This week the Greenwich Planning & Zoning commission reviewed an application for a final site plan and special permit at 9 Glenville Street to demolish a Queen Anne style house built in 1898 and a garage that once was “Andy’s Filling Station,” operating from 1933 to 1954.
The applicant seeks to build a 17,730 sq ft multi-family building that would be 3 stories tall and have 5 one-bedroom apartments and 8 two-bedroom units.
Two of those apartments would be designed as moderate-income dwelling units.
The proposal is submitted under the town’s 6-110 regulation that incentivizes moderate income or “workforce housing.”
The property is .49 acres, in the LBR2 zone, which is business and residential, though the applicant no longer proposes retail on the ground floor.
An undated photo courtesy of the Greenwich Historical Society shows a traffic circle at the intersection of Riversville Rd and Glenville Street. The white Pottgen house is in background.
Andy’s Filling Station on the Pottgen property at 9 Glenville Street. Photo courtesy Greenwich Historical Society
The house at 9 Glenville Street is on .49 acres in the LBR2 Zone. It has 5 bedrooms, an adjacent garage that was once Andy’s Filling station. 9 Glenville street sold from Siegrun Pottgen to 9 Glenville Street LLC on March 10, 2021 for $1,150,000.March 2019 Photo: Leslie Yager
Previously the application included ground floor retail, but the P&Z commission suggested to the applicant that an all-residential building might be a better fit and result in less traffic in the Glenville business district.
The commissioners have struggled with the application. The site work would involve significant site disturbance of rock ledge and tree removal.
Commissioner Anne Noel Jones had several questions.
“It looks that the site will be completely clear-cut because you’re going to do the ledge removal,” Jones said. “Are there any trees being left on the property?”
Landscape architect Matt Popp said all of the trees were proposed to be removed, though it might be possible in the northwest corner of the site to save one or two trees.
Ms Jones asked if it was possible to reduce parking spaces to decrease impact to the site from ledge removal.
Attorney Heagney for the applicant said 25 parking spaces were required, and 28 were proposed.
He said it was possible to reduce the size of the refuse area by half, which is located where the rock is steepest, but that his client would not consider further reductions to parking.
Public comment
Several residents attended as a group via Zoom including Adele and Frank Rota, Rose Repaci and Pam Ferraro, who all shared their concerns.
Ms Rota said she there was already “gridlock” at the intersection of Angelus and Glenville Street at certain times of the day, which she said would worsen when the new supermarket DeCicco’s opens in the former Stop & Shop. She expressed concerns that emergency vehicles at the fire house would be impacted.
Ms Ferraro said the project was simply too big and too out of character for the neighborhood.
“The environmental concerns brought up by the town don’t seem to have been adequately addressed: the loss of ledge, the loss of mature trees, runoff into the Byram River, and the traffic which mostly affects Angelus Drive residents,” she said. “It’s super difficult to get out of our street as it is, and this will just add to it.”
Mr. Heagney said in the record there were emails of support for the residential project from Monica Sante, Nicole Johnson, Alicia Tramontano and Frankie Ferraro of Glenville Pizza.
He said his client had already made a number of changes to the project, including making the building shorter, making the footprint smaller, removing the retail portion use and removing 6 parking spaces.
Further, he said the application conformed to “standards,” which he said referred to the town’s moderate income housing regulation, 6-110, designed to incentivize workforce housing.
Commissioner Peter Levy said 6-110 was mitigated by other concerns the regulations try to meet.
“The size of this project is 10 lbs a trying to fit in a 5 lb bag,” Levy said. “How much is too much? This is a complex site that diminishes the ability of it to be developed in a way that meets the contextual standards in this downtown hamlet in Glenville.”
Commissioner Peter Lowe asked said while Mr. Heagney referred to “standards” per the 6-110 regulation, the application included a special permit, and standards for special permits also needed to be considered.
“The standards for the special permit include #3 that we don’t want ‘to materially adversely affect adjacent structures, neighborhoods or developed areas within close proximity to the use,” Lowe said. “And #8 is, ‘be in scale, compatible to, and contextually consistent with surrounding uses, buildings, streets and open spaces,’ and #10, ‘will not not materially adversely affect residential uses, nor be detrimental to a neighborhood or its residents, nor alter a neighborhood’s essential characteristics.'”
“I think this gets to the essence of what Mr. Levy is driving at,” Lowe said. “You mention the word standards – these are the standards for the special permit.”
Attorney Heagney warned developers could bypass the town’s 6-110 regulation in favor of Connecticut’s state affordable housing statute 8-30g.
“If you are going to discourage developers from using 6-110 in this fashion, then generally the developments will become larger because there is no point of working within the local regulation when you have a state statute that deals with it differently,” Heagney said.
“I understand Conservation thinks this will have impact to the river, but I have sign-off from the town engineer that says the drainage is acceptable and the drainage manual doesn’t treat volume of runoff, it treats quality of runoff,” he said. “We meet that.”
Commissioner Dennis Yeskey pointed out that the two units of workforce housing would not even count as “affordable” and toward the town’s required 10% affordable requirement.
Ms Alban said the commission had talked about revising the 6-110 regulation, which is not used often because developers prefer to have more zoning flexibility and more incentives, and “would rather do an 8-30g.”
“The decision before us, and the one Mr. Heagney alluded to in a less upbeat way, is we have this regulation. People aren’t using it much. It’s in part because even at the zoning incentives it has now, it gives both residents and commissioners pause,” Alban said.
“The regulation in the books is what you follow. You have to obey the law first and foremost,” Alban said.
Mr. Yeskey said the special permit was discretionary.
“I’m glad we have that discretion,” he said.
Ms Jones said she wrestled with the impacts on the environment, the landscape and the immediate neighborhood.
The application was a “must close.”
The commission closed the application. However they did not take a vote. That will come at a later date.
See also:
9 Glenville Street Revised to All-Residential; Loss of Ledge for Parking Doesn’t Jive with POCD
July 25, 2023
P&Z Watch: Issues for 9 Glenville St Include Traffic, Scale & Protecting Steep Ledge Rock
June 22, 2023
May 13, 2022
Concerns Emerge about Traffic at Proposed Retail/Residential Development at 9 Glenville
Oct 4, 2021