Town Officials Plan for Sweeping Changes in Commerce Drive Section

The long-awaited train station on lower Black Rock Turnpike has led town officials to prepare for dramatic growth in the eastern side of Fairfield.

Town Planning Director Joseph Devonshuk, Jr. said the Commerce Drive section of town, which once had 10,000 people a day working there when heavy manufacturing was at its peak, has probably had more changes than any other part of town, and dramatic changes are in the near future after the town's third train station opens in late fall on 35.5 acres across from BJ's Wholesale Club.

Instead of handling new developments spurred by the train station on a case-by-case basis, the Town Plan and Zoning Commission is planning to amend the town's Plan of Conservation and Development and its zoning regulations to accommodate growth in about 200 acres surrounding the upcoming train station at 21 Black Rock Turnpike, an area that also is nearby entrances and exits for Interstate 95.

The opening of the train station will cause property values to rise, and that rise will create redevelopment pressures, according to David Kooris, vice president of Regional Plan Association in Stamford, which was hired by the commission to help the town set a vision of what that area of Fairfield should look like.

"What the commission has anticipated, and the reason for this procedure, is they wanted to get ahead of the curve," Devonshuk said to about three dozen people in McKinley School's cafeteria Tuesday night. "The commission's main intent of this whole process is to get a standard for redevelopment of that area."

Kooris presented a vision of Commerce Drive to the commission and audience members that involved more than the redevelopment of property. It also included linking that section of town to nearby neighborhoods through trailways along Ash Creek and bus transportation; making the area more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists; and reorienting traffic so it flows better, single intersections don't get overloaded and motorists don't use residential streets, such as New England Avenue, as a shortcut for getting to the train station.

"This is a very automobile-oriented part of town and a very automobile-dependent part of town. The infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists is not very strong in the area," Kooris said. He said Black Rock Circle was an impediment in the area and needed to be realigned and that highway underpasses needed to be safe for pedestrians to walk through. "We really focused on the Circle as a pedestrain barrier...We really need to break down that barrier," he said.

As it stands now, the 200 acres include homes on New England Avenue and the town's Grasmere neighborhood, big-box retailers like The Home Depot and upcoming Whole Foods, restaurants, car dealerships, fitness centers and mom-and-pop businesses. Kooris showed, on slides depicting aerial views of the area, how difficult it is for someone to walk to different spots in the section. Instead of a straight line, the shortest legal route involved zig-zagging around the neighborhood.

"The impact to intersections at Brewster [Street] drove us to the idea of a pedestrian bridge, to get more people in Black Rock to walk," Kooris said, referring to the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, which is next to the upcoming third train station.

Regarding future construction, Kooris said no new building would be taller than existing buildings but parking-space requirements would be less because a train station will be near the area. Regulations that permit denser developments - such as a housing development of 50 bedrooms per acre and a maximum height for buildings of 60 feet instead of 40 feet - are proposed because the ideal is to have dense developments near mass transit, Kooris said.

The 50 bedrooms per acre and maximum height of 60 feet for buildings pertains only to an area that would be designated as a "Transit-Oriented Development Park." The area surrounding that would be known as the "Commerce Drive Area Designated District," and buildings could be a maximum of 40 feet.

Ken Camarro of Carroll Road said residents shouldn't fear that dense housing developments will overburden the town's school system because studies have shown that for every 20 condominium units, only one child in kindergarten through eighth grade is among residents who live there. He said having young families in dense residential developments in the Commerce Drive section would create a demand for single-family houses as those families look for larger homes. "You want young families moving up to a single-family [house]," he said.

New commercial developments would be required to include residences, such as retail on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors, according to Assistant Town Planner James Wendt. "It can be 100 percent residential, but it can't be 100 percent commercial," Wendt said of new construction.

New apartments or condominiums also would have to include a percentage that are set aside as affordable housing for low to moderate income families. Alyssa Israel, a former member of the Town Plan and Zoning Commission, suggested that 20 percent be set aside as affordable housing, rather than 10 percent, noting that only about 2 percent of Fairfield's housing stock was deemed affordable by the state, while the state wants municipalities to have that figure at 10 percent.

Bryan LeClerc, chairman of the commission, said the Commerce Drive area of Fairfield was unique and that town officials didn't want to discourage residential development or drive existing nearby homeowners away. "We didn't want this to be another Stamford, another Blue Back's area," LeClerc said, referring in the latter case to a shopping, dining and entertainment section in West Hartford. "There's no place we found anywhere in Connecticut like it. It's an extermely unique location."

Kurt Wittek, managing director of Blackrock Realty, LLC, the company that owns most of the land where the train station will be built and that hopes to build office buildings and a hotel on the property, said he was encouraged by the positive comments offered Tuesday night on plans to guide growth in the larger area.

"It's a little bit of a lovefest compared to what I've been through with my project," Wittek said.

But Wittek added, "There's a lot that needs to be done to take this to the streets, if you will," adding that Tuesday night's discussion was theoretical.

Wittek said the state of Connecticut was losing young residents faster than any other state in the country and a lot of that had to do with "close-mindedness."

"I'm now 11 years into the process and I don't have the first yard of concrete poured on my project. I spent eight years trying to get the project approved," Wittek said. "The town of Fairfield has a process that runs through its Conservation office that I think we all know is a difficult, if not impossible, feat. A progressive look at that part of the process, I think, would be beneficial."

First Selectman Ken Flatto in December 2007 removed the town's Conservation Department from environmental oversight of the Fairfield Metro Center development planned by Blackrock Realty, and Flatto told the Representative Town Meeting on Monday night that he was pleased with how construction of public portions by Wittek's property was going. Flatto's comment to the RTM came after Kathryn Braun, R-8, asked Flatto if he had any intention of returning the Conservation Department to environmental oversight of the Fairfield Metro Center development. Litigation aimed at returning the Conservation Department is pending at the state Supreme Court.

Wittek said he hoped the positive and constructive comments at Tuesday night's meeting "can trickle down into the community, to people who resist change."

Wendt said the Town Plan and Zoning Commission would hold a meeting next Tuesday to talk about comments offered at Tuesday night's meeting in McKinley School.