The former RegalCare nursing facility at 1188 King Street, which some may remember was previously Fairview, was approved by the Greenwich Planning & Zoning commission last week to become “Laurelton Residences,” a residential rental community of 17 apartments and a total of 26 bedrooms.
Located near Sacred Heart Greenwich, the nursing home had 40 units but the site had town approval for 75 units.
The building has been vacant since sustaining major damage during Hurricane Ida in September 2021. RegalCare’s residential patients were evacuated when the facility experienced flooding and a power failure.
The applicant previously proposed to change the nursing home into an assisted living facility, but didn’t get an approved site plan from the P&Z commission before starting renovations.
“This was not completely buttoned down in its first iteration,” P&Z commission chair Margarita Alban said. “It had a change of use and…it was only a building permit application. What I’m looking for is that your client is very conscious in following town process and having the correct permitting because that was a disturbing thing …That somebody would just file building permits with that much of a change of work.”
The applicant proposed adaptive reuse from nursing home to multi-family residence.
The state legislature recently approved Section 8-2r of the Connecticut General Statutes, to enable the adaptive reuse of vacant nursing homes as multi-family housing, as long as the facility is not increased in size or knocked down to build anew.
The applicant was represented by attorney Andrea Sisca and architect Emmanuel D’Amore.
“We understand the statute provides for an as-of-right conversion provided that the site plan complies with regulations,” Ms Sisca said.
The property is 4.24 acres in the RA-4 zone.
Since the reuse already complied with state law, the application was mainly a double-check against possible conflicting language with local local regulation.
Commissioner Arn Welles asked about the proposed energy strategy.
“It’s a 64-year-old building, are you replacing mechanicals?” he asked.
Mr. D’Amore who said the plan was to replace mechanicals with new ones. The entire heating and cooling system will be entirely electric.
As for Electric Vehicle chargers, there were none planned.
“We realize it is a requirement under the change of use application so we will have to comply,” Mr. D’Amore said.
“This looks to me like a renovation, not a new build, so I don’t think our EV charging mandate covers this,” Mr. Welles said.
“It’s tricky because you’re taking a vacant building that had mostly occupants who were not driving, except for staff, and converting to an active building,”Alban said. “Our regulation doesn’t really cover that. The decision you could make is really up to the applicant, which is whether the demand will be there from the new occupants. Some people will probably want it.”
“It is a blank spot that we should consider in our regs, because we’re looking more at conversions of uses of existing buildings in general,” Alban said.
This application was the first instance of the new law being taken advantage of in Greenwich.
There are three existing nursing homes in Greenwich: The Nathaniel Witherell at 70 Parsonage Road (Town-owned and operating), Greenwich Woods at 1165 King Street (Privately owned and operating) and the privately owned former RegalCare facility at 1188 King Street.
The vote to approve was 5-0 with Margarita Alban, Nick Macri, Arn Wells, Dennis Yeskey and Peter Lowe voting.
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Up to the Minute Greenwich Property Transfers, May 1-5, 2025