The 173-unit multifamily residential development proposed for 131 Danbury Rd. seems poised to clear one more regulatory hurdle after the Thursday, Mar. 14 meeting of the Inland Wetlands Commission. At a special meeting last week, the independent peer review firm that has been tasked with analyzing the application had flagged a series of concerns not yet addressed in the documents. With the Mar. 26 deadline to close the public hearing approaching, it wasn’t clear whether the applicant and peer review firm would be able to resolve the open questions in time. However, a last-minute flurry of activity seems to have brought the two sides into agreement.
“We have 20 pages of comments but most of them have been addressed and the others will be addressed in the future as part of the building permit process,” said Roy Seelye, Senior Project Manager for the peer review firm Cardinal Engineering, after a final presentation by the applicant team. “So I’m fairly satisfied that they’ve met the requirements of the regulation and there is minimal direct impact on the wetlands.”
The plans for the development included a portion of above-ground parking that lies in the upland regulated area. Although the site does include wetlands and the riverbank, no parking would be constructed there. In its current state, the parking lot on the site is significantly larger, covering 90% of the upland area in impervious pavement. The new proposal moves the majority of parking underground and decreases the impervious pavement in the regulated area by two-thirds.
During last week’s special meeting, Cardinal seemed to indicate that they had remaining concerns about the project, due in part to confusion over whether they were seeing final plans or if changes were still being made by the applicant team. On Mar. 13, the firm submitted their final peer review report to the Commission, stating in part that “proposed plans do not adequately describe how the Norwalk River will be protected during construction during flooding events, including small storm events.”
In a cooperative turn of events, the engineers from SLR worked quickly to put together plans for dealing with flooding during construction and detailed a series of tools to alert residents of which parking spaces are in a flood zone. They also ran models with different grading of the soil and looked at the impact of 10-year and 100-year storms on the property. These additions to the proposal seemed to resolve any lingering concerns the Cardinal team had.
“They’ve addressed the flooding issues. I don’t think anyone ever said you can’t park cars in a flood zone but the flood preparation plan and keeping residents informed will be a big advantage,” Seelye said in closing. “I am satisfied with the application and the applicant’s efforts to respond to our comments.”
Inland Wetlands Commission Chair Nicholas Lee, who was now presiding over a meeting that had run into its fifth hour, praised the two engineering firms.
“This is a stellar example of why we have a third party [peer review],” he said. “Everyone got along very well and played nice, and together you made this into a better application. Thank you to both sides for your work on that.”
The Commission then invited public comment on the proposal, but with no speakers coming forward, they voted to close the public hearing. Given the late hour, the Commission opted to save deliberation and voting until its next meeting, which is scheduled for Thursday, Mar. 28.
The project is also still waiting on final approval by the Water Pollution Control Authority, where it has been caught up in a broader debate over Wilton’s dwindling sewer capacity, and from the Fire Marshal, which the applicant team said should be resolved soon. The project would then proceed to the Planning and Zoning Commission, which gave the proposal a rave review during a pre-application hearing in February.