2 cities balk at housing plans
Simsbury, Newington rebuff developers amid housing shortage
Simsbury officials have rejected a New Jersey developer’s plan to build 432 apartments and rental houses along Route 10, the second time this month that a central Connecticut community balked at a massive residential complex.
The Silverman Group’s newest version of its Talcott Ridge South proposal would have created 10 three-story apartment buildings, 33 duplexes and 41 single-family houses along Route 10 just south of the sprawling Ridge at Talcott Mountain project.
The Silverman Group last year scaled back its original plan for 580 rental units including a series of four-story apartment buildings, while adding a small retail and restaurant component. But the Zoning Commission concluded that was still too much housing with far too little of the other elements Simsbury wants in a mix-use development of the property.
In a somewhat similar development just a week earlier, Newington officials gave a chilly response to the Raitses family’s proposal to demolish a retail strip center and replace it with 273 apartments.
Newington is already short on retail space, and making the town center more walkable and vibrant requires more than another large-scale influx of apartments, the town plan and zoning commission said in an informal talk with the family. One commissioner after another said redeveloping the strip plaza on Lowrey Place could add housing, but should also provide groundfloor restaurant and retail space.
Officials in both towns acknowledged that the state still faces a serious housing shortage, but said that reason alone doesn’t
justify authorizing hundreds of apartments without adequate commercial construction as well.
Simsbury’s zoning commission voted 5-1 last week to reject the controversial Talcott Ridge South proposal, despite the Silverman Group’s recent revisions to make it smaller, boost the percent of affordable apartments and add nonresidential components.
The property is part of The Hartford’s former 172-acre campus along Route 10 that closed a little more than 10 years ago. Simsbury created a special plan for redeveloping the property, with goals of adding offices and space for technology firms, new employment and fresh retail along with apartments.
On the northern end of the property, the Silverman Group years ago built about 420 apartments at the Talcott Ridge North complex. Last year, it proposed building more of the same on the southern end, but with the addition of rental duplexes and one-family homes.
Opposition was strong at public hearings, where residents complained that adding nearly 600 new rental units would bring an influx of students and severely boosting the education budget. They also warned it would worsen traffic on Route 10, ruin scenic views of Talcott Mountain, and create costly new demands on municipal services.
In a prepared statement explaining its vote, the zoning commission last week noted that the area’s development plan called for a blend of different uses to form “a vibrant, walkable community.” The statement said Silverman’s proposal fell short in several ways.
“The applicant’s proposal remains overwhelmingly a residential project in land area, square footage and use mix. One 27,500-square-foot flex commercial building with no specific uses disclosed and one 5,000-squarefoot restaurant does not meet the intend of a mixed-use development,” it said.
In addition, a small restaurant and the single commercial building wouldn’t support any longterm way of attracting new jobs and economic development. The development regulations call for office, technology and health care uses complemented by housing and retail, the commission said.
Further, Silverman’s new proposal doesn’t benefit the public by adding public amenities, open space, civic sites or public parks, commissioners said.
The regulations call for permanent employment opportunities to replace some of the jobs and economic development lost when The Hartford shut down its 600,000-square-foot offices and transferred 1,500 employees elsewhere.
The commission also objected to Silverman’s plan for every home to be rented, with no opportunity for purchase. Offering a variety of rental and for-sale homes would be better for the town, it said.
The vote to approve was 5-1, with Commissioner Tucker Salls dissenting.
“We are in a housing crisis, the homeless population in Connecticut is the highest it’s ever been,” Salls said.
“I’m constantly seeing on our social media in Simsbury people asking where they can try to find a place they can afford to live,” Salls said. “Senior citizens cannot downsize, they don’t have anywhere to go, meaning they stay in their existing home. So new residents can’t move into that home.”
Salls pointed out that the Silverman Group added the 27,500-square-foot commercial building to satisfy the commission, even though he projected it would be hard to lease in the current economy.
Further, the company boosted the share of affordable apartments from 10% to 15% also to satisfy the commission.
“They were trying to put in 65 deed-restricted affordable units,” Salls said.