P&Z Approves 15-Lot Home-Building Project

By Andrew Gorosko

Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members have approved Ridge Valley Estates, a planned 15-lot residential subdivision on a 65-acre site at 15 High Bridge Road. P&Z members approved the project proposed by Hawley Enterprises, Inc at a November 3 session. The approval is effective on November 14.

The site lies on the north side of High Bridge Road, just east of its intersection with Botsford Hill Road.

Fourteen of the 15 building lots will be located on a proposed dead-end street extending from High Bridge Road, known as Ridge Valley Road. The site has extensive wetlands and varied terrain. The Ridge Valley Estates site abuts the expansive Rollingwood residential subdivision.

The initial design drawings for Ridge Valley Estates are dated January 3. Based on the town’s land use review, the developer revised those plans in June, August, and September.

The site holds R-1 and R-2 zoning designations, which respectively require minimum building-lot sizes of one acre and two acres. The planned building lots range from 1.8 acres to 4.5 acres.

Besides a planned 17.4-acre open space area for passive forms of public recreation, the site will contain approximately 17 acres of conservation easements, where development would be prohibited. Consequently, more than half of the site would be restricted from development. Three water-quality control basins will be constructed on the property to control stormwater runoff.

High Bridge Road will be widened in the area where it intersects with the proposed Ridge Valley Road to facilitate vehicle movements in that area.

Conditions of Approval

The P&Z placed a number of conditions on the subdivision’s approval.

Before the record maps of the subdivision are filed in the town’s land records, the developer must submit a construction performance bond in the amount of $940,600 to ensure that the subdivision’s dead-end road is constructed, and that two 30,000-gallon underground water storage tanks are installed for firefighting. The bonding also will cover the construction of two common driveways, each of which would serve two building lots, the installation of building-lot marker pins, and the installation of open space and conservation easement markers.

Also, the P&Z is requiring that the developer remove a proposed trail easement that is shown on Lot 12 on the design drawings.

The P&Z is requiring the developer to redesign the turnaround circle at the end of the dead-end subdivision road to allow horse trailers to be easily parked there. Equestrians would park horse trailers there while riding horses in the area.

Also, the P&Z is requiring the developer to permanently field mark the conservation easements, the public access easements, and an open space accessway before receiving building permits for any building lots in the subdivision. The developer must permanently field mark and blaze a trail within an accessway to open space land on the site.

Such markers allow potential building lot buyers to visually identify areas on the site that will be open for public use as open space, and also to identify areas where physical changes to the landscape are prohibited in the form of conservation easements.

In April 2004, the Conservation Commission, acting as the town’s wetlands protection agency, had rejected a previous version of Ridge Valley Estates due to the proposed construction’s proximity to wetlands. The developer then filed a court appeal against the Conservation Commission, in seeking to overturn that rejection. Through an ensuing mediated settlement, the developer and the Conservation Commission resolved their differences, with the developer later gaining a wetlands permit for a 15-lot project.