‘It’s a little bit unusual, but OK’
Danbury luxury car dealership unveils roof parking plan
DANBURY — City leaders welcomed plans to transform a longtime storage yard eyesore on the west side into a Mercedes-Benz dealership, but they had questions about traffic and the project’s unusual design for a second-floor vehicle display and roof deck car storage.
“It’s a little bit unusual, but OK, there’s going to be a second floor and a roof I guess, with cars on them mostly, I’m assuming,” City Councilman Paul Rotello said at a public hearing this week. “Explain to me because I am a little bit confused — there will be an uncovered roof with cars on it and then a covered section for people to stand in to look at the cars that will have another roof on top of that?”
The short answer is yes, the developer’s representatives said.
Most of the second floor of the proposed dealership at Miry Brook and Sugar Hollow roads will be an uncovered deck finished with a 6-foot-tall wall of “European-style” dark metal panels and screening. A portion of the second floor at the front of the building will be a glass-enclosed indoor vehicle display area, to
get Route 7's attention.
“What we really want to do is make it look like a finished building and not just a parking deck with a guardrail,” said Michael Kozlowski, a project executive at Claris Construction, during a Planning Commission hearing on Wednesday. “It's really hard to see any (parking deck) cars from the street.”
Kozlowski was referring to a plan by Curry Automotive to transform a 2.5-acre storage yard at a gateway intersection on Danbury's booming west side into a $7 million luxury car dealership. Curry, which has 12 locations in four states, including a MercedesBenz dealership in Danbury's east end, would move its Federal Road dealership to the west side if it receives the Planning Commission's approval.
The site next to Danbury Municipal Airport is in the heart of an emerging “mecca for high-end autos” that is already home to luxury dealerships, custom garages and storage facilities, and a manufacturer of $450,000 sports cars.
“(The site) has for a long time been used for various commercial and industrial uses of dubious compliance with zoning and most recently has been used for the stockpiling of raw materials as well as for the storage of construction equipment,” Curry Automotive attorney Meaghan Miles told the Planning Commission this week. “It's a very appropriate use for the area — being transportation-centered and commercial — particularly when it comes to auto sales … this fits right in.”
The Planning Commission won't decide until at least June, when the hearing has been continued to review the traffic impact on the area. Abdul Mohamed, Danbury's traffic engineer, said the dealership would be a “major traffic generator,” adding 860 vehicle trips to the area on an average weekday and 1,615 car and truck trips on an average Saturday.
Several city leaders attended Wednesday's hearing to get answers for their constituents, only to find out that the traffic study would be discussed in June.
“I have had quite a few constituents calling me and wanting to know this or that,” said City Councilman Fred Visconti, who added he was pleased about the prospect that the “mess” at the intersection of Miry Brook and Sugar Hollow roads would be rehabilitated. “We look forward Mercedes-Benz being there, but I do have some questions on the traffic.”
Curry Automotive for its part said it's confident that traffic will not be a deal breaker.
“This project will maintain acceptable levels of service with minimal increases in vehicle delay at all peak hours,” the attorney Miles said this week. “No off-site road improvements are necessary.”
Rotello meanwhile said he wasn't sold on parking cars on the roof.
“We have constituents on top of Wooster Heights who live several hundred feet above this (proposed dealership) and I'm assuming (rooftop cars) would be visible from that vantage point,” Rotello said. “I would like a take on what would be viewable from a height of several hundred feet — I don't need to get into airplanes flying over the building — it's the people that will live there who will be looking down the hill and see this building from a vantage point that is clearly not from street.”
“I will argue that just because of the distance away, the front part of this building will screen most of those cars on the roof,” said the project executive Kozlowski. “If you're high enough, of course you are going to see something on the roof, but at that vantage point, it's no different looking at cars on a roof as it is looking at cars on a parking surface, in my opinion.”