A Superior Court judge Tuesday said the Planning and Zoning Commission must permit Garden Homes Management Corp. to build a 113-unit “mobile manufactured community” along Donovan and Hurley roads.
In his written decision, Judge John W. Pickard overruled the reasons the Planning and Zoning Commission used to deny the application in 2007.
The project is to be built on 41 acres of undeveloped land in the town’s “corporate business park district.” The town had argued that residential units were not allowed there.
However, the town is being trumped by the state’s affordable housing law, according to the judge.
Garden Homes plans to make 35 of the 113 units “affordable,” as defined in state law.
The commission’s reasons for denying the mobile home community “do not clearly outweigh the need for affordable housing in Oxford,” Pickard wrote.
Since 1991, state law “has required all municipalities to adopt zoning regulations that ‘promote housing choice and economic diversity in housing, including housing for both low and moderate income households,’” the judge wrote.
“The Oxford (zoning) regulations do not contain any provisions which seriously address this requirement,” Pickard wrote.
The judge also pointed out that just 1.1 percent of the housing stock in Oxford qualifies as affordable, “ranking Oxford near the bottom of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities.”
Read the judge’s decision at the bottom of this story.
Richard Freedman, president of Garden Homes Management Corp., said he was still reviewing the judge’s decision.
There is no timeline as to when he will build the mobile home community, because the judge upheld the Oxford Conservation Commission/Inland Wetlands Agency’s rejection of the application.
Freedman will have to submit a new application to the wetland agency that has less impact on water courses within his property.
How Freedman will do that is not known. Freedman said it was too early to say if it was possible to reduce the number of mobile homes.
“The rejection was highly technical and extensive,” Freedman said. “(The project) won’t be exactly what we had planned, but it will happen.”
Freedman’s property is bounded by Hurley Road to the south, Donovan Road to the east and Oxford Airport to the north. The property is divided by a large wetland.
The town has until Nov. 23 to appeal the judge’s decision.
At a meeting of the Board of Selectmen Wednesday, First Selectwoman Mary Ann Drayton-Rogers said her board will meet with its lawyers — along with members of both the planning and zoning and inland wetland
commissions — to decide how to proceed.
That meeting will not happen until newly elected members of all three boards are sworn in Nov. 17.
Drayton-Rogers said she would “support an appeal” of the judge’s decision — if that is what the lawyers and commissioners want.
Drayton-Rogers blamed former First Selectman Augie Palmer’s administration for not creating affordable housing regulations, which, she said, would have protected the town from litigation.
“Strong regulations are needed to be put in place to fight these decisions,” she said. “My opposition has foolishly opposed this plan of action.”
David Haversat, who was a Selectman under Palmer, said it is still cheaper to fight developers in court than spend millions of dollars on schools and infrastructure.
He was happy to hear the town might appeal.
“I am glad the town has decided to fight this,” he said. “It seems like Drayton-Rogers is falling in line with what we’ve been saying.”
The town has spent approximately $300,000 on legal fees on the Garden Homes case, officials said.
