Fairfield OKs plan for condominium with affordable units on Pequot Avenue

FAIRFIELD — The Town Plan and Zoning Commission approved a proposal to build an 18unit condominium on Pequot Avenue — the second multi-family housing plan in Fairfield's Southport section to be greenlit in the last two weeks.

A former Fairfield doctor plans to demolish his office building at 250 Pequot Ave. and build a four-story, 18-unit condominium in its place after the P and Z approved it Tuesday. The condominium will include two affordable units, despite an earlier offer by the developer to pay a fee totaling several hundred-thousand dollars to eliminate them from his plans.

“I'm really encouraged to see multi-family housing in Southport, and the inclusion of the belowmarket-rate units in there, I think, is a great thing for Fairfield,” said Tom Corsillo, the commission's vice chair, during a meeting Tuesday.

Commissioners unanimously approved the project. They also applauded the developer's work with the local neighborhood and the Southport Conservancy nonprofit, which works to preserve historic buildings in the area, to design a project that fits with its surroundings.

“It's going to harmonize with the neighborhood,” commissioner Steven Levy said. “It'll be an improvement along that stretch there.”

The zoning support comes two weeks after the commission advanced a 20-unit housing development at 110 Woodrow Ave. — its first approval in two years for an affordable housing application that qualifies for protection under state statute 8-30g.

Under state statute 830g, towns that meet the threshold of 10 percent affordable housing inventory are exempt from a law that allows developers to challenge a town's decision to reject construction of an affordable housing development.

The Woodrow Avenue building will house six apartments designated as affordable housing.

The commission rejected an application from the developer, former radiologist Robert D. Russo, to pay a fee-in-lieu of the Pequot Avenue affordable housing units. The application would have amended Fairfield's zoning regulations to permit fee-inlieu payments for affordable housing units.

Real estate attorney Chris Russo — Robert Russo's son, who has represented him — argued that for-sale affordable housing units could, counter to their purpose, subject lower-earning residents to unpredictable home ownership costs.

But zoning commissioners said more affordable units are necessary to bolster diversity around Southport, and a fee-inlieu payment would limit that potential. They agreed the proposed payment — which would fund future town-led affordable housing projects through Fairfield's Housing Trust Fund — would be too low to finance the creation of affordable units in another location and could go unused while the town searches for potential affordable housing space.

Thomas Noonan, the chair of the commission, said incorporating fee-inlieu payments into Fairfield's zoning regulations could tempt the commission to excuse various developments of affordable housing in the future and slow the rate of their construction. He floated the potential for a “unit-inlieu” agreement option in Fairfield for developers to identify other sites for affordable housing in exchange from scrapping affordable units from their project.

“We're more likely to be tempted in the future to use this fee-in-lieu, and all of a sudden now we don't have a lot of units,” Noonan said. “We have a lot of money in the trust that would be difficult to use in its own right. So I think taking the units is a better course of action in general.”

The fee-in-lieu payment would amount to 250 percent of the local median income of a four-person family for each affordable housing unit.

Commissioner Kathryn Braun was the only member against denying the fee-in-lieu payment. She supported raising the value of the payment to 400 percent of the local median income for a four-person family and wanted the commission to table the item until members could get more information on how to calculate the fee from Mark Barnhart, Fairfield's director of community and economic development.

“I would like to give ourselves the discretion to make these decisions,” she said.