P&Z reluctantly set to hold hybrid hearing on East Norwalk development

NORWALK, Conn. — Residents can express their opinions in person at an upcoming Planning and Zoning public hearing on a development proposal hotly opposed by the East Norwalk Neighborhood Association.

It’s uncertain how many Commissioners will be in City Hall to hear them.

Requests came in for a hybrid meeting on the controversial plan for 77 apartments in a mixed-use development on the circle near Calf Pasture Beach, Planning and Zoning Director Steven Kleppin told the Commission at its Wednesday meeting, held, as always, online only.

Commission Chairman Lou Schulman said he’d prefer to keep it strictly virtual unless all Commissioners agreed to do it in person.

“This is an important project about which people feel very passionate,” he said. “And it can be incredibly messy and technology can interfere with us understanding them, or they understanding us… When it’s going to be difficult on a difficult topic, I think we’re just asking for trouble. Nobody’s going to walk away satisfied.”

The State has issued language saying that if residents request a hybrid meeting, the Commission has to allow it, P&Z Director Steven Kleppin said.

“I’m all in favor of hybrid meetings but I can’t commit to attending in person,” Commissioner Ana Tabachneck said.

The project, dubbed The Lofts at Mill Pond, would put two buildings on the 1.6 acres at 1 Cemetery Street, where a bank has sat for decades amidst an expanse of asphalt. One smaller building would sit off to the side along Gregory Boulevard. The large building, prominently placed on Cemetery Street so anyone going to the beach would look at it, would feature a façade meant to resemble a set of smaller New England-style buildings.

“Playing with the different roof lines, going between flat and pitch roofs and changing the architectural style, we feel we’ve achieved a varied composition and something that’s going to benefit the neighborhood and really, you know, make this a place to be on the south end of the green,” Colin Grotheer of Beinfield Architecture said at the Jan. 4 P&Z Commission meeting.

Architectural firm DiCarlo & Doll is charged with offering an independent opinion to the Commission.

“The project presents itself as a predominantly three-story building when viewed from the north,” DiCarlo & Doll states in its peer review filed with P&Z last week, characterizing the project as likely reflecting coming development around the East Norwalk Historical Cemetery, situated within the traffic circle and referred to by some as “the green.”

Given the cemetery’s “gentle topographical rise,” the proposed building’s height “could be anticipated to have the salutary effect of making the cemetery feel more framed and more of a spatially unifying feature than it currently is,” the firm states.

It’s the first project submitted under the recently approved East Norwalk Village TOD (Transit Oriented Development) Zone regulations. Applicants M.F. DiScala and Spinnaker Real Estate Partners seek to qualify for increased height by providing public amenities, including a public courtyard accessible from East Avenue, across from Sweet Ashley’s ice cream store and adjacent to the planned retail space on the development’s corner which Grotheer called “a mercantile or a hall building.”

Originally submitted in June, the project was withdrawn and then refiled due to traffic concerns, Attorney Adam Blank said Jan. 4. The Connecticut Department of Transportation has jurisdiction over the road and “it took a long time to get DOT to actually take a look at it.”

Out of that, a plan has developed to turn Cemetery Street into a one-lane road. Other adjustments include moving the curve where Cemetery meets Gregory Boulevard down a bit, turning it into what Traffic Engineer Greg Del Rio called “almost a roundabout type treatment.”

That would enable to the development’s residents to exit out of the planned driveway. The State is also making adjustments to accommodate large trucks, so they don’t need to go over the roadway into the “green,” as they do now.

A public walkway would lead to Mill Pond, but that’s City property and plans aren’t yet developed.

Commissioner Mike Mushak asked about the City’s ability to build there once The Lofts at Mill Pond are constructed.

“The easement language does have language in it, confirming that the City would have the ability to access for construction on their parcel,” Blank replied.

In a lengthy East Norwalk Neighborhood Association (ENNA) Jan. 16 Zoom meeting, leader Diane Cece meticulously detailed facets of the development and the P&Z process.

“We’ve heard from a lot of people that there’s no way that this development should go through, ‘it’s too big, we don’t want it, it’s the wrong location.’ It’s too many apartments etc.,” she said, before  delivering the unhappy news, “that ship has really already sailed.”

Once the TOD regulations were passed, “in order to actually spur larger scale development to happen around the transit hubs like the train stations,” it became a “done deal,” she said. “It’s not really going to be productive for people to say that ‘we don’t want this at all.’”

The key is to try to mitigate “what could be a tremendous impact, a negative impact, on our community,” she explained.  If there are “enough questions or suggestions or concerns” raised at the public hearing, the applicant “would then have to go back and do revisions and come forward again.”

Cece explained that the plan for two separate buildings is due to a City easement for an underground stormwater pipe. The driveway is where it is, “where it doesn’t really make sense,” so the City can reach its pipe without demolishing a building, she said.

The main building is “pushed” to closely front Cemetery Street because of setbacks on the inland wetlands and the flooding that occurs in what is now the back parking lot, she said.

“The community is very concerned about this,” Cece said. “…Reasonable people certainly could reach a conclusion that the directive was really to design something for greed” as developers are “maximizing everything out…. The mandate was get as many residential units in there as you can and just do (enough) retail that’s going to satisfy the mixed use requirement of a special permit plan in here.”

No one is opposed to developing East Norwalk, she said. “Yes, of course, they should make a profit. They should make a reasonable profit. They should make a fair profit, and something that allows them to continue to invest. But this is not it.”

Further conversation focused on traffic concerns with predictions of serious issues at the area’s big events, the July 4 fireworks, dog shows, concerts and boat shows. Cece said residents oppose the City’s plan to narrow Cemetery Street to one lane, fearing gridlock.

She decried the Commission’s decision not to demand developers create a 3D model, saying it would give people more insight into the proposed height, and cast aspersions on the public amenity plans.

“They’re looking to do as inexpensive-as-possible and easy-to-put-in amenities to rack up points that allow them to have three and a half stories,” she said, characterizing the amenities as being difficult for residents to notice and the building itself blocking the would-be water view, in possible violation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.

She mentioned lawyers and said ENNA holds out hope that the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) might oppose the project based on its impact to wildlife.

Few people spoke in response; Jesse McGarty said the swans and the ducks and other “beautiful birds” she’s been watching for 27 years will surely leave once the project is built.

Liz Conti called predictions of low traffic impact “pie in the sky.” But one speaker, Ben Hanpeter, noted the struggle to get housing nowadays and expressed support for the project.

Cece said 30-40 people were attending the ENNA meeting and about 200 opponents were needed to make a dent on Commission’s opinion about the project.

Last week’s P&Z meeting and the comments about a March 7 hybrid meeting drew a sharp rebuke from ENNA in a YouTube video titled, “Excuses for P&Z Commissioners No Shows @ Hearing.”

As for Schulman’s comment, “asking for trouble,” the unnamed ENNA narrator states, “asking for trouble is holding a public hearing while you hide behind a camera and a computer.”

Kleppin, at last week’s meeting, said either he or Principal Planner Bryan Baker would be in City Hall to act as a “gatekeeper,” for citizens who want to speak at the Council Chambers lectern. Commissioners can attend in person or via their computers.

Mushak said he wanted a camera focused on the audience area, not just the speakers.

“I think that’s going to be a helluva mess,” Schulman said. Kleppin agreed, saying he’s heard it’s been done elsewhere and been “very messy.”

Tabachneck pointed out that the Common Council has been holding hybrid meetings for months and said the audio has worked “pretty well.”

Commissioner Jacquen Jordan-Byron said she has “no problem” attending in person because, “I think it’s important that if the public wants to take the time and effort to respond, support or oppose a project, I think the least we could do is be there to hear them.”

Commissioners Richard Roina and Tamsen Langalis agreed.

“I just want to make everyone aware that COVID is still spreading, it’s still an issue,” Mushak warned, alleging that the Council Chambers’ ventilation is not designed to Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) standards.

“I just would say if somebody starts coughing their head off in that room, God bless you all for being there,” Mushak said. “I mean, you know, because they’re probably not going to have a mask on and nobody else is going to have a mask on and then you’ve got an event.”

The East Norwalk Neighborhood Association plans to meet at 7 p.m. Monday.

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