Newtown apartment plans draw opposition
NEWTOWN — The historic stretch of Colonial and Victorian homes that runs south on Main Street from the iconic flag pole harkens back to quieter days.
That’s the way Newtown residents want to keep it, at least those who came out to oppose plans by a Brookfield architect to replace a single-family home at South Main Street and Borough Lane with a 27-unit apartment building.
“There is nothing good here,” said Wally Thomas, a resident of Borough Lane, referring to the apartment building proposal at a Planning and Zoning Commission public hearing last week. “The building would bring extremely high density (and) school-age kids that could potentially live in the apartments, which would mean school buses at commuter times.”
Six other Newtown residents who came to the Dec. 2 public hearing to oppose the plans agreed.
“It is unbelievable how much the town as changed,” said Nathalie Bennet, of Huntingtown Road. “[T]his particular lot is zoned the way it’s zoned for a reason. Smaller houses are more appropriate than a three-story enormous building that takes up almost the entire lot.”
Their opposition is to plans by Brookfield landscape architect Robert Sherwood to construct a three-story apartment building that, along with parking, would cover 70 percent of a 1.6-acre residential lot. Sherwood would demolish the home, the detached garage and the collapsed barn on the property, and screen the new building with 10foot evergreens.
At the public hearing, Sherwood said while the property does border a stretch of single-family homes to the north, it’s also at the gate of a commercial zone going south that includes for former Amaral Motors dealership, a fabric store, a strip mall, a restaurant and a Walgreens.
“[T]the building lot is in a transitional space between higher density commercial and residential,” Sherwood said at the hearing. “This is a good spot to make that transition with a higher density residential component.”
No one in the audience agreed, saying a new apartment building would be unsightly and draw too much traffic to an already congested area.
“It can take 10 minutes sometimes to make a left out of Laurel Road, especially around 5 p.m. and 8 a.m.,” said Cathy Suhoza of Laurel Road, referring to a street one block north of the proposed apartments. “It is too much for the location.”
Resident Carol Ando, of Berskhire Road, said Sherwood’s application to change the zone to allow more density was part of a larger problem in Newtown.
“This town is changing zoning to suit builders,” she said. “Apartments are going up everywhere and ruining neighborhoods, (and) there is gridlock anywhere you go in town. Apartments don’t belong there; individual houses do.”
South Main Street resident Sheila Cole agreed, saying that several hundred apartments have been proposed at the town’s Fairfield Hills campus, and questioning if there was “demand to fill these (South Main Street) apartments, or are they just building to build?”
“This is not the place for apartments,” Cole said.
In response to questions from the Planning and Zoning Commission, Sherwood said there would be 12 garage parking units in the back of the property, for a total of 54 parking spaces. The building would be a mix of one-, twoand three-bedroom apartments.
In addition to Planning and Zoning approval, Sherwood needs approval from the town’s Design Advisory Board. At a meeting with that board in November, Sherwood said his designs are focused on giving the apartment building residential features “so it doesn’t look like a big box” and varying building materials “so that it doesn’t look like one big, massive structure.”
The Planning and Zoning Commission continued the public hearing to Thursday.
Sherwood agreed to bring a traffic report to the hearing to better address residents’ concerns.