CT Supreme Court weighs in on land-use lawsuits
Stamford residents fought to block two developments. Are their petitions legal?
STAMFORD —The city’s dual land-use legal battles had their day before the Connecticut Supreme Court this month, marking the beginning of the end for the two-year long debates over how residents and the Board of Representatives can proceed with protest petitions.
Both cases involve petitions organized by residents attempting to block new development from creeping
into their neighborhoods. Both cases debate whether the city’s top elected body had the authority to validate said petitions.
But in the two back-toback hearings, the lawyers involved make vastly different arguments, boring down into the minutia of rules and semantics to hopefully eke out a victory for their respective clients.
The former B&S Carting site
The Planning Board in 2019 approved changes to the Master Plan — Stamford’s governing planning document — that would allow the dominant South End developer Building and Land Technology to put up more than 650 units on a South End block between Woodland Avenue and Walter Wheeler Drive, more commonly called the former B&S Carting site.
The move earned intense scrutiny from some South End neighbors, who filed a petition ultimately affirmed by the Board of Representatives after an initial referral from the Planning Board.
In the eyes of Stamford’s charter, two types of protest petitions exist: area cases and signature cases. In this case, residents brought forth an area petition, which 20 percent of the landowners who live within a 500-foot radius of the zoning change must sign. However, according to analysis from Board of Representatives Legal Officer Valerie Rosenson, the signatures about the former B&S Carting site only represent “owners of 6.32% of the total area of the privately owned land within the 500-foot buffer” of change.
Before the court, that insufficiency became a cornerstone of the argument for BLT’s lawyer David Martin.
But repeatedly during the hearing, Board of Representatives lawyer Patricia Sullivan argued the number of signatures was beyond the point.
“The Planning Board referred this petition,” she said in a back-and-forth with one of the justices on Sept. 10. “The presumption is that they determined whether it was valid or they wouldn’t have referred it.”
By taking on the petition from the Planning Board, Sullivan claimed that the petition became valid. Even if the document was improperly configured, Sullivan maintained, the board still took the right steps.
“If the petition is invalid, you follow the four steps that are set forth in the charter,” Sullivan maintained. “One is that the Planning Board makes a decision. A petition is filed. The Planning Board refers the petition to the Board (of Representatives.)”
Sullivan repeated those four steps time and time again to the justices, who pushed back on why the board took on the petition in the first place.
“I’m having a really hard time understanding how, if the charter requires, I think the word is ‘proper petition,’ the Board of Representatives can overlook the fact that these were not properly signed petitions, and go ahead and disapprove something that the Planning Board had approved,” Justice Christine Keller said early on in the hearing.
Life Time Fitness on High Ridge
The tables turned in the next hearing — which debated a petition against a 100,000-square-foot, indooroutdoor gym chain Life Time Fitness. This time, attorney Martin found himself arguing granularities on behalf of commercial real estate developer George Comfort & Sons, whom he also represents.
While the city’s Zoning Board appeared to look favorably on adapting one of Stamford’s vacant office parks along High Ridge Road for new tenants, homeowners in abutting Turn-of-River took issue with the potential disruptions a building of that magnitude could create.
Once the board approved the proposal, more than 696 residents responded by submitting a petition to the Board of Representatives disavowing the zoning change, which would allow gymnasiums in a handful of spots around Stamford.
In stark contrast to the other petition verified by the board, the charter only requires 300 landowner signatures for cases that impact multiple sites in the city.
Despite the groundswell of support for the petition, the word “landowner” forms the basis of the developer’s argument. Many of the signers owned condominiums, Martin contended. Thus they only owned a fractional stake of the land. The 696 signatures, he posited, overstated land ownership interests at hand.
“How one takes title to land creates limitations on what they may do with that property,” Martin stated. “For instance, a joint owner cannot sell, lease or mortgage the property without consent of the other.”
The Stamford Charter, written long before modern condos existed, has no formal definition of a landowner.
The justices and attorneys split hairs over how “landowner” could be interpreted. They wondered whether giving condo owners a full vote would over-represent them in the community, whether they were entitled to a say proportionate to their stake in the land.
After two hours of petition talk, Chief Justice Richard Robinson let out a slight sigh toward the end of the hearing.
“I’m just trying to figure all this,” he said. “It’s interesting.”
Sullivan responded almost immediately: “It’s a lot.”