By James Lomuscio
The owner of Able Construction, Inc. said today he plans to return to Westport’s Planning & Zoning Commission (P&Z) with a further scaled-down plan for a 55 age-restricted development at the former Daybreak Nurseries property.
Johnny Schwartz (l) and Peter Greenberg describe the revised plans. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
“We went from 12 to 11 units, and we think they will accept fewer units; now we’ll go down to 10 or nine,” said Peter Greenberg, owner of the Norwalk-based construction company.
His business partner Johnny Schwartz said the new plan also forgoes a cut through driveway via Main Street to Weston Road and instead offers a cul du sac accessible from Weston Road beyond the troubled Main Street-Weston Road intersection.
At previous P&Z meetings since November, area residents have spoken against the project at 500 Main St., arguing it would only exacerbate traffic at the intersection.
Traffic studies have found that the intersection handles about 3,000 cars during rush hour, and Greenberg has countered that his complex, even with 12 units, would add only three cars to the mix.
Greenberg purchased the 2.2-acre property for $1,350,000 as the highest bidder in a foreclosure settlement in February 2014. Daybreak Nurseries had been on the site for almost 73 years.
The property, located near Exit 42 off the Merritt Parkway in a half-acre residential zone could currently accommodate four large houses under the town’s regulations. Able has already construcetd about 100, mostly large homes in town.
Schwartz said his company originally wanted to restore the nursery’s historic conservatory and rent it as a coffee house, too, but the P&Z in a meeting had said no to mixed use commercial residential.
“They didn’t like any of these ideas, and the only thing they were open to, the only thing they were interested in were small homes,” Greenberg said about conversations with the P&Z in 2014.
Since the property was already approved for four, six-bedroom homes, “We decided eight, 3,000-square-foot, three-bedroom homes,” Greenberg recalled about meeting with the P&Z in 2015.
“They said 3,000 square feet was too big,” he said.
As a result, Able Construction represented by land use consultant Mel Barr pushed for a text amendment that passed in September 2016 for 12, two-bedroom units not to exceed 2,400-square feet.
It also called for the 60 percent of the units to be age restricted, 55 years and older. The P&Z approved it as a means of providing senior housing stock in Westport.
“When we got the text amendment passed, we though that would be half the battle,” Greenberg said, adding that shortly afterwards neighborhood concerns about traffic surfaced.
“Keep in mind that there was a commercial, nonconforming use there for more than 50 years with delivery trucks coming in and out of the nursery,” he said, adding that Daybreak had five curb cuts to the property off Main Street.
On Feb. 8, Able Construction was back at the P&Z with a new plan calling for 11 instead of 12 units, 100 percent of them age-restricted instead of the previous 60 percent, each seeling for about $1.2 million.
Early Friday, March 15, the P&Z voted of 4 to 2 rejecting the new application.
Despite the setbacks, Greenberg and Schwartz said they are not giving up on the project.
“We’ve been approached by another developer,” Greenberg said about a party interested in buying the parcel. We haven’t really entertained it because we came up with the text amendment. We own it.”
“It’s the first thing you see when you come into town,” said Schwartz. “It’s a showcase, a showcase for our work.”
The planned units that Greenberg says he plans to resubmit to the P&Z in the near future would consist of two duplexes and five or six stand alone units, each unit being 2,000-square feet.
Greenberg insists he is not a fighter, but a persistent applicant trying to work with the town. Still, after four years of trying to accommodate the P&Z only to be rejected, he said, there are limits to being accommodating.
“If they turn that down,” he said about the new proposal he plans to submit, “we would have grounds for a lawsuit.”
