Protect White Barn preserve, Cranbury neighborhood

Dear Editor:

As the dates approach for public hearings on the proposal to develop 15 units of cluster housing on the White Barn property Norwalk residents, especially Cranbury dwellers, should take a moment to consider precisely what is has been proposed and what it would mean for the stately property at the corner of Newtown Avenue and Cranbury Road. The Zoning hearing is on June 17 at 7:30. Conservation meets on June 23 at 7 p.m., both at City Hall.

You may recall that in 2005 the Save Cranbury neighborhood group and the Norwalk Land Trust won a $450,000 Connecticut Open Space grant to establish a Preserve on 5.5 acres of the property, an amount that was supplemented with an additional $250,000 from the City of Norwalk. The $700,000 award was used to purchase a permanent easement from the property’s new owner, a New Canaan developer. The developer’s effort to leverage the Preserve as part of the acreage required to qualify the proposed development as a Conservation Development was rejected as unlawful by Norwalk’s legal counsel.

A Conservation Development is almost the opposite of what the term implies. It allows building at twice the density conventional half-acre zoning would permit, so long as 50 percent of the property is left undeveloped. When the Preserve was excluded from the builder’s calculation, the open space numbers were achieved in a rejiggered proposal in which wetlands are filled in and “new” wetlands “created” as part of a patchwork quilt of non­-contiguous bits and pieces of land needed to add up to 50 percent.

The result: a new “Conservation Development” proposal to build 15 houses on about five acres. A conventional development would permit ten at most, before factoring in roads and parts that are unbuildable.

A Conservation Development requires a Special Permit. Developers usually hate these because a Special Permits require an extra level of scrutiny, although the potential payoff (greater density) is sometimes worth the risk. A Special Permit challenges local commissions, Zoning and Conservation, to look beyond the minimum regs and requirements. It demands the use of farsighted discretion, prudence and an extra measure of good judgment to evaluate the suitability of the proposal and its long-term effects on the community.

Here are a few of the effects:

• Almost total deforestation of 5 acres of black alders, pin oaks, grey birch and blackberry rambles.
• The presence of four or five redwood rear decks, and their personal generators, backed as closely to the pond as commissions allow.

Apart from that ghastly visual, consider the effects on the Preserve, a bio-diverse habitat of woodland, pond and Stony Brook. The present proposal violates the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) recommendation of 100 feet of undisturbed buffer for riparian corridors. The recalculated “open space” proposed by the developer is not contiguous to the existing 5­ acre Preserve, eliminating the ability of wildlife to pass undisturbed through a corridor.

Moreover, such dense housing in such close proximity to a designated quiet open space and animal habitat ignores the spirit of a preserve and scoffs at the effort to secure the acres as a Preserve in the first place, turning it instead into a scenic back yard for the residents of Cranbury Court.

Fifteen 3-bedroom houses would generate approximately 3,375 gallons of sewage per day. For these particular houses, built on an upland slope, the developer proposes a complicated system in which sewage is pumped uphill electrically, run beneath flood­ prone Stony Brook and into the mains on Partrick. Even with the fifteen generators needed to back up this elaborately engineered system, properties downstream, particularly along Partrick and Cranbury in Norwalk and Westport, could be in trouble should any little thing go amiss.

The White Barn property at Newtown and Cranbury is not just another buildable lot. Environmentally sensitive and historically important, it has stood as an essential feature of the Cranbury neighborhood for some 70 years, since theater legend Lucille Lortel established her White Barn playhouse there in 1947. Her house and the theater remain, but apparently not for long.

The simple fact of this property’s existence would, it seems to me, mandate an especially respectful treatment. For those unmoved by the sad prospect of that loss, consider the impact of the present proposal on traffic, damage to the watercourse and potential for flooding resulting from the impacts of construction, debris, runoff, erosion and   sedition.

The City, the State and the Norwalk Land Trust–legal stewards of the White Barn Preserve brought about with taxpayer dollars–have a fiduciary responsibility to protect it. Approval by the City of a proposal for such dense housing is in direct violation of that obligation.

Celia Maddox