creating a $300 million a year income generator for Cape May County, he said. Manresa Island “could be a premier birdwatching destination an hour from Manhattan.”

‘Vision needed’

Argent could submit a subdivision application for clustered housing now “and I don’t think you could say no,” Kleppin replied.

Mushak said it would get denied because there’s no dry egress; Kleppin said that’s not a requirement, though the Connecticut Department of Transportation would do a traffic review.

Mushak said the “B” zoning for the peninsula is “bogus,” an “accident of geography.” It wouldn’t stand up in court.

Commissioner Nick Kantor asked if it could be rezoned now.

The Commission could change the zone but that hadn’t been advertised for the meeting, Branse said. “The question before you is, this cluster idea is intended to incentivize preservation …You can adopt that or not adopt it. But preservation of this area is something that can’t be done by the Zoning Commission.”

“I think the conversations we need to be having right now are with our elected delegation at federal, state and local level, to look at possible options of having the federal government purchase this and make it part of the McKinney Wildlife Refuge,” Mushak said.

Schulman said the property has been unused since 2012 and, “The Federal government has shown no interest, the City has shown no interest in purchasing this land. The State has shown no interest in purchasing this land.”

“Honestly, I don’t think a lot of people knew that NRG was putting up there for sale,” said Commissioner Tamsen Langalis, a real estate agent.

“I would be really disappointed to know that if the City knew it was going to sell for $4 million, that they wouldn’t have just bought it,” Commissioner Richard Roina said.

Langalis suggested tabling the overlay proposal. The Commission eventually agreed to do that.

“I’m really setting the stage for a shift in the conversation,” Mushak said. “I think the conversation really needs to be about putting the conservation back in the Plan of Conservation and Development.”

In his 15 years, he voted to approve many projects, he said. But, “in hindsight, maybe the City should have rezoned the site immediately, as soon as they knew that it was going to be going up for sale.”

He said, “There were times in the city when there was vision, real vision, and it was by Mayors and elected officials and Common Council. That’s how the City purchased Cranbury Park and set it aside. That’s how they purchased Oak Hills Park. That’s how they purchased Taylor Farm and Calf Pasture Beach, and all of the things that we hold dear. … I’ll just ask all of you to think about the legacy of this unbelievably important site surrounded by a National Wildlife Refuge, designated as one of the most important sites environmentally on the East Coast. And we’re talking about putting dense housing on this site. It’s crazy.”