Key Points
- P&Z extended the northern parking district to include more commercial properties where housing could be proposed.
- State law limits parking requirements for developments with 16 or fewer units outside designated districts.
- Commissioners approved clearer design standards for qualifying middle housing projects.
Why It Matters: The decisions shape where Wilton can require parking and how much control it has over the appearance of smaller housing developments.
Three copy fixes before publishing: “Wilton’s souther parking district” should be “southern”; “praised the ARB’s line-by-line review the draft regulations” needs “of”; and “the zoning code is the only means” is too absolute. I’d use “a principal way” for the last one.
As Wilton gears up for its first comprehensive rewrite of the Town’s zoning regulations in 30 years, the Planning and Zoning Commission dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on two key components of the code during its Monday, Sept. 14 meeting to ensure it was ready in time.
The changes affect how smaller residential developments may be built in town.
First, the seven commissioners in attendance voted unanimously to extend one of the town’s two new traffic mitigation districts, which commissioner Trevor Huffard had proposed as a way to include more commercial properties as potential locations to develop for residential use in the future.
Under Connecticut’s new housing law, Public Act 25-1, towns may establish up to two such traffic mitigation districts — which Wilton also calls parking exclusion zones — in which towns can set parking requirements for new residential developments with 16 or fewer units that are built in commercial zones, although developers may submit a parking needs assessment to support a lower requirement. Outside the districts, the law sharply limits when a town can reject a development of that size because it does not meet parking minimums.
Wilton’s souther parking district extends north from the Norwalk town line along Rte. 7/Danbury Rd. to Wilton Town Center. The northern district extends south from the Ridgefield town line, also along Rte. 7/Danbury Rd. That zone was originally planned to end at Mountain Rd., but Huffard proposed extending it further south to include additional commercial properties located south of Old Mill Rd.
During the meeting, Wilton’s Director of Planning and Land Use Management Michael Wrinn presented the revised boundary for the northern zone extending to just south of the Four Seasons Racquet Club.
“I think that takes care of basically where we might see these type of developments, the middle housing as it were, where we could have a problem that they don’t require any parking unless they’re in this mitigation zone,” Wrinn said. “I think from that viewpoint, that sort of solves that problem of being in the … business zones.”
The second item passed by the commissioners was the proposed change to Wilton’s middle housing development design regulations drafted by Wilton’s Architectural Review Board (ARB).
Middle housing generally refers to residential buildings with two to nine units constructed on properties zoned for commercial and mixed-use purposes. State law requires towns to allow qualifying projects to proceed through a streamlined review process by the town’s Zoning Enforcement Officer, making the zoning code the only means for the town to exert at least some control over the design of such projects.
P&Z approved an initial draft of the middle housing regulations before the state-mandated July 1, 2026, deadline, intending to incorporate the ARB’s recommended language once it was finalized.
The revised regulations presented to P&Z strengthen the code’s requirements governing exterior materials, blank walls, mechanical equipment, roof design and façade modulation. They aim to eliminate ambiguity and give zoning staff clearer standards for reviewing applications. They also refined the language related to placement of mechanical systems, roof design, solar shingles, and vertical and horizontal measurements for ensuring the visual harmony of architectural elements.
P&Z Chair Ken Hoffman praised the ARB’s line-by-line review the draft regulations.
“Our goal was to drive conformity since we will have less review rights of these [projects],” Hoffman said. “Once an application comes in, conforming to these is very important.”
Hoffman also reminded the commissioners that they could revisit the middle housing standards “should we find that any of these become problematic in ways we didn’t anticipate.”
“Absolutely, they’re your regulations,” Wrinn said. “You can change them as you see fit.”
