Noroton Heights Rezoning Plan Inches Forward

A plan to significantly alter zoning restrictions around the Noroton Heights commercial district inched closer to approval this week, as a representative of developer Tom Golden made the pitch at a public information session.

Speaking at Town Hall to a group of mostly neighboring property owners, attorney Bruce Hill outlined the tenets of the proposed Noroton Heights Mixed Use Zone, which would allow for a combination of retail, office, and residential development.

As the owner of many of the parcels in the district—most notably Stop & Shop—Golden would be uniquely situated to conduct a major, if gradual, overhaul of the area should the changes be approved.

Golden and the owners of Palmer's Market applied for the new zoning regulations in mid-May, echoing an almost identical application filed—but later withdrawn—in 2009. The plan will face a public hearing before the Darien Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday.

Among other items, the new zone would give the commission the power to raise height limitations on individual buildings from two stories to three and to permit the construction of parking structures of up to one story above ground.

At Wednesday's information session, Hill noted that the zoning changes and the redevelopment they might yield dovetailed closely with ambitions for the area laid out by the commission.

"They'd like to see development that produces a little bit more life for the district—a place where people can not only shop for retail items, but they can actually live there, perhaps work in an office there, perhaps go to a restaurant there," Hill said.

Fielding several questions about the shape of eventual redevelopment, Hill emphasized that a set of hypothetical site renderings presented alongside the application were only speculative and had no direct bearing on the rezoning process.

"Tom Golden will not be able to redevelop the Stop and Shop parcel and put up three-story buildings and apartments—or anything of the like—just as-of-right under the proposed NHMU zone," Hill said. Any proposed structures that followed would need new permits and approvals from the town, he said.

"No one's expecting this to happen overnight," Hill added. "There's no question that Tom Golden wants to redevelop some of his properties, but it's going to be incremental over a period of years."

Hill detailed other aspects of the plan questioned by audience members: 

• Buildings would be allowed to cover 35 percent of the land in the new zone, while 80 percent could be developed in some fashion or another. "We did not take the Central Business District as the model, where you have 100 percent coverage. That just clearly did not seem appropriate," Hill said.

• The rezoning application does not make any specific proposals vis-à-vis storm water management, a recurring concern for that section of Darien. "There has not been any study to see if storm water management is feasible, and the reason for that is we don't know what's going to be built," Hill said.

• Any development akin to the one in the renderings would be sensitive to the residential character of abutting properties, according to Hill. "In order to protect these residences across the street—across from West Avenue—the face of [buildings] on West Avenue would be limited to the existing residential building height of any district in Darien," he said.

A public hearing on the plan will be conducted at the Planning and Zoning Commission's next meeting, set for 8:00 p.m. in the town hall auditorium.