The Westport Planning and Zoning Commission closed its public hearing tonight on an application to change its affordable housing regulations after it heard concerns from some residents.
The commission is considering a proposal from Woodland Group, and the zone would be applied to a property in the Indian Hill and Bradley Lane area. No decision was scheduled to be made tonight on the application.
Under the changes, 20 percent of the units would have to be for those who make 80 percent of the state median income, and 10 percent would have to be those who earn 80 percent of the local median income.
The state median income is $81,000 for a family of four, and 80 percent of it would be $64,800. The median income of Westport is almost $159,000, and 80 percent of it would be about $127,000.
Rick Redniss, planning consultant for Woodland Group, said the proposed “test site” in the Indian Hill and Bradley Lane area is a good spot because of its location in Saugatuck Center.
Saugatuck has a number of transportation options, including the train, and there are many businesses in the area.
Helen Martin Block, a commission member, said she is concerned about a large amount of development centered in one area of town, and there are other projects planned for the Saugatuck area.
“That’s a lot of density and traffic in that area,” she said.
Redniss said housing developments like the one proposed need to be in a center like Saugatuck Center or downtown because that’s where the infrastructure exists.
Neighbors of the planned project were again in attendance, and one again expressed concerns.
Vincent Renzulli, of Sunrise Road, said he has concerns of safety.
There are 21 homes on his road with little traffic, he said, and the road is very narrow.
If there is snow and cars parked on the road, he said, it’s hard for other cars to pass and that is not considering a fire truck.
Additionally, the traffic counts for the area have not been updated, he said.
Glen Tatangelo, managing partner of Woodland Group, said he has spoken with the neighbors a number of times and made commitments to them.
Those commitments will be addressed in the site plan, he said.
“There is no tiger hiding in the application,” he said. “The goal is to build quality affordable and market rate housing.”
How does this work? Does this mean that the controlled units must cost around $200K based on the state median, and around $400K based on the local median income (3 times gross income, plus a down-payment)? Does that also mean that the residents of these units equity growth will be limited to the growth in incomes?
Just curious.
I don’t believe this site is actually within Saugatuck Center, which will soon, as pointed out by one of the commissioners, have a number of additional residential units to add to our housing stock. This added density will become part of the overall picture in Saugatuck, and I agree that it would be prudent to take that into account as part of the decisionmaking process.
What would be the point to creating congestion, and possibly overloading any part of the “infrastructure”?
There already are affordable housing regulations in place. Under the Residential Affordable Housing Zone, for example, developers can build, contiguous to arterial roads, and not impact the heart of a single family neighborhood in the same way. Preserving our character, including our single family residential neighborhoods, was frequently given as a goal during the town plan public meetings. Wouldn’t it, then, to be an important value to consider?
Just in case our leadership doesn’t have any good ideas, where would you suggest that this type of housing be placed?
I am responding to the article written in Westport Now about the P&Z closing hearings on Affordable Housing Regulations. I, Vincent Renzulli, am the speaker misquoted in the article. First of all, my street,
Sunrise Road does have a tremendous amount of traffic on it, not “little traffic” as stated in the article. I also stated at the public hearing, currently there are 21 houses with 41 vehicles on Sunrise Road itself.
If the affordable housing project is approved as proposed, the addition of another 48-55 cars will impact the already burdened traffic problems on Sunrise Road. I want to state the existing zoning regulations allows for four new single family resident houses which would only add eight to ten more cars. This would not impact the traffic patterns as much. This was one of several point I made at the public P&Z hearing.
I also stated that the wide fire trucks and ambulences, each requiring a minimum of 14 feet, would not have
enough room on the narrow roads in our neighborhood when an emergency arises. This is correctly attributed to my saying.-Vincent Renzulli, Sunrise Road
Other points made by us at the hearing included the impossibility of making a left hand turn down Sunrise Road onto Saugatuck Avenue We asked for an updated traffic and accident report at this intersection. The developer pointed out that people living in this proposed new zone devolopment would walk to the train station and to commercial and retail businesses nearby. we pointed out that Indian Hill Road has no sidewalks and there is only a narrow footpath on Sunrise Road, leaving it impossible to walk during the snowy, winter months.