Groton Open Space Association

Hawthorne Presents “Mystic Woods” To Zoning: NEW MATERIAL ADDED AT END OF ARTICLE 9-21-07

GROTON — Hawthorne Development Partners LLC made a lengthy presentation to the Zoning Commission Sept. 19, 2007, of its application to build a 211-unit Active Senior Housing complex called “Mystic Woods” atop Fort Hill.

At the conclusion of the approximately three-hour presentation directed by Uncasville Attorney Harry Heller and following comments by the town’s Office of Planning and Development Services, members of the public spoke in opposition to the project. Among other complaints:

–the Zoning application is premature given that the Inland Wetlands Agency ordered changes when it granted conditional approval to the project only a week earlier.

–the stormwater treatment plan for the project is experimental and the slope stability analysis was flawed.

–Hawthorne engaged in misleading advertising of the project on its website and engaged in largely meaningless consultation with neighbors of the proposed project.

–the large size of the project is not in keeping with the neighborhood.

Mr. Heller said the development would offer several types of dwelling for seniors, starting in price around $275,000 and ranging up to $450,000. He said 100% of the occupants of the buildings will have to be at least 55 years old, though rules on senior housing require only 80%. He said 42.6% of the 105-acre tract would be under conservation easement.

He said design of the project had improved during the review process conducted by the Inland Wetlands Agency. Development has avoided environmentally sensitive areas, he said, adding that “Density done right is a community asset.” He said the developer had the right under town regulations for the RU20-zoned tract to build up to 304 units.

The project will “complement, rather than detract from” the existing neighborhood, he added. Mr. Heller said he expected the project would lose 3-10 units as a result of the IWA’s conditions imposed Sept. 12, 2007.

The developer-hired traffic consultant, James Bubaris of Cheshire, asserted that the project, which would be connected both to Flanders Road on the east and Route 1 on the west basically “does not change anything” with regard to projected traffic congestion or accidents. He estimated that the project would generate approximately 90 to110 one-way trips an hour during two morning peaks and the same number during two evening peaks. The town has hired its own consultant — Camp, Dresser and McKee — to review the traffic situation. The Cambridge, MA-based CDM is the same consultant hired by the town to examine engineering plans for Mystic Woods submitted to the IWA by the Woburn, MA-based Hawthorne Development Partners.

Opposition speaker Joan Smith, a director of the Groton Open Space Association, read a fax message from GOSA’s attorney, Peter Cooper of Cooper, Whitney, Cochran and Francois, New Haven, contending that the Hawthorne’s application should be withdrawn until the company has revised its plan in order to comply with the IWA conditions. Mr. Cooper said that should the Zoning Commission somehow act in a way that failed to take account of IWA Condition 17 protecting Wetland 11, an “administrative nightmare” would result.

Mr. Heller responded that changes in the plan responding to the IWA would not affect the Zoning Commission’s deliberations. Michael J. Murphy, who heads the town’s Office of Planning and Development Services, said only “minor adjustments” are entailed by the IWA decision.

Lloyd Hutchins, who lives near the project, said that the University of New Hampshire- designed stormwater treatment plan for the steeply sloped tract is “experimental.” Mr. Hutchins, who said he holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering, noted that he had pointed out errors in the developer’s slope stability analysis during the IWA hearings and complained that the town’s engineering consultant, CDM, had accepted the figures with a “one-line report.” Fort Hill slopes down to Fort Hill Brook, which flows into Mumford Cove, off Long Island Sound.

Patricia Olivier, an abutter, said the developer had canvassed the neighborhood at one point asking, in her paraphrase, “what it would take to make us [opponents] go away.” She said neighbors asked that the developer avoid the wetlands, give existing property owners adequate buffers and move the construction dump, vehicle storage area and site trailer away from existing houses. “They moved the trash, and we never heard from them again,” she said.

Ms. Olivier said the website advertising the project has stated for the last two years that Mystic Woods is “in the final stages of permitting” when in fact the first permit by a town land-use agency was granted Sept. 12, 2007.

Jim Furlong, a GOSA director, criticized the project’s size. He noted that Mr. Heller’s computation of a theoretically possible 304-unit development was based on an allowable 15,000-square foot minimum per unit where more than one housing unit is to be built. The minimum lot size in an RU20 zone is 20,000 square feet–or half-acre zoning if the unit involved is single-family housing. Mr. Furlong noted that the area as built is single-family housing. The 105-acre tract could yield a theoretical maximum of 210 single-family units, but the actual yield would be far lower because of the area’s unbuildable sections. Mr. Furlong said he did not object to clustering housing units but said that in order to fit into the neighborhood the project should be sharply reduced in scale.

The Sept. 19, 2007, hearing was a special meeting for Mystic Woods only. The public hearing is to be continued at a second special meeting Oct. 15, 2007.

NEW MATERIAL ADDED SEPT. 21, 2007. Original story filed Sept. 20.

The Zoning Commission is charged in town regulations with “encouraging the most appropriate use of land throughout the town” and “preventing the overcrowding of land and avoiding undue concentration of population,” among other duties (source: Section I, “Purpose and Authority”).

In evaluating an application for a special permit (the case here), the commission may prescribe safeguards to insure that (source: Regulation 8.3-8, “Special Permit Objectives”):

–”the proposed use is of such location, size, and character that, in general, it will be in harmony with the appropriate and orderly development of the district in which it is proposed to be situated…”

–Traffic problems are avoided

–”the location and size of such use, the nature and intensity of operations involved in connection therewith, and the site layout and development will not have a negative impact on any environmental and natural resource areas on or adjacent to the site or within the neighborhood.”