P&Z Watch: 13-Unit Apartment Building with 2 Moderate Income Units Approved in Glenville

After reviewing an application for a multi-family apartment building at 9 Glenville Street numerous times, and the application having been closed at the previous meeting, the Greenwich P&Z commission worked in decision mode on Tuesday night.

The application, which was submitted under the town’s 6-110 workforce housing regulation, (not the State of Connecticut’s affordable housing statute 8-30g), involved demolishing a Queen Anne style house dating back to 1898, as well as an adjacent garage that was at one point a filling station, to construct a 3-story building totaling 17,731 sq ft, along with both underground and surface parking in the LBR2 zone.

Unlike an earlier iteration of the proposal, there will be no retail on the ground floor.

Rendering of three story residential building at 9 Glenville street submitted under Greenwich’s regulation 6-110, that is intended to encourage moderate income housing.

The building will contain five 1-bedroom apartments, and eight 2-bedroom apartments, with two of the apartments designated as moderate income dwelling units.

Since earlier iterations of the proposal, the applicant made some changes in response to the commission’s feedback.

For example, to enhance comparability of units, the they enlarged the 1-bedroom moderate income unit on the first floor increasing it from 780 sq ft to 846 sq ft.

The applicant also eliminated some of the proposed asphalt areas, and reduced some proposed rock removal in the northwest corner of the property, though the commission still struggled with the amount of rock removal on the steep slope.

The site has an existing 31% slope, and the POCD recognizes steep slopes over 25% as a natural resource. The commission noted that the proposed ledge removal would adversely impact the community and surrounding habitat.

They noted that building zone regs talk about preservation of natural attributes and major features of the site, such as wetlands, highly erodible areas, historic structures, major trees and scenic views, both from the site and onto and over the site.

The commission noted the project is within the Glenville Historic District and was included in the US Dept of Interior’s Register of Historic Places in 2007. The historic district contains 57 resources, of which 51 contribute to its significance. The 9 Glenville site contains three of those 51 contributing structures: The Pottgen house, shed and garage.

The applicant had lowerered the proposed parking to 28 spaces plus two ADA spaces, and reduced the site coverage by 762 sq ft from their earlier design.

While regs talk about minimizing curb cuts, the Dept of Public Works granted the applicant a waiver of town standards on the minimum distance between driveways to permit a 55 ft separation distance between the two proposed curb cuts on Angelus Drive, on the condition that there be adequate lines of sight lines.

The commission noted that special permit standards talk about preserving and enhancing important open space and other features of the natural environment, and protecting against deterioration of the quality of the natural environment and support environmental sustainability.

The motion to approve, read, in part, “Whereas the commission thus wishes the applicant to continue to enhance the environmental sustainability of this project by further reducing impervious surface, as well as the amount of ledge removal.”

The motion noted the commission had concern about the long-term stability of the soils added to support planting over the ledge rock as it might lack long-term stability.

The motion to approve had conditions including that the applicant meet with staff and explore opportunities to work with rather than demolish the existing ledge as well as further reduce impervious surfaces.

Also, the motion to approve said the applicant shall bond 30% of the total planting cost plus installation at the time of zoning permit. Bond is to be returned two years post-completion and C/O as long at 80% of the plantings are still in good health.

Each commissioner seated on the application shared comments.

Peter Lowe indicated would vote in favor of the application, while acknowledging that the town’s 6-110 reg had been rewritten a few years ago, but was still “not perfect.”

“The public should know that the commission is intimately familiar with 8-30g, the threat that it poses to the town and its appeal to developers,” Lowe said. “Let’s be clear, P&Z welcomes 6-110 applications, and no one is intentionally discouraging developers from its use.”

“The public should also be aware that this commission re-wrote the 6-110 regulation a few years ago with the hope that its incentive features would find broader acceptance among the developer community. The regulation is not perfect and the commission recognizes that it may need additional tweaking.”

That said, Mr. Lowe listed several “troubling aspects” of the application, including the scarring and appreciable reduction of the steep slope, significant ledge removal with blasting and compromised air quality, anticipated traffic increase and the questioned feasibility of the planting plan.

Mr. Lowe said those concerns were balanced with the Greenwich’s shortage of housing.

“Here are the trade offs: We need more housing. The town doesn’t want large apartment buildings with 1500 units popping up anywhere.”

“Perfect solutions are few and far between. At the end of the day, the need for housing may supersede almost everything else. We can work with developers to create housing that is sensible and compliant with our regulation and the POCD guiding principles. Or, we can pay lip service, do nothing, and wait for exogenous forces to impose unwanted changes to our town,” Lowe said.

Commissioner Peter Levy took a different view.

“I believe there is a disconnect,” he said. “You have the ecology here is a significant issue and the applicant has an opportunity…to heed our calling to reduce the size and volume of this project. And I think that as much as they’ve complied with the letter of it, they didn’t get the spirit of what we were trying to do.”

“Especially in view of how the community thinks about this project, I think that the applicant should be doing considerably more to protect the resources of the site,” Levy added.

Anne Noel Jones described the site as tricky and complicated.

“I do have concerns that the project is a lot for the site and is not in harmony with the neighborhood,” Jones said. “At the same time I know we want housing diversity.”

“I also have concerns that if we don’t use this and don’t allow people to use this (6-110) that there’s less control and it’s a behemoth.”

“We have intense feelings about this application,” P&Z chair Margarita Alban said.

Mr. Yeskey said he planned to vote yes on the motion because while the commission did not like plans for the steep slope, the application secured all the regulatory sign-offs.

“It’s in the spirit of working with the applicant to get the thing built, and 6-110 is a plus,” Yeskey said. “That’s what we intended it to be: to give a bit more incentive to build something more affordable – moderate income housing.”

Motion to Approve Fails to Carry: 3-2

The vote on the initial motion failed to carry, with a 3-2 vote.

Levy and Jones voted no.
Yeskey, Alban and Lowe voted yes.

When a motion fails to carry, there is no decision letter to the applicant.

Amended Motion Carries: 5-0

From there, the two commissioners who voted no were asked what might be changed to result in their yes votes.

Mr. Levy suggested reducing the parking and curb cuts.

With 28 parking spaces plus 2 ADA spaces for 13 units (for 16 bedrooms) Alban said only 26 spaces were required and they could ask for the reduced parking.

“That would create an opportunity to take out less of the slope, and reduce the height of the wall,” Mr. Levy said.

The motion was amended to add the condition that the applicant reduce curb cuts from two to one, as long as that did not result in more ledge removal.

The third condition was to reduce the paved refuse area.

The vote on the revised motion, was 5-0, with yes votes from Mr. Levy, Mr. Yeskey, Mr. Lowe, Ms Alban, and Ms Jones.