Application for 102 units on Weed Street pulled
NEW CANAAN — First Selectman Kevin Moynihan announced late Friday that the building application has been pulled for a 102-unit development with 31 affordable housing units at 75 Weed St. But it may be refiled.
“We will learn more next week, but for now we are on pause,” chairman of the Water Polution Control Authority and Board of Finance Todd Lavieri said in an email.
Moynihan said the town received an email from attorney Tim Hollister that said 751 Weed Street LLC and WE Partners LLC are withdrawing their pending sewer and zoning application.
Several members of the community have opposed the development. Signs have been popping up on lawns in town saying “Save Weed Street” on one side and “Yes Affordable Housing” and “Overdevelopment No” on the other.
One of the first steps in reviewing the 47 one-bedroom units and 55 two-bedrooms apartment project was for it to go before the Water Pollution Control Authority, and the meeting scheduled for next week has been cancelled.
“They expect to refile next week. The 65-day period for review now restarts on the date of our next Board of Finance meeting on April 12,” Lavieri said.
Hollister’s email said that when preparing letters to abutting property owners “our office discovered that the Assessor’s Office at some time in the recent past assigned the subject parcel, and possibly abutting parcels, a lot number that differs from the subdivision parcel number, which led to a technical defect.”
“The situation appears to have
been inadvertent, and unusual, but obviously we do not wish to proceed with the scheduled meetings and hearings until this is
corrected,” Hollister’s letter says.
A petition on change.org in opposition to the project had 2,690 signatures by Friday evening, and $69,395 has been raised by gofundme.com.
If a town’s total housing stock has less than 10 percent affordable housing, it is vulnerable to developers building under the state’s affordable housing law. Under the law, an affordable housing development is not required to comply with existing zoning, such as height restrictions, coverage, density and parking requirements, and the Planning and Zoning Commission had little say on the project.
New Canaan will have nearly 3 percent of its total housing inventory units deemed as affordable housing after the Canaan Parish project on Lakeview Avenue is completed. In some cases, as municipalities complete affordable housing projects, they are entitled to moratoriums, however the town’s applications for a moratorium were delayed.