Danbury zoners get academy off ropes
Move for school at the Summit requires deft parliamentary touch
DANBURY — There were the nine members of the city’s Zoning Board, perilously close to a “no” vote for a new public school at the Summit, and none of them knowing quite how to get themselves off the ropes.
Veteran Zoning Commission member Robert Melillo had just made a motion to approve the latest changes to the master plan of the 1.2 millionsquare-foot Summit – the city’s largest commercial redevelopment project that includes a $99 million public school for 1,400 upper-grade students.
The problem was that three commission members wanted a site visit to inform their vote. Chairman Theodore Haddad Jr. backed them up.
Melillo insisted that a site visit was useful but not necessary to approve a deal City Hall and the school district had worked so diligently to reach with the Summit — reducing the 360 proposed apartments to make room for the 200,000-square-foot Danbury Career Academy.
That set up a showdown that no one expected.
“Let me ask you this, Mr. Melillo,” said Haddad at the commission meeting on Tuesday. “If four out of the nine that will be voting tonight indicated they do not want to vote and they want to do an onsite visit, if your motion to approve does not carry, what does that do to this petition?”
“We deny this petition,” Melillo answered.
“Are you willing to take that risk?” Haddad asked.
“Are you willing to keep your motion on the floor when you have four people right off the bat who want to do an onsite?”
What followed was a 10 second pause — the longest pause of the 2-hour and 40-minute meeting.
“Are you asking me to withdraw the motion, or table it until our next meeting?” Asked Melillo.
“I’m not telling anybody here what to do,” Haddad responded. “I’m just saying you’re walking a tightrope … because you’re running the risk as the motionmaker that this whole thing could dissolve tonight when all someone is asking for is two weeks to do an onsite.”
The short version of what happened next is that it took some crafty parliamentary maneuvering by Melillo — the commission’s expert on the rules of procedure — for the members to get out of their deadlock.
The convoluted process that followed saw the commission work backwards to undo its previous vote and reverse its decision, voting to keep the public hearing about the Summit’s master plan amendments open until members have a chance to visit the sprawling commercial site.
The result is not expected to delay the Zoning Commission’s vote for more than several weeks on the most anticipated mixed-use redevelopment and school construction project in Danbury.
Meanwhile City Hall and the Summit are yet to finalize the part of the deal that would turn over three “pods” that the city would renovate and operate as the new west side high school and middle school.
“The Career Academy project depends to a large degree on the state of Connecticut’s commitment for reimbursement of construction costs,” said Thomas Beecher, an attorney representing the Summit, at the public hearing on Tuesday. “That aspect of things has not yet been finalized.”
As a result, Beecher said, “if for some strange reason” funding falls through for the new school, the developer wants the right to fill the 200,000-square-feet reserved for the school with apartments.
Among the city officials urging the Zoning Commission to approve the new plans for the Summit were newly elected Mayor Dean Esposito.
“This change in the (Summit) master plan will give us the ability to build the academy on the west wide,” Esposito said. “The reduction of the apartments required gives us the space for that construction. I hope you can support this petition.”
It was not immediately clear how soon the Zoning Commission would take up a discussion and vote.
The city’s Planning Commission has already given its unanimous backing for the Summit’s master plan changes.
Danbury’s top planner, Sharon Calitro, told the Zoning Commission that the Summit’s latest blueprints were “consistent with the purpose for which the site was rezoned and … provide flexibility while maintaining a mixed-use development.”