Traffic and environmental concerns dominated a public hearing Tuesday before the Shelton Planning and Zoning Commission on a developer’s application to put a 20-unit condominium complex on a 2‑acre property near the city’s boundaries with Trumbull and Stratford.
Of the 21 members of the public who weighed in on the proposal Tuesday, not one spoke in favor of it.
Afterward, the developer, John Guedes, said their concerns would be addressed when the hearing continues next year.
The Proposal
Guedes is asking the planning and zoning commission to approve a “Planned Development District” for the property — 39 Shelton Road — which is currently in an R‑1 residential zone.
If the commission approves the PDD, Guedes, whose Primrose Companies have developed much of the Canal Street area downtown from industrial to residential uses, would need further approval of specific site plans from the planners and the Inland Wetlands Commission.
The application calls for the 20 condos to be contained within four buildings on the property, with a total of no more than 44 bedrooms in the development, called “Pond Meadow.”
The buildings would be three and a half stories, or about 60 feet, in height. Each condo would have two parking spaces.
Guedes said the condos would be attractive to commuters because of easy access to nearby Route 8.
A single-family home currently sits on the land, which sits at the intersection of Shelton Road, Huntington Road, and just beyond the edge of the busy Bridgeport Avenue commercial corridor to the northeast.
Article continues after a picture of the area from Google Earth.
Opposition
The property also borders the Bushinsky Arboretum, a park donated to the Shelton Land Conservation Trust, which opened last May.
Representatives from the land trust, as well as the owners of every other property abutting 39 Shelton Road, spoke against the application Tuesday.
Others gave the commission petitions and letters written by others in opposition.
Joe Welsh, the president of the Shelton Conservation Land Conservation Trust, said the arboretum is a getaway from the hustle and bustle of nearby Bridgeport Avenue, and that putting a condo development on land nearby would ruin that.
“It gives everybody the chance to kind of escape the craziness of the world and head out into nature,” Welsh said. “What’s being proposed next door would definitely impact this … The proposed development would destroy what we are working hard to protect for everybody to enjoy.”
Bruce Nichols, a Leavenworth Road resident and member of the land trust, said Guedes was trying to use the arboretum as a “front yard” for the condominiums.
“Sometimes a development is just wrong,” Nichols said, urging the PZC to reject the application. “The property should stay R‑1.”
That sentiment was echoed by many, who also worried about their own property values being lowered.
“Density equals devaluation,” said Kevin Morey, a resident of Golden Hill Road in Trumbull. “It’s R‑1, keep it R‑1 … There is no redeeming value to this project.”
Scott Westlund, who lives on Lobsterback Road, a cul-de-sac that straddles the Trumbull-Shelton line to the northwest of the property, said he and his family enjoy the wildlife that abounds in the woods behind their home.
If condos are built there, he wondered, “Where’s all that wildlife going to go?”
Fred Barmmer, who owns a Huntington Street property to the east of the proposed development on which his daughter lives with her family, called the proposal “outlandish.”
Others said the area already has too much traffic, and adding a condo development would just make the problem worse.
Many questioned the numbers in a traffic study presented at Tuesday’s hearing on Guedes’ behalf by David Sullivan, a transportation engineer at Milone & MacBroom, a consulting firm.
Sullivan said a traffic impact study he performed indicated the development would be a “low traffic generator.”
“During the peak hours, it would generate somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 trips total,” Sullivan said.
Others criticized the proposed traffic pattern in and out of the property, which Sullivan conceded would call for motorists headed northeast toward Bridgeport Avenue to make an “unusual” maneuver — turning right out of the property before using a to-be-constructed “turnaround” lane.
City Engineer Robert Kulacz and Fire Marshal James Tortora also wrote letters to the commission opposing the plan, citing concerns over traffic and emergency vehicles being able to enter and exit.
Brian Erickson, a Lobsterback Road resident, said that when he gets off exit 11 of Route 8 north and tries to turn left onto Shelton Road, from Huntington Road, “I can’t get across. I have to wait two, three traffic lights.”
It’s just as bad going north from Shelton Road to Bridgeport Avenue, he said.
“When you try to go through that intersection, if you’ve gone through it on a regular basis, you’re not seeing one car go through that intersection when the light’s red, you’re see two and three cars go through that intersection today,” Erickson said.
Thomas Harbinson, a Soundcrest Drive resident and chairman of the city’s Conservation Commission, which also sent a letter opposing the proposal, said he does banking nearby on Bridgeport Avenue, and the traffic’s never light.
A complicated intersection and turnaround lane nearby won’t help, he said.
“Although this application may not add a great volume of traffic, it does add the potential for conflict,” Harbinson said.
Developer: ‘Just Part Of The Process’
After listening to more than an hour of disdain, Guedes agreed with the commission to continue the hearing to Jan. 13, 2015.
He said after the hearing adjourned that he looks forward to responding to the criticism leveled at his proposal Tuesday.
“I go through this all the time, it’s just part of the process,” Guedes said. “There’s concerns, and those concerns will have to be addressed to make it work.”
