80-Unit Complex—

Developer Seeks Sewers For Oakview Rd Complex

By Andrew Gorosko

Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) members are considering a developer’s request for sewer connections for 80 age-restricted, multifamily housing units proposed for a site off Oakview Road, near Newtown High School.

Representatives of Toll Brothers, Inc, met with WPCA members February 12 to discuss the prospects for a sewer connection for the 52-acre property west of Oakview Road. The Pennsylvania-based firm, which has built several residential subdivisions in Newtown, has an office on Church Hill Road.

WPCA members asked the firm to provide some technical information on the waste disposal capacity of the soil at the Oakview Road site to help them gauge the sewering request. The firm holds purchase options on the property. The WPCA has until late April to act on the sewer connection request.

WPCA Chairman Richard Zang said, “This is a tricky one. This is a very (environmentally) sensitive area. We want to make sure we get it right.”

The WPCA could simply reject the request because the site lies outside of the town sewer district, Mr Zang said. But then, the site might later be developed as a subdivision of single-family houses, posing potential pollution concerns in that environmentally sensitive area, he noted.

The site is within the town’s Aquifer Protection District (APD), an overlay zone whose regulations the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) strengthened in 1999. The APD, which lies atop the Pootatuck Aquifer, is closely regulated to prevent environmental damage to the aquifer, which is a major underground source of local drinking water.

The site has R-2 (residential) zoning, which requires a minimum building lot size of two acres for a single-family home. Toll Brothers is also seeking P&Z approval to change the zoning designation of the site from R-2 to EH-10 (Elderly Housing) as a step toward constructing the proposed 80-unit multifamily complex. EH-10 housing is restricted to people over age 55. A P&Z public hearing on the requested change of zone is slated for March 4.

The dwellings would be built on a sand-and-gravel knoll off Oakview Road. Toll Brothers would develop approximately one-third of the 52-acre site. The remainder of the property includes lowlands near the meandering Pootatuck River.

Toll Brothers project manager Dan Knowlton told WPCA members February 12 the firm wants to build approximately 80 luxury-grade, two-bedroom attached units on the site. The first story of each two-story unit would contain a master bedroom to meet applicable zoning regulations, he said.

Mr Knowlton said the town’s zoning regulations would require a sanitary sewer connection for an 80-unit multifamily complex within the environmentally sensitive APD.

Mr Knowlton urged the WPCA to consider the merits of allowing a sewer connection for the project. Although costly, installing sewers for such a complex is the correct environmental approach to develop such a site, Mr Knowlton said.

Toll Brothers wants to build a complex similar to its Regency Meadows at Trumbull, an age-restricted multifamily complex that is now under construction on Route 25 in the Tashua section of Trumbull, just north of Route 25’s intersection Route 111. That complex consists of multiple buildings that contain several dwellings each. The starting price for units at the Trumbull complex is about $450,000.

On February 17, the town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) unanimously endorsed Toll Brothers’ 80-unit multifamily proposal for Oakview Road as a form of local economic development, said Community Development Director Elizabeth Stocker. The four EDC members endorsing the proposal were Chairman Chester Hopper, Stephen Small, Kevin O’Neill, and Naveen Kapur.

Toll Brothers approached the EDC in seeking an endorsement for the project. The EDC will send a letter of endorsement to the WPCA and the P&Z.

After reviewing the project, EDC members decided that the presence of such a multifamily complex would have a positive financial impact on the town, compared to the potential presence of a residential subdivision of  20 or more single-family houses eventually being built at the vacant site, Ms Stocker said.

Before it received town land use approvals for its 96-unit Liberty at Newtown age-restricted, multifamily housing complex in Hawleyville, Ginsburg Development Corporation, Connecticut, LLC, sought and obtained an EDC endorsement for that project as a form of local economic development. The Hawleyville sewer system to which Liberty at Newtown is linked was constructed by the town to spur economic development. Liberty at Newtown is under construction.

The central sewer system, to which Toll Brothers wants to connect its proposed 80-unit complex, was constructed for environmental reasons. That sewer system was built to rectify longstanding groundwater pollution problems caused by failing individual septic systems.

 

Sewage Capacity

At the February 12 WPCA session, attorney Robert Hall, representing Toll Brothers, said he has calculated that the town is using between 225,000 and 229,000 gallons of its daily allotted sewage treatment capacity of 332,000 gallons at the Commerce Road sewage treatment plant. The town and the state jointly use the plant where the overall daily sewage treatment capacity is approximately one million gallons. The state has reserved two-thirds of that capacity for its use.

When the town acquires the 189-acre Fairfield Hills core campus from the state in an upcoming $3.9 purchase, the town will obtain 100,000 gallons of additional sewage treatment capacity at the plant from the state. It is unclear whether the WPCA would consider using some of that additional 100,000 gallons of treatment capacity when reviewing whether to provide Toll Brothers with its requested sewer connection for the proposed 80-unit complex.

Toll Brothers projects that each of 80 units would dispose of 190 gallons of wastewater daily for an aggregate demand of 15,200 gallons of daily sewage disposal.

In the past, the WPCA has reviewed requests for sewer connections to multifamily complexes based on an elaborate set of criteria.

Mr Hall said that by allowing Walnut Tree Village on Walnut Tree Hill Road to connect its 189 condominium units to the municipal sewer system in the late 1990’s, the WPCA set a sewer-connection precedent for multifamily complexes.

Town Benefit

WPCA member Alan Shepard asked Mr Knowlton, “What’s the benefit to the town? You guys have to demonstrate that to us.” Mr Shepard said the WPCA’s eventual decision on the Toll Brothers’ sewer connection request must be in the best interests of the town.

If the WPCA allows Toll Brothers to connect to the sewer system, there would then be other multifamily developers that would seek to connect other multifamily complexes to the sewer system, which would then deplete the town’s sewage treatment capacity, Mr Shepard predicted.

Mr Hall said Toll Brothers proposes a good project that could put the town’s excess sewage treatment capacity to good use. The sewage plant’s treatment capacity has been planned to last until 2017.

Many factors must be considered when reviewing how the town’s sewage treatment capacity should be used, said Public Works Director Fred Hurley.

If the site is not developed for an 80-unit multifamily complex, the site’s underlying two-acre zoning could allow the eventual development of single-family houses on the site. Considering factors such as the space that is needed to build roads and the P&Z’s open space requirements, such a site might allow the construction of roughly 20 single-family houses.

Considering the environmental sensitivity of the site, Mr Zang asked whether it would be wiser to provide a sewer connection for 80 multifamily units, or to have multiple individual septic systems used by potential individual homes.

Mr Knowlton said he expects that the 52-acre site would be eventually developed in some manner.

Letter

In a February 10 letter to the WPCA, Mr Hall writes that because the site is in the APD, applicable zoning regulations would limit the number of dwellings to 26 that could use a large-scale septic system. “Accordingly, if the project is to be built as proposed (with 80 units), a sewer connection is necessary,” Mr Hall adds.

Mr Hall lists a series of reasons why a new 80-unit complex would benefit the town.

The project would provide living quarters for people who do not want to maintain single-family residences, but want to continue living in Newtown, he said.

The project would economically benefit the town, he adds, stating that the cost of public services required by people over age 55 would be outweighed by the property taxes generated by such a complex.

Allowing an 80-unit complex to connect to the sewer system would prevent the prospect of an approximately 20-home conventional subdivision, involving road construction, septic system installation and general development of the terrain, Mr Hall adds. The lawyer states that he expects that much less of the site would be disturbed by an 80-unit multifamily complex than by a potential single-family home subdivision.

In the past, the WPCA has approved some, but not all, requests for sewer connections for multifamily development.

Public sewers and public water lines that serve Newtown High School are located beneath Oakview Road, along the frontage of the development site. Toll Bothers would need to convince the WPCA to expand the dimensions of the town’s sewer district for the complex to gain sewer service.

The site that Toll Brothers wants to develop lies between Oakview Road and the Pootatuck River. Toll Brothers holds a purchase option on the acreage from Watkins Brothers Development Corp, and others.

In a letter to the P&Z, Mr Hall wrote that a traffic study performed for the developer found that the proposed complex would not cause traffic congestion on Oakview Road, nor create a traffic hazard there. Toll Brothers is willing to widen and improve some narrow sections of Oakview Road in connection with the project, according to Mr Hall.

Until several years ago, Oakview Road was unpaved. Oakview Road links Berkshire Road to Wasserman Way. The narrow, curving, hilly Oakview Road passes directly behind the high school’s new athletic field complex. The street contains about a dozen residences.