In Court Appeal—

Taunton Lake

Public Access At Issue

By Andrew Gorosko

The developer of a proposed 14-lot residential resubdivision near Taunton Lake has filed a court appeal, in seeking to have a judge overturn the Planning and Zoning Commission’s (P&Z) recent rejection of the home-building application.

In an administrative appeal filed October 28 in Danbury Superior Court, Hunter Ridge, LLC, seeks to have a judge order the P&Z to approve Hunter Ridge, which is proposed for a 30-acre site lying between Mt Pleasant Road and Taunton Lake. The property is in the borough.

Developers David and Carol French of 149 Boggs Hill Road, doing business as Hunter Ridge, LLC, propose the project for a site on the south side of Mt Pleasant Road, just west of the Taunton Lake Drive neighborhood. Two proposed building lots would have shore frontage on Taunton Lake, which lies downslope of Mt Pleasant Road. The development would be served by a new 1,400-foot-long dead-end road known as Dakota Drive.

On October 6, P&Z members rejected the Hunter Ridge application in a 4-to-0 vote, following lengthy consideration of the open space aspects of the development proposal.

Conflict over the development application has focused on the town’s desire for municipally owned open space land on the site that would provide direct public access to Taunton Lake. Hunter Ridge, LLC, contends that there is no legal requirement for it to give the town any open space anywhere on the site. The site has 454 feet of frontage on Taunton Lake, a more than 100-acre, spring-fed pond that is ringed by privately owned properties.

In seeking to strike a compromise, the developer had offered to give the town a $172,000 “fee in lieu of open space.” The town uses such funds to acquire open space elsewhere.

Typically, subdividers provide at least 15 percent of the acreage at a site as public open space. Alternately, developers sometimes donate cash to the town equivalent to ten percent of the value of the undeveloped land at the site as a fee in lieu of open space.

In the court appeal, attorney Robert Hall, representing the developer, states that when the site was initially subdivided in 1970, the town had the right to demand open space land on the property, but did not do so, thus exempting Hunter Ridge from now having to provide any open space to the town.

“During the public hearing, it was clear that the [P&Z] wanted the [developer] to dedicate open space that would give the town the right to have access to Taunton Pond within the border of the property,” according to the appeal.

The developer contends that the P&Z requirement for a mandatory donation of at least 15 percent of the land on the site as open space, plus requirements concerning the physical quality of that land, “would result in a [governmental] ‘taking’ of the Hunter Ridge property.”

The developer claims that such a taking of land without compensation amounts to a violation of the Connecticut Constitution and US Constitution because it violates the due process of law and the equal protection of law.

The P&Z’s failure to obtain public, communitywide access to Taunton Lake from the developer is not a legally legitimate reason to reject the application, according to the court appeal. Such open space should be related to the demand for it, which is created by the development itself, rather than some broader townwide need, the court papers add.

The town currently has public access to Taunton Lake via property off Taunton Lake Road, near the Newtown Fish & Game Club boat storage area, but that access is limited.

At the October 6 session at which the P&Z rejected Hunter Ridge, P&Z members were divided in opinion over whether the town should obtain public access to Taunton Lake via municipally owned open space in the proposed development, or should instead seek more money than the $172,000 fee in lieu of open space that has been offered to the town by the developer. Some P&Z members said it may not be environmentally wise to broaden the public’s access to the pond.

In recently reviewing the Hunter Ridge application, members of the town’s Open Space Task Force found that no open space had been donated as part of the initial 1970 subdivision of the site, so the panel has recommended that the developer donate to the town a proposed 3.2-acre building lot with frontage on Taunton Lake as open space land.

The other proposed building lot with pond frontage is 1.9 acres. Both of those proposed lots are “rear lots,” which would have driveways extending to them from the turnaround circle at the end of the proposed subdivision road.

Attorney Robert Fuller represents the P&Z. The town has November 15 court return date in the case.

In early 2001, Ginsburg Development Corporation Connecticut, LLC, had proposed building 110 condominiums for people over age 55 at the Mt Pleasant Road site now eyed for Hunter Ridge.

But in May 2001, citing strong neighborhood opposition to its condo construction proposal, plus uncertainty about the availability of municipal sewer service for the project, Ginsburg dropped its proposal to build there. Ginsburg is currently constructing a 96-unit age-restricted condo complex several miles to the west on a 40-acre site at 178 Mt Pleasant Road, known as Liberty at Newtown.