New apartments, hotel proposed near Norwalk-Wilton border
NORWALK — An apartment complex and a hotel could soon join LA Fitness and a slew of medical offices on a property near the Norwalk-Wilton border.
iPark Norwalk II LLC filed a special permit application earlier this month for a 244,750-square-foot expansion to its property at 761 Main Ave.
The expansion calls for two new buildings to be added to the property: A 164,750-square-foot apartment complex featuring three floors of residential housing over one story of parking, and an 80,000square-foot, 120-bedroom hotel.
The proposed apartment complex would feature 132 units. All units would either be studio or one-bedroom apartments with about 750 square feet of space on average.
Lynne Ward, executive vice president of National Resources Company, the parent company of iPark, said the development will offer units “unlike” those currently being built in the area.
“This is really akin to ‘workforce housing,’ and many of the people who will live here are already working or visiting on the site,” Ward wrote in the application.
National Resources Company did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
The iPark property at 761
Main Ave., which sidles the border between Wilton and Norwalk, currently has more than 371,000 square feet of buildings, which includes an LA Fitness gym, warehouse space and office space.
The company’s special permit application said there would be “no changes” to the existing land uses on the property.
If approved, the expansion would bring the development on the property to 616,444 square feet in total.
iPark has long eyed a potential expansion that would include a hotel. The company expressed interest in building a hotel on the northerly portion of Main Avenue parcel, which is partially located in Wilton, back in 2016.
In June 2016, the development’s owners successfully lobbied Wilton’s Planning and Zoning Commission to revise the town’s zoning regulations to make them more hotel friendly.
Under the revised regulations, the maximum height of buildings in Wilton
would be increased from three stories and 39 feet to four stories and 55 feet for properties that meet the minimum acreage requirements for 5- and 10acre design-enterprise districts.
Wilton’s then-Town Planner Bob Nerney said the changes opened the door to the eventual construction of a hotel, which he said at the time had been in discussion for “many years.”
The newly proposed plan is set to come before the Zoning Commission next month.
The commission’s next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 4, but it is unclear if the iPark application will be discussed then.