P&Z Hears Developer’s Proposal to Rezone Curtiss & Summit Farms Parcels
- Philip Thibodeau
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
The Planning and Zoning commissioners have had a light load so far this year, with several meetings cancelled due to a lack of items to consider. On Tuesday night that changed in a big way, as the commission held a hearing on a major development proposal before an audience of more than 40 people.
The project in question involves a piece of land that runs along I-84 from Curtiss Street to Smoron Drive, just south of the Summit Farms Road neighborhood. Currently undeveloped and zoned for industrial use, a developer, Southington 2 LLC, is seeking to persuade the town to open it to retail development.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, a team of representatives for the developer came before the Commission to describe their plans for the property and explain why it would benefit the town. First to speak was John Knuff, a land use attorney from firm MRG in Milford. Knuff sketched out the framework that he said the Commissioners should follow when making their decision about the proposal. He said first that their decisions needed to be consistent with the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development and its Comprehensive Plan “without adhering slavishly to it,” then argued that his client's proposal was consistent with those plans, insofar as it brought economic benefits to the community as a whole.
The second representative was Kevin Solli of Solli Engineering. Solli delivered a slide presentation outlining the basics of the proposal. The three properties involved contain 113 acres of land and are all currently zoned I-2, or medium industrial: 682 Curtiss Street, 115 Summit Street, and 99 Smoron Drive. Solli stressed that this should be prime land for development, given its proximity to the highway, but has so far remained undeveloped. He suggested that this was due to the presence of various obstacles - high-tension power lines, water lines, and wetlands – as well as the lack of easy access to the property.
The basic overall vision for the development that Solli laid out involved the construction of a frontage road connecting Curtiss Drive to Smoron Drive that would run more or less parallel to I-84, and the building of a hotel and various retail spaces along that road. (See headline photo for plan.)
The specific proposal laid before the Council Tuesday was to “catalyze” development of the entire stretch of land by changing the zoning for 682 Curtiss and part of 115 Summit Farms from I-2 to B, for business. That change would in effect represent the town’s commitment to move forward with the entire plan. Once that approval was in place, Solli’s firm would set to work developing a detailed plan for stormwater remediation and a traffic impact study, in the hope that Planning and Zoning would then approve a rezoning of the remaining parcels, and thus pave the way for the implementation of the full plan.
The third speaker, Donald Poland from the firm Gorman + York Property Advisors, offered a series of estimates of the plan’s economic impact. Among the highlights of his presentation was his assertion that the town of Southington would take in another $2.2 million in annual tax revenue from the new commercial properties once they were complete, while having to spend another $500,000 in infrastructure services for them; that would result in a net benefit of about $1.7 million per year to the town. He also estimated that the development would create about 360 local jobs, most in the retail, warehouse, and hotel industry.
When it came time for the Commissioners to comment, Justin McGuire and Caleb Cowles raised the most pointed questions. McGuire asked Poland how he could be confident in his revenue projections, given the variability of the mill rate and property depreciation. Poland replied that tax rates may change but that that does not affect the cost-to-benefit ratio that much. He also noted that new commercial properties are always worth more than old ones simply by virtue of being less obsolete.
Cowles asked Knuff to look at the proposal from a local’s perspective and say whether the funds the town spent on infrastructure services for this development might not be better spent on improving some of Southington’s older built structures. Knuff granted that that might be true of old buildings in town, but that since no developer was going to be interested in rehabilitating Southington’s big box stores as they age, it would be better to build new ones.
When the commissioners finished their initial questions, Chair Steven Walowski observed that “this is a big decision, obviously.” He said that the Commission would need more time to review all the details of the proposal, and that the public hearing would remain open through the next meeting of the Commission.
At that point Walowski asked for a show of hands from members of the public who wished to speak. When he asked if there were any present who wished to speak in favor of the proposal, no hands were raised; when he asked if any were opposed, about a dozen hands shot up.
Most of the speakers who came to the podium to speak in opposition were residents of the area near the proposed development. The first, Sean Mckeown, said that he was fortunate enough five years ago to buy a century-old farm home on nearby Spring Hill Road. He said that he moved to Southington because “we love this town, we love the trail that this development is going through, we love the restaurants. We don’t need more stuff. There are things that are dying in this town that can be redeveloped.”
Many of the speakers who followed were residents of Summit Farms road. They expressed worries about increased traffic in the area, the loss of undeveloped open space, and the potential presence of new strangers close to their back yards.
Later, Knuff and Solli sought to assuage the concerns of the residents by pointing out a buffer zone between their neighborhood and the new construction that would consist of a line of forest, high-tension wires, and a stretch of vegetation. They joined members of the Commission in noting that there was no plan to send traffic from the development through the Summit Farms neighborhood, and that in fact it would be impossible legally to do so.
Walowski also sought to make residents aware that the three parcels near the highway are currently zoned for industrial, which means that even if no changes are made, a developer could still come in at any time and develop them, assuming their proposal conformed to the town’s zoning standards.
The Commission will take up the issue again at its next meeting on April 21.
