Controversial Rebuild in Southport Headed to Court

A controversial proposal to demolish a waterfront house in Fairfield's Southport neighborhood and build a larger one in its place is heading to Bridgeport Superior Court.

The house at 935 Harbor Road, most recently appraised at $6.1 million, was bought in June for $5.9 million by a limited liability company that lists Judith C. Urquhart as a principal and member. It was built in 1937, stands on nearly an acre and has a gross area of 9,478 square feet, according to tax records.

Alex and Judith Urquhart, who live on Hulls Farm Road, wanted the town's Historic District Commission to approve their plan to replace the house, garage and stone wall and build new terraces, driveways, walkways, lighting and a spa.

"There's two huge problems," said Sharon Klammer, a Harbor Road opponent of the Urquharts' proposed rebuild. She said the house was designed by Cameron Clark, a well-known architect from the 1930s to '50s, and was one of only two houses in the Southport Historic District that had been designed by Clark. She said the house was the best example of Clark's colonial revival style and "beautifully fits on the property."

The other problem, Klammer said, is that the proposed replacement house would be 50 percent larger and include a third story with an observatory.

Members of the Historic District Commission on March 10 voted unanimously to reject the plan after nearly two dozen residents voiced opposition, either in public comment or letters read into the record. The commission's rejection says the house "is an historically and architecturally integral component" of the Southport Historic District and waterfront at Southport Harbor, and they didn't like the scale, massing and "rigid formality of the dominant Georgian style" of the proposed house. The commission also believed the proposed house and related accessories would clash with a former commercial wharf in the harbor and "forever change the appearance of Southport Harbor's waterfront and of the Southport Historic District."

But John Fallon, the Urquharts' attorney, says in the lawsuit that additions onto the two-story Colonial, which include a fake chimney, already are inconsistent with the character of the Southport Historic District and that the commission in 2007 approved the demolition of a nearby home that had been designed by Roswell Barrett, whom Fallon said was a "prominent Southport architect." He said the house that replaced the 883 Harbor Road house was larger than the one proposed by the Urquharts.

Fallon says in the suit that the commission in 2004 approved a renovation that resulted in the "practical and substantial demolition" of a house at 911 Harbor Road and that the existing house is more than 500 square feet larger than the one proposed by the Urquharts.

"In approving the demolition of the structures immediately adjacent to the subject property, no mention or consideration was made with regard to historical or architectural significance of the structures located on the properties," Fallon says in the suit.

The house owned by the Urquharts also wasn't among Southport homes that the commission wanted added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 nor did the commission have "any substantive evidence" that confirmed Clark designed it, Fallon says in the suit.

Klammer said the National Register of Historic Places didn't consider houses less than 50 years old at the time and the Urquharts' home was less than 50 years old in 1971.

Glen Gregg, an architect who spoke on behalf of the Urquharts March 3, testified that the house was not architecturally or historically significant, according to Fallon's suit. Klammer said four prominent local architects, including Jack Franzen and David Scott Parker, disagreed, an opinion confirmed by minutes of the March 3 hearing.

The Urquharts can't renovate the existing house because they would have to comply with current Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations, which would require that its basement be filled and utilities be moved upstairs. The existing house also couldn't withstand raising of its roof, according to Fallon.