After more than two hours of presentations, correspondence being read into the record, and questions from commissioners, members of the public at a PZC hearing Tuesday finally got a chance to weigh in on a plan to build a condo complex on waterfront property currently owned by Mayor Mark Lauretti.
They’re not exactly thrilled about it.
Reinhold Wilhelm, the owner of an abutting property on River Road who raised concerns about environmental contamination nearby leeching onto the site in question, garnered applause from several of the 30 or so people at City Hall for the hearing when he asked the PZC not to grant the application.
“The city, if it will approve (the application), will make itself subject to a lawsuit sometime down the road,” Wilhelm said. “These materials may have been capped over, but that makes that property far from safe. As far as I’m concerned, I would like for this application to be denied.”
A total of eight people offered comments to the commission about the application from developer Alan Temkin — to build a 36-unit condominium development on the 12.4‑acre property, at 550 River Road.
Nearly all of those said they thought the developer put together a good presentation on the project, but had concerns nonetheless.
Wilhelm’s fears about environmental contamination were echoed by Irving and Nancy Steiner, a Partridge Lane couple who had asked the Conservation Commission to look at recommending the city buy the land so it could be preserved as open space.
The Conservation Commission did so, and at their regular meeting this month voted unanimously to “continue to stand on our original position that the City not pursue this property,” in part because of environmental concerns — a metal hydroxide sludge pit left over from a previous property owner.
The commission also sent a letter with a list of concerns about the property to the PZC, along with several pictures taken during a recent site walk there, which is embedded below. Article continues after the document.
550 River Road, Final Letter 2012-09-21
“If the Conservation Commission doesn’t want to put the city at risk here, how can Planning and Zoning possibly consider using this space for people’s homes? What about their risk, their safety?” Nancy Steiner said. “Use your conscience. No one should live there so close to this contaminated site.”
Later, Ralph Matto, an Audubon Lane resident, said he was approached by Mayor Lauretti about a decade ago to help him see how the property could be developed.
He said he spent about a year doing so, and the process entailed testing the land for contamination. He said parts of the property did show contamination, but most of it didn’t.
“Most of it was all good,” he said. “All I’m hearing tonight is that people that had experience there before is saying everything is no good. But 10 years ago it was good.”
Several others who are members of the Coram Cemetery Association, which oversees a graveyard on another abutting property, raised concerns about increased foot traffic.
“We are very concerned with the security of the cemetery,” said Barbara Glover, who said years ago, her family owned the property where the condos are proposed. “It’s almost 200 years old. Being so old, some of those stones are very fragile.”
Her sister, Phyllis Walsh, said, “We really need to have, well, about a 20-foot iron fence, and a gate.”
“We have always kept the cemetery very quiet,” she said. “A lot of people in town don’t know it’s there, and that’s the only way we can protect it.”
Another member of the cemetery association, Nola Bain, wondered how public access to the river from the site — via a handful of parking spaces and a walkway around the property to the water — would be monitored.
“I’m fearing that there’s going to be a big problem because it will go out of control,” she said. “I don’t know how that’s going to be supervised to keep the people from doing things they’re not supposed to be doing.”
She also raised concerns about traffic.
“The Sikorsky traffic alone, it’s horrendous,” she said. “Any more traffic coming on that River Road is going to be unbearable.”
A traffic engineer hired by the developer, ATA Realty, couldn’t make Tuesday’s meeting, but will be at City Hall to talk to the PZC, along with a landscape architect, when the hearing continues next week, on Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.
Earlier, representatives working for the developer detailed their plans for nearly two hours, pointing out their successful track record of working with land use boards in other cities to develop properties and saying they’d be willing to modify their proposal to address issues that come up.
The 36 condos would be divided into 15 buildings, and would range in price from $389,000 to $525,000, said Peter Hughes, a land use planner working for ATA Realty.
The units would range from 1,900 to 2,700 square feet, with a maximum of three bedrooms in each. The proposal calls for a total of 178 parking spaces.
Hughes said he didn’t think many children would live within the complex, but any that do would have to walk to River Road to be picked up by school buses.
“We do not anticipate this being a family-oriented development,” he said. “This is not age-restricted, but it’s age-targeted by design.”
And having condos there, as opposed to single-family homes, would bring the city more tax money, he said.
“This development versus a single-family development produces about $200,000 to $250,000 in additional taxes to the city,” he said. “This development will be a positive tax flow to the city.”
Hughes also said that most of the property’s environmental characteristics would remain the same after the condos are built.
“We are preserving 8.6 of the 12.4 acres, 70 percent of the site,” he said.
Two streams — Ivy Brook and Butternut Hollow Brook — run on the site, and Hughes said they would not be disturbed, despite the main access drive to the property going over Ivy Brook on a bridge.
The structure of the bridge wouldn’t come within 15 feet of the bank of the waterway, he said.
“We go over the stream,” Hughes said. “We do not touch the stream.”
The development would also use private utilities, as well as trash and recycling collection.
“The only thing the city’s going to provide is ambulance, police, and fire, and hopefully we never need them,” he said.
