Over the past few years, a few big housing developments riveted Westport’s attention. There’s 1177 Post Road East, opposite Greens Farms Elementary School, for example, and 3 others in various stages of construction: 157 units on Hiawatha Lane Extension, 68 on Lincoln Street, and 16 more being shoehorned onto Wilton Road opposite Fort Apache on Kings Highway North.
Sometimes, Westport is handcuffed by state legislation that trumps local boards and commissions (and traffic and safety concerns). The driving force: the need for each town in Connecticut to provide a share of “affordable housing.”
1177 Post Road East
But local officials have been proactive. They’ve searched for sites where a new development might work (like the state maintenance facility between Walgreens and West Parish Road), and enacted zoning regulations to encourage “cluster cottage” housing on town-owned land.
All of that construction — already done, and planned — has one thing in common: It’s south of the Merritt Parkway. That’s where zoning enables its construction.
Recently, however, a unique property came on the market. It offers a chance for a small new development, with a decent-sized affordable housing element.
Glendinning Place is the 16-acre site first developed as an office park in the 1960s by Ralph Glendinning. His eponymous company was the first marketing promotion firm in the world.
(The wooded land next to the Saugatuck River — much of which he preserved — had a long history with business. The Dorr-Oliver Company, which made chemicals and other products, was headquartered in a nearby former mill.)
One view of the Glendinning property …
Eventually, Bridgewater Associates became the office park’s tenant. The world’s largest hedge fund was famously secretive. Westporters barely noticed the firm, which departed over a year ago to consolidate all its operations at Nyala Farm, next to I-95 Exit 18.
Three partners — Westporter David Waldman, and New Haven-area Urbane Capital and Sachem Capital — purchased the property in September, for $10.6 million.
They’re leasing out the office space. But they saw a chance to use 3.7 acres to build 14 single-family, 2-story detached homes that they believe fill an unaddressed niche: 3-bedrooms, and just under 3,000 square feet.
Ten of those homes would be sold at market rates. The other 4 would be deed-restricted, as “affordable” (using state guidelines).
The developers need a text amendment. But they felt the timing and the site was right, for a small project including several affordable homes, on the only commercially zoned property north of the Merritt Parkway.
… and the office building.
Rick Redniss — whose Redniss & Mead land use and engineering firm is working on other local projects like Delamar Westport and The Clubhouse — is helping guide the project through the approval phase.
He calls it “an opportunity to add affordable housing in pretty innocuous ways. Generally, it’s very difficult to do that without an 8-30g proposal” — an often-adversarial process, pitting developers against the town.
However, he admits, “this is a balancing exercise. It always is, with housing in a Gold Coast town.”
Traffic concerns will be minimal, he says. Soil tests have been positive.
But feedback from neighbors — including concern about the septic threshold of 7,500 gallons a day — caused the partners to rethink the project.
They withdrew a planned text amendment application, as they reduce the number of homes. The goal remains to have 20% of them be affordable.
A new proposal and text amendment, and future meetings with neighbors, are in the works.
A previous rendering showed 14 homes built just below the top yellow line (underneath “Aspetuck Land Trust.” That number will be lower, in the next plan to be submitted.
Redniss remains convinced that Westporters want to do their share to provide affordable housing.
“I defended the town when it’s been attacked about housing,” he says. “Over the last 8 years, Westport has been proactive. It’s not ‘no’; it’s ‘let’s try to accomplish different ideas, and meet the diverse needs of the community.'”
Housing is a complex issue, he notes, involving everything from politics and zoning to history and tradition.
“Everyone has a responsibility to do their fair share,” he says. “This is a modest proposal. It’s not 150 units. It’s in a commercial zone.
“If we can’t do this here, where can we do it?”
Conceptual plans for the Glendinning homes.
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