About 400 people showed up at Shelton Intermediate School Wednesday for the beginning of a public hearing on a developer’s request for a zone change to put a mixed-use “lifestyle center” development on a 121-acre property off Bridgeport Avenue.
The developer’s lawyer and engineers assured those in attendance that they’d listen to their concerns and revise their development plans accordingly going forward.
But a 300-person strong Facebook group created to organize opposition calls Shelter Ridge a “Frankenstein” project, one that will ruin the last vestige of open space along Bridgeport Avenue.
Residents who live nearby have spent weeks organizing opposition, and say they’d prefer the land remain zoned as light industrial come what may.
The Proposal
The proposal — called “Towne Center at Shelter Ridge” — would be one of the largest development applications Shelton has seen in years.
It calls for a 450-unit, nine-story apartment building and more than 300,000 square feet of retail space on the property, which fronts Bridgeport Avenue opposite Long Hill Cross Road. It also borders Buddington Road, Mill Street, two city-owned open space properties, and several private properties.
The project would be divided into five sections. The apartment building would be its focal point. Other parts of the proposal include plans for a medical office building and assisted living facility, a mixed-use development similar to the Split Rock Shopping Center, and two separate retail complexes.
This quick video taken at a meeting last month shows what the project could look like:
Opposition Organizes
Wednesday’s large crowd prompted the chairman of the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission to announce before the hearing even began that it would be continued to May 31 at 7 p.m.
More than 80 people signed up to offer public comments during Wednesday’s hearing. Some brought signs. One urged the PZC to “Save Buddington Road.” Another advertised a Facebook page created in opposition to the development.
The first name on the meeting’s sign-up sheet was Diane Jowdy’s.
Her Mill Street home was the site of an April 17 neighborhood discussion of the “Frankenstein” nature of the project. About 50 people attended.
While Shelter Ridge would front Bridgeport Avenue — Shelton’s busy commercial corridor — it is bordered by Mill Street, a scenic road. Traveling from Bridgeport Avenue onto Mill Street is like entering another world. It’s quiet, woodsy and rural.
The 121 acres proposed to be developed is a buffer zone, separating nature trails from the Walmarts of the world along Bridgeport Avenue, neighbors say.
Building a 9‑story apartment building off Mill Street is the very definition of sprawl, the opposition maintains.
The Planning and Zoning Commission also received more than 20 letters from residents opposed to the zone change before the hearing.
The letters listed concerns about traffic, impact to the nearby Far Mill River, blasting, and the impacts to public safety and other city services, just to name a few.
Others boiled down to general worries about over-development.
“Slowly the beauty that once surrounded us is being taken away, the nature of which led many of us to move to Shelton in the first place,” wrote resident Mariann Hudak, for example. “I am shocked that a project of this magnitude that has the potential to change this area forever is even being considered … Enough is enough.”
Why Develop?
The project’s lawyer, Dominick Thomas, began presenting the plans by noting that they’d already been changed after residents and officials gave input at prior “informal meetings,” like one held at City Hall last month.
For example, traffic on Buddington Road — curvy, narrow, and densely populated with condos and single-family houses — was a chief concern raised by neighbors.
Thomas said officials had also been concerned about the road, and suggested restricting access to the site there only by emergency vehicles. So they did.
On the other hand, while he said the developers are “cognizant” of concerns raised by the Conservation Commission about nearby open space, incorporating all of that commission’s recommendations would make the project “uneconomical.”
That hit at one of the central issues surrounding the conflict over the proposal: so what if it would be uneconomical? Why change the zone just to help a property owner make money?
Thomas said the commission “needs to look at what can be done on this site under the current zoning as a matter of right.”
The land is zoned as light industrial. Examples of permitted uses include warehouses and manufacturing facilities.
The lawyer pointed out a developer would need only submit a site plan that conformed to the zoning regs to have up to a million square feet of such uses approved there.
He then referred to comments made by resident Eric Fine at last month’s meeting.
Fine said the land’s zoning should be left as it is. If the land can be developed as industrial property, great. If it can’t, so be it.
Fine said the city isn’t obligated to change zoning so investors can make more money — especially when that development motivates hundreds of neighbors to shout “no!”
“My response was yes, that’s what developers do,” Thomas said.
But, Thomas said, when developers make money, so does the city, in the form of increased tax rolls.
Jowdy echoed Fine’s sentiments.
“It’s been my experience that they hold out LIP (light industrial park zoning) as kind of a sword over your head if you’re not interested in the current egregious proposal,” Jowdy said. “It’s been LIP for 50 years and nobody is going to put a little aluminum plant up there with all the blasting they’d have to do. It’s a terrible site for development.”
And she said that even if a developer wanted to, neighbors would find that preferable to what’s being proposed now.
“We would,” she said. “It’s zoned as light industrial park right now and we do not want to see that zoning changed.”
