Plan & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call this meeting to order. Thursday, August 28th, Bloomfield Town Planning and Zoning Commission at 7:03. First item on the agenda is a roll call. One moment, please. [Music] Sure.

Amen. It is. Oh, yeah. We're good. Okay. Great.

Okay. Once again, we'll call this meeting to order. Thursday, August 28th. It's 7:06 p.m. Bloomfield Town Planning and Zoning Commission. Uh, first item on the agenda is a roll call here. Here

we got five. Um, Linda, is there alternate sitting?

Okay. Thank you. First item on the agenda. chair and entertain a motion to approve the minutes from February 27th, 2025, March 27th, 2025, April 24th, 2025, May 22nd, 2025, June 26, 2025, and July 7 1725. any further any errors, corrections? Um, I abstain. I wasn't here on on June 26, so I abain.

And actually, um, I wasn't here on the on July 17th, so maybe I should abstain or I shouldn't make the motion. Okay. Um, Renee James abstaining for July 17th. I'll move that we approve the July 17th minutes. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion? Mr. Chair, I abstain from the May 22nd and from the from the July 17th as I was not present. Mr. Chair, I have a few comments or revisions.

Sure. Um for the March uh on page four um at the bottom of the page uh regarding um the calculation uh for rounding up or down it was it was for the number of affordable units not AMI duly noted Um for the May minutes on page six, um motion to appoint uh commissioner, it was Steve Mlette, not Brian Mlette. Um there might be one more uh in the July minutes um on page five. Oh, just um at the very top of the page, pollution six. I'm I'm not sure if that was just an extra letter there. And at the top of page six, incorporate as many energy efficiency me measures as possible versus an those were my only notes. Yep. Okay. Duly noted. Uh Mr. Sher. Yes. Um I also have one comment on the um July 17th and that's on on page five. Uh there's a reference to related to inclusionary zoning and the housing trust. I think it's affordable housing trust is isn't it the affordable housing trust not just housing trust?

Yes. Yeah. So any duly noted any further corrections seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I

oppose abstension chair votes sign. First item on the agenda is a public hearing. I'll ask the secretary to read the legal notice. Uh, notice notice is hereby given that the town plan and zoning commission will hold a regular on a regular meeting on Thursday, August 28th, 2025 at 7 p.m. Hybrid meeting in person at 800 Bloomfield Avenue, council chambers room and virtually via Zoom to consider the following uh 57 and 9 Northwood Drive and 9 West Dudleytown Road special permit and site plan application per sections 4.4.c.4.U U of the zoning regulations to allow outdoor storage as an accessory use for a proposed contractor's yard business in the I2 zoning district. Applicant Burns Construction Company, Inc. O owner 5 Northwood Drive LLC.

Okay. Thank you. Uh before we proceed with our public hearing, I just want to go over the process on how we conduct our public hearings. We'll first hear a presentation from the applicant. We'll then hear comments from our director. We'll then take questions from the audience. We'll take questions from the commission. We'll then have comments from the audience. We'll take comments from the commission. And then the applicant will have one last chance to make any closing remarks before we close the public hearing. Uh with that said, who's here for the application? Just state your name and address, please. Can you please turn on your mic? Thank you.

There you go. Do you want me to start over?

Sure. Okay. All right. Take two. Uh, good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the commission. My name is John Casey. I'm a partner with the law firm of Robinson and Cole, representing the applicant this evening. Uh, as was stated in the, uh, call of the hearing, we are here requesting a special permit uh, for a contractor's yard under sections 44 C4U, outside storage of as an accessory use. We're also seeking special permit under 61c8. uh which is uh tree cutting in excess of 10% of the tree canopy cover on the lot and we are also requesting a waiver of the sidewalk requirement in section uh 610F. A little history uh permitting history. Uh the wetlands map amendment for this site was approved in May on the 19th of May and our regulated uh activity permit was granted on July 21st um with a number of conditions that we are prepared to to meet. Uh with me tonight is Tim HL and Jordan Buslawitz from BL Companies. Tim will give the substantive presentation as soon as I finish my little intro. As a um procedural issue, prior to the start of the hearing, we submitted our sign affidavit and the copies of the mailing receipts. So, we believe we're all set with that procedural requirement. Um, as was read into the record, this is there's four lots, five Northwood Drive, seven Northwood Drive, nine Northwood Drive, and nine West Dudleytown Road. One of them is developed with an existing building. That's five Northwood Drive. The other three are wooded and undeveloped. Uh it's zoned I2. Uh and the purposes of which is to provide areas suitable for warehousing, secondary processing and packaging. Uh with related outdoor storage and

incidental sales. This is generally in your industrial park. Uh surrounding land uses include commercial and industrial businesses including another contractor's yard. Uh there's a town public work facility uh and one or two other undeveloped parcels. With that, I will turn it over to Tim who will run through the site plan and all the related uh permit requirements and standards. And when we're done, I'll come up and say a few words to wrap things up after public comment and answer any questions that the commission may have. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Tim and we're going to share our screen so that the uh site plan and the plans are on the screen for anyone watching from home.

Thank you.

Yes. Uh so, good evening. My name is Tim HL from BL Companies. Um, I do have Jordan here. Uh, she's actually signed in on Zoom under my name. I see she's coming on as a panelist now. So, thank you very much. Uh, so I would like to go over a few existing conditions items uh that uh Mr. Casey did not mention. Um, there are four lots as was mentioned. We are prepared to consolidate those lots as a a condition of approval. I believe we did have a draft lot consolidation plan in our plan set here. Um essentially just showing we are planning to consolidate all four lots into a single parcel. Uh the total area of the single consolidated parcel uh would be about 6.6 acres. Uh currently the parcel is bordered by Northwood Drive which is uh the plan south side. Um there is the portion of West Dudleytown Road that is plan right. Um there's also the the community firehouse kind of uh northeast on the plan view. Uh another contractor yard to the rear uh plan north. Uh and then there is a uh an electric company to the south which is uh plan left. Currently the facility has a single building located on I believe it is the five Northwood Drive parcel. The building is just under 18,000 square ft. Uh that facility will remain as is. There's no building improvements, no footprint changes proposed as a part of this project. The paved area surrounding the building uh contains about 14 parking spaces and one loading dock. There are also material storage bins on that parcel in the rear uh which is the the plan north again. Um those four material storage

bins were installed when the the current tenant which is uh Burns Construction Company, the the applicant uh when they took out their lease on this facility um and those material bins were inadvertently installed just over the property line. The rear of them go a couple feet past. We are proposing and and we'll get to that in a moment to resolve that encroachment, pull that back onto the property. Um the existing building has all the necessary utility connections. We are not proposing to modify those, but it does have water, sewer, storm drain, electric, telecommunications, and gas. Uh as mentioned, we did uh go before inland wetlands and water course commission. There are two main wetland resources on site. Um on the plan right there is a um a vegetative wetland system and then on the the plan left kind of in the top left corner there is a slightly larger wetland system um on our site but then it extends into off-site properties uh continuing to the south or plan left. Generally speaking uh the sites are uh the two portions of the site away from the building are primarily all wooded today. There are those uh wetlands pockets within the forest uh but most of the parcel is upland area. We are not within any FEMA flood plane areas as well. Um for storm water infrastructure, the property does contain a few catch basins within the paved areas. Uh those discharge more or less directly without any retention or treatment. Uh there's a catch basin in the back yard space that discharges to uh to the wetland resources and then there are a few catch basins in the the front area of the property. Those discharge into the municipal system in Northwood Drive. Uh

roof runoff is captured uh as well piped underground and direct discharge into the municipal system in Northwood Drive. So looking ahead to proposed conditions. Um so as I mentioned the existing building will remain as is. No footprint changes uh give or take 18,000 square ft. The proposed building does comply with all setbacks although we are not modifying it. It does comply with the required front side and rear setbacks. We are proposing additional parking. The building does not currently meet the uh the latest parking standards um which we have one space per two employees on any one shift but in no case less than one per 500 square ft. We're proposing 36 spaces which would comply with the one space per 500 square ft. Uh proposed employees were expecting roughly 30. So in this case the controlling factor is the the square foot area of the building. Uh so of those 36 parking spaces uh we are retaining the roughly 14 along the immediate building wall on the it would be east side from plan view. It's the north side of the site and then we are expanding that pavement area a little bit to the plan right to add the remaining needed parking spaces. uh does push the the existing curbing paving limits a little bit farther towards that northerner plan right side, but it largely retains the same function and um and everyday travel pathways that the employees are used to. Uh as I mentioned, there are the material storage bins in the rear of the property. Um we are pulling those in uh resolving the encroachment. We are also pulling it far enough in that we can provide uh space for some landscape

buffer behind between the back of the bins and the property behind us. Um I believe the numbers somewhere around 10 ft or so of buffer. Um but we are resolving that conflict. Uh we are also adding in a formal space for refu containers. Uh that is also in the rear of the property. Um those are those two uh the the darker gray uh squares and rectangles in the back. The the ones on the the very planned northern edge, those are the material storage bins. And then the two smaller ones on just to the left of that, those are the uh the refuge containers. As I mentioned, utility connections are not proposed to be modified at all. uh because there's no building changes, there's no uh no need to update or modify any of the utility connections. We are proposing to make some modifications to the site grading and storm water management. Uh overall, the site does uh the proposed development will include addition of the the main contractor yard on the it's the plan left which is the the south side of the building. Um so in order to accommodate that we do need to add uh noticeable improvements for storm water management. That area is a little bit lower and due to the presence of the wetlands we do have to uh fill in that area a little bit to provide the separation to groundwater needed for the storm water infiltration to comply with the state regulations. So on that southern side, we're we're bringing in a couple feet of fill and overall that yard space will drain uh in one of two directions. Um it'll drain primarily to the uh to the plan left uh off of the the yard space and we have um we have some drainage swailes that will convey the water into the storm water basin. uh it'll be pre-treated through

the swailes and then have the the primary treatment through uh the active infiltration and storage within the basin. And then in overflow conditions, we do also have a swale as well. There's an overflow we set so that in large storm events uh if it exceeds capacity of the basin in in exceptionally large storms water will overflow that weir and flow out towards the wetlands in the the southwest corner of the property which is matching existing conditions. Uh this whole area the south side or plan left of the building pretty much all of it drains towards that wetland in existing conditions in the the paved yard space. We are proposing uh some improvements there as well. The catch basin in the rear will remain exactly as is. Um that is currently installed online on a culvert connecting the two wetland areas together. So in the interest of maintaining the the hydraulic connection between the wetlands, we wanted to leave that alone. But we are proposing improvements on the front half of the site. Um because we are pushing the curb out a little bit to expand the parking. we do need to add some storm water retention. So, what we're proposing is um connecting the catch basins on that front side into an underground storm water retention system. So what we're essentially going to be holding the water and slowly releasing it out into the municipal system to match the existing discharge point, but also through the act of storing it and slowly releasing it, we're ensuring that the water will flow out at a rate matching or uh in a slight reduction compared to existing conditions. Um jumping back quickly to the um to the outdoor storage area. Um we are proposing the surface treatment in that storage area to be uh

reclaimed asphalt millings. Uh given that this is a contractor's yard, it will uh there's going to be a variety of equipment stored in that area. uh include we did show them on the the site plan uh three to four triacal dump trucks with with trailers um roughly one excavator per trailer um and possibly a loader. And with those excavators, a lot of them have metal tracks. If we were to use a regular asphalt or a concrete pavement, the metal tracks will tear that up and chew it up and it will u it will get chewed up and and really ground up into millings within a handful of years. Um we found these contractor yards are much more suitable for the millings because it's a very easy to maintain surface. So that is what we are proposing for the surface treatment. Uh as I mentioned overall number of employees will be about 30 hours of operation are expected to be about 6:00 a.m. to 6 pm. Um uh we are proposing the to modify the existing driveways. The curb cuts will remain where they are today, but in the our analysis and design for verifying truck turning movements in and out, the existing driveways are just a little restrictive. So, we're proposing to just widen out the the curb openings and provide a slightly wider radius so that uh tractor trailers or dump trucks towing trailers can come in safely off the street without risk of clipping a curb. So, there's slight modifications there. And then the general traffic flow, the plan right side will be primarily employees or uh occasionally it may be a dump truck or so going into the material storage bin in the back. The vast majority of the more construction traffic will be utilizing the plan left driveway. Uh so

we do have a couple different uh shades shown on the plan. The darker gray is the limits of the reclaimed asphalt for the the proper yard storage area. The lighter gray is where we're proposing new batuminous asphalt pavement. Uh so you'll notice on that left side it's a batuminous asphalt all the way out to the street line and then we do have a a road going around the building on that plan leftand side. The intention there is to have the ability for pretty much all construction related traffic to be isolated to that southern driveway so that there's very little overlap between employees and construction traffic. Um if there's dump trucks coming into the material bins, whether it's a dropping off material or picking it up, they can enter on that plan left driveway and circulate around the building without having to intermix with the uh the employee parking area. Uh there are also new concrete pads proposed for the material storage bins and the refuge containers. Uh currently those bins are just sitting on the asphalt pavement, but we are proposing to do concrete as a a floor for those so that it's a little bit more stable um and certainly a more more uniform surface for storage of of the the various soil products that may be stored there. We do also have a a pretty comprehensive landscaping plan included. Specifically, we have screening along the the front side uh the plan south and along the plan left towards our southern butter. Uh that includes a large number of of evergreens for visual screening. Uh there's also screening behind the material storage bins as I mentioned previously. Uh that is a row primarily evergreens again uh separating our

property from the the contractor yard behind us uh to provide some screening. Um we are also proposing to add street and parking lot trees. So, there's a handful of shade trees being proposed along the frontage and a couple uh al along the border of the parking area and as a condition of approval from inland wetlands, we are going to be adding buffer plantings between the storage yard and the wetland area. So, that would be kind of where uh where the the hand is going right now on that planned north side of the storage yard. Uh there will be some uh buffer plantings consisting primarily of wet foot species to provide a little bit of a soft transition between the yard and the uh the wetlands as well as provide a a nice visual barrier where the the contractor yard stops and the you know the buffer zone and vegetation starts. Um, we did receive a thorough review from town staff both through the inland wetlands process as well as uh this process for the special permit. Um, the wetlands comments uh conditions of approval, we are prepared to uh satisfy all of those comments. We have sent in a set to uh to Mr. Cassaldi. Uh we believe we've satisfied most of them at this point. We know there's a little back and forth uh to remain, but we are um we are working through that. We also did receive a few comments from uh the town engineer. Um we did respond to those. I believe it was last week. We feel the vast majority of them are are fairly minor in nature. We have no problem satisfying those. And I believe uh it was mentioned in the staff memo that largely they are satisfied. I think

there's two that may be open and have a little bit more discussion to remain, but uh we're confident that we can coordinate with town staff to to satisfy those comments as well. So I believe with that I'll pass it back to mention the sidewalk.

Ah yes, thank you for the reminder. Um so we are requesting the waiver from the the sidewalk requirement as Mr. Casey had mentioned. Um specifically the uh the regulations allow for the waiver under three conditions. What we uh our uh professional opinion the condition that applies here is that there would be little public benefit to having a sidewalk here. Uh there is no sidewalk on this section of West Dudleytown Road and there's no sidewalk on Northwood Drive. Um, when we combine that with the fact that this is a very industrial area. It's a contractor use. Um, installing a sidewalk would basically be a sidewalk to nowhere. There's nothing to connect to. There's no transit stops immediately at this vicinity. Um, and there's no sidewalks on on West Dudley to connect to as well. So, we feel uh the waiver of the sidewalk is uh does fall under the criteria for little public benefit. I believe with that, John, did you want to provide a few final remarks? Thank you, Tim. Again, for the record, John Casey, I I think we'll wait um to see if there's any questions and then we'll do our final remarks then. Um it's pretty straightforward. we want what are we're going to ask for but uh it's probably best to hear the comments and if there's any responses we need um so we can wrap everything up at the end of the hearing

okay thank you uh Linda

thank you commissioners um Linda Lauriano assistant director of building and land use um in your package you received the staff report um regarding the proposed contractor's yard um there were some listed conditions recommended um you know conditions of approval under the staff and I'd like to just add to that um as um the uh presenter was stating about the storage bins material storage bins um the commission may want to um either put a height limit um I'm not sure it wasn't really stated on the types of material. I know they said soil um but maybe uh I would say I if they could give us a list of the types of materials that are going to be stored and also a maximum height uh that would be um I guess a one to ensure that it's not going to exceed you know a height that wouldn't be permitted. Uh for the record, John Casey, the we we checked with Burns. So the materials would be um sand, stone, and um highway uh debris. They are basically a road contractor. They they have a lot of state DOT contracts. So they all the materials they get when they're rebuilding roads, they bring it here. Uh and this will be a stopping point before it's ultimately uh disposed of. So those are the three materials that will be kept in the in the bins. Actually the question of the height had I think came up in wetlands and um um we don't have a specific height. They're they're made from big concrete blocks if I'm not mistaken. So um but I think it's typically three of those

blocks. So I don't think it's much higher than 8 ft possibly, but I can't say for certain. Tim, do you have anything to Usually they're six feet for three blocks high. That would be the the wall itself. So, for the record, six feet, three blocks high. Each block is 2 feet and that would be the height of the wall that would encapsulate the uh the materials and the material height would be would exceed six feet. I think it possibly could under certain circumstances. Yes. Okay. To what maximum height? Oh, well, I'm sure there's a point where it would spill over. Um, 15 seems like an engineering question.

Yeah, it shouldn't exceed 50. Okay. No, no. If you're asking would it exceed like the building height for the zone? I I don't think that's okay. A reasonable, you know, it's not likely I should say that it's going to exceed the the maximum building height. Thank you.

Okay. Um so as um we're we're going through this the commission may want to consider uh imposing maybe a maximum height um to the material storage um just because you know sometimes change of ownership um other materials may be stored there um and we don't want that to we want to be able to uh just contain it and be able to enforce it. Um, in addition to that, uh, I would also like to add that the lots be combined as as part of this approval. I know that it's in their proposal, but I'd like to add that as a condition to ensure that it be combined. Um, beside that, um, they did address I spoke with our town engineer, um, all but two of, uh, their items. I gave you a copy today. Okay, I added that to your package. So, it's all but just um two minor revisions that they're going to be working with our town engineer on. Other than that, I believe that it meets the criteria as stated of the special permit. Um the storage area will be properly screened. um the millings instead of asphalt for the parking area or the storage area uh has been approved by our town engineer. Um and uh the only other item that I believe I'd like to we you know would like the applicant to submit is a lighting plan. If they're proposing if there are existing lighting on the building, it should be shown on the plan as well. And a phototric plan to ensure that the

light source um will not um you know exceed I guess 0.1 Kelvin from the property line. So we just like to see the light source on that to ensure compliance with our light plan. Other than that, um, staff has no further concerns. Okay. Thank you. At this time, we'll entertain questions from the audience. If anyone have any questions from the audience, please come to the podium and state your name and address. Uh, can you check online? No one online.

Nothing online. Okay. Okay, we'll start with the commission and we'll start with Commissioner Mallette. Any questions on the um right side of the plan which I think is uh on the Eastley is that going to be left mainly as is uh undeveloped tree stay? Uh yes. So that's the the plan right area I believe you mentioned. Yes, that will remain um we're pushing the parking out just a handful of feet to expand, but past that it will remain as is. Yes.

Okay. So, from the it's not even really a main road, but the the main road coming in um that will be largely will be no change in view really. Correct. Okay.

Um materials. I think part of my question was already answered mostly road construction. Would are there going to be any materials that could be uh contaminated or would you know have have further regulations um that could be potentially um you know not good for the wetlands or you know so is there a a limit or some kind of uh for the road construction that they're not hazardous in any way?

Yeah. any uh hazardous materials encountered during any of the uh site construction processes certainly with roadway. Um really it's limited to like asbestous pipe or something like that. Um any of those demolition processes fall under the deep protocols for uh tracking and paperwork and it's very strict that those get hauled and disposed of by a licensed hauler. And there's a paper trail from the second it's cut and capped out of the ground. There's a paper trail that follows it every step of the way and it has to go to licensed disposal centers. It can't just go to interim sites for temporary storage. So there there's no intended uh storage of any hazardous materials on the site. Okay. Thank you. That was my questions.

Commissioner O'Brien, any questions? Um my question would be um if we're combining the lots, are there any special permits on the lots that are being merged into this lot that would be in conflict for the record, John Casey? Um no, the only uh prior approvals and I think they're in the staff report. There's one um uh site plan approval for the original building um from 1978. Sorry, from 1978 there was a site plan approval for an addition to the existing building. And in 2007, there was a 2-year special permit to allow a 35 um 53 foot box storage trailer at the rear of that property. So that would be limited to five Northwood. And so the other three parcels have no record of any uh zoning approvals.

Uh thank you. How how are you going to ensure that storm water maintenance is handled going forward? Will there be an annual inspection by a PE that's filed with the town engineer or exactly how are you going to do that?

I'll defer to Tim on that. I know there's there's a complete storm water manual and operations uh uh guideline but as a condition of approval from uh the inland wetlands commission we are uh submitting annual records of the storm water operation and maintenance. Um the annual operation and maintenance is required under the state regulations for storm water. But uh town staff like I mentioned during inland wetlands they requested a condition be added to uh to receive written documentation of the maintenance measures being performed.

Okay. Um I guess this is a question. Can I ask staff a question? Sure. Um, Linda, how does the town assure that things like the trees at a certain size and height are planted? Uh, do we have a performance bond mechanism in place that can be called if it's not done? Yes. So, when they go for their final certificate of occupancy, if those plantings were not um if they're seeking for a a CO um and they haven't been planted, there will be a CO agreement and they'll have a specific amount of time to do so and they'll they'll post a bond.

Okay. Yep. We'll get some quotes um and ensure So, they don't they don't post a bond at the time they get the permit. They post it when they want to zero

if correct the way that we historically have been doing so. Yes. Now it for soil and erosion control and you know maintenance and things like that if the commission wishes um to ask the applicant to post a bond um that's up to the commission as well. Um but from our experience being that most of uh these types of application also goes through the inland wetlands we actually secure all of that through the inland wetlands approval with our town engineer as well prior to our approval. So we have a pretty good So you're comfortable with the current mechanism? Yes. All right. Thank you.

It's worked. Okay, Commissioner James.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, this might be a question more for uh the planning department. Um, considering they did not submit the sidewalk plan um and and requested um an exemption um if we didn't provide that, what would be the required sidewalk um for this project? Our zoning regulation just says like the width of the sidewalk, but it's required along the street frontage of all new site developments or redevelopments. So, what exactly would that sidewalk look like? That would be, you know, in working with our town engineer, um, it would be right on, you know, within the right of way, a specific between the front property line. They have two frontages and I'm not sure with having wetlands that they'll have some challenges on West Dudley going into Northwood. Um, but our town engineer uh, you know, actually was comfortable with with the waiver. Um I I'm not there there are no it's up to the commission ultimately but um they would have to work with our department of public works and our town engineer to install a sidewalk in the frontage.

Okay. I guess also just to be like make sure I'm understanding there there's like a large property is would a sidewalk be required along the entirety of that property or is it worth saying like just a portion where they're uh along the entirety of of the property? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um the entire frontage. Okay. Um uh that's all I have for questions. Thank you. Uh, Commissioner Goff,

thank you. Um, let's see. Um, I guess I I will just ask one question about the sidewalk. Um, because that was one of the the things that was incomplete in the staff. Oh, well, the staff report mentioned that there was no at the time no um uh request for a waiver. Um, so just as a sort of, you know, I understand and we we've we've had this, we've had a couple of instances of folks coming in and the question is always chicken and egg

because the question is always, well, this doesn't connect to anything right now. But I think part of the reason we put this in was because we wanted to start putting building blocks in place. And even if there were other prop existing properties that weren't asking for something, uh if there are now two or three new things and there's a sidewalk here, there's a gap, there's a sidewalk there, uh eventually we could fill in those gaps. Um, so I I guess my question to you on on on the sidewalks is um or a multi-use path because it can also be a multi-use path which might be more appropriate out here. In looking at the site plan of where this is, I understand it's sort of in an industrial area. This is putting in places where you're largely going to see commercial contractors and of course go down at the other end is our own public works department. But if you go to the east and north a little, you start getting to a commercial area. We have a brewery there. We hope we have had discussions with this commission about having more commercial activity there. So I guess my question to you is is it really enough to just say it doesn't connect to anything now and we're building, you know, we're building this for the future that we start having building blocks. if this were completely industrial and everything north and east of it were industrial, you know, does it make some sense here? Um, so I I asked that as as just a general question and sorry, I think we'll both have an input on that. Um, we think given the and it was just an oversight on our part not to include it in the original uh proposal. Um, we had never considered a a sidewalk here. Um,

given the nature of this particular street, the way north uh wood comes in and goes around and really fronts just industrial pretty uh properties and activities that even in the future, it's unlikely that this would be an area attractive for people uh to walk. We think it's more and is used by vehicles and we would have the sidewalk to nowhere. We see seems like a lot of the uses there are pretty well established and um you know maximize their coverage. you know, the other contractor yard across the way. It's I I it's speculation, but right, I don't see them going anywhere, and I don't see a significant turnover where you would have sidewalks on any of these other properties in the next 5 10 years. Um, we understand if it was a more commercial active place, you got to start building those pieces. I understand that. Uh but here just given the nature like I said sort of a corner like the road just sort of bends around to nowhere. Um so we think that there is no public benefit and you know we didn't really address this but the other basis for not having a sidewalk is uh environmental issues. And um we we didn't really even evaluate it, but we think there would be issues up on West Dudley Town because we'd be so close to the wetlands there. Um we'd be close to the the the um um storm water detention basin on the southern end of our property. I know the other condition or the other standard is, you know, if it's really not technically feasible. may be technically feasible, but we think it would take a lot of engineering

to put a a path here that really wouldn't benefit the public. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Um, anything you want to add, Tim, on that? Yeah, briefly.

Um, the, uh, the right of way also is pretty narrow here. So, uh, kind of building upon that, uh, technical challenges, uh, it may be feasible to fit a sidewalk, but it is a very narrow, uh, narrow right ofway from the curb line to the property line. Uh, and that would force the sidewalk very close to or right on the curb line. And that generally the industry standards is to try to separate sidewalks as far away from the traveled way as possible to enhance pedestrian safety. So there certainly uh is several drawbacks with the physical design criteria that we would we would be seeking to satisfy with adding that sidewalk between the fitment the uh the wetlands proximity the storm water management basin um and just kind of fitting all of that within the right of way.

Great. Thank you. Um couple other questions. Um the you mentioned you and I think you mentioned this in your um presentation about the contractor's yard is reclaimed asphalt millings. So I and this is just an educational thing for my benefit. Um you have asphalt, you have nothing, you know, you have dirt or whatever non-compacted dirt completely permeable. Um where the asphalt millings fall within the permeability. I I assume these are more permeable than an asphalt, right? So So that's a good thing with respect to some permeability here or is there too much leeching?

So um normal soil conditions uh the permeability varies based on whether it's you know sand, gravel, silt compaction as well. Um, and from a storm water modeling, we look at that at the I guess the the easiest way to explain it is a percentage of how much water hits that will soak in versus runoff. Um, and that can vary from, you know, 40% up through 70% depending on the type of soil and makeup. When we look at uh reclaimed asphalt or other more like stone or gravel surfaces, um, it can depend. it can get somewhere in the 70ish% range. That more runs off um up to like 96%. Generally, um what we think of as as true impervious, whether it's concrete or regular asphalt, it's considered 98% impervious. There's a tiny bit that soaks in, but next to nothing. Uh from a conservative standpoint, the industry always assumes items like reclaimed asphalt is 96% impervious. It's being overly conservative on the storm water design so that we ensure our storm water basins are sized large enough if those gravel areas get really compact and really dense. But there certainly is in in most cases they don't get that dense. More water will soak in and infiltrate through the yard space. So a little bit of of it is the conservative nature of engineering design on why we assume it's virtually impervious but there is definitely infiltration capacity through the uh the reclaimed asphalt or if it were you know compacted stone or similar um there is some infiltration that will happen through that

and and and the reason you're doing this is because if you did asphalt it get torn up by these the tracks of the loaders. So to the degree that these lo You know, that implies to me anyway that sort of this would be more pvious because it's sort of being ground up all or it's sort of being I don't know circulated all the time as opposed to, you know, because if you put as if you weren't doing that, you'd put asphalt in, right? So, correct. Okay.

Yes. And I think what you're touching upon is as the the construction equipment is circulating through the yard, it will kind of fluff up the soil, if you will. So it it shouldn't be hard as a rock all the time. Um it will kind of get loosened up and turned up a little bit. Okay. So then um in the in the suitable transportation conditions and you talked about um how many employees are there there now? Uh I believe they're they are operating out of there today and they they have roughly 30 employees. Oh and that so that does not change the expansion of the yard is not going to change the number of employees. Correct. Okay. one in that town maximum. Okay. Yes.

So, so, so I think that the point is really by doing this and expanding this there's not going to be any large change in the traffic conditions overall other than, you know, other than the design and the amount of parking and that kind of thing, but the circulation and the people coming and going is about the same now. Maybe it will increase slightly but it's not it's not like you know we have this small operation now and it's becoming three times as large. Is that correct? Correct.

Okay. Okay. Um and I think the other the final question I have um is is just the whole issue the in the environmental section. You talk a lot about the wetlands issues, storm water, water runoff, and all that, which is great. Uh, but you don't talk at all about the vegetation or wildlife. Uh, Commissioner Mallet also already um I think asked a question. Pretty much the uh eastern side of the property is going to be left largely as is. Correct. Yes.

And that's just a buffer and wooded and as is now. uh it's really the uh western side where there's a lot of change. Um how you know the staff memo mentions that there's no real um you know there's no real calculation of trees and vegetation lost how much is being put back with the buffering and so forth. Do you have some numbers on that? Um, so we don't have necessarily hard numbers on that, but we really did uh through the inland wetlands process, we've planted out just about as much as we can around the development areas to restore as much of that vegetation as possible while still maintaining adequate sight lines for safety and maintaining the the form and functionality of the storm water management system. Uh so as I mentioned one of the con uh conditions of approval from inland wetlands was to add back in wetland buffer plantings between the yard space and the wetlands. Um there was a a specific requirement for species types and we went through a little more discussion on number and area. Um and really the intent is to fit as much vegetative value back in as possible. Um so primarily is that the yard space on that plan west. I think that's the southern side of the site. Try to fit as much as possible there. And then we do have more of the shade trees as you look towards the parking lot and street area to provide more of that um uh you the shade benefits, the uh the the cooling um things of that nature. So we are trying to maximize the developable area as we can um and still retain a lot of the existing vegetation where possible.

Okay. and what what's the current condition of wildlife in these uh so this area does have um it's kind of a transitional uh forest area right now it very clearly was clear-cut in the history a lot of the trees aren't very large in nature um and there's not a lot of undergrowth here uh it's a lot of the trees are very similar in age so it speaks very much to it was cleared at one point and then some point somebody just you know decided to let it go and in a lot of those environments And the wildlife benefit tends to be much more restricted because wildlife really needs that variety of vegetation types, heights, sizes, things of that nature really to provide uh shelter for a lot of the, you know, smaller animals that may be along the ground. But then as you build up in the, you know, larger species, larger stories, whether it could be, um, you know, nesting habitats for birds of prey are similar, they need different ages of of trees, different species, a lot of the undergrowth to provide shade and shelter. So, because that is lacking here, um, there really isn't a huge wildlife benefit in this area. There certainly is more of that as you head back to the wetlands, but it really does uh get very limited as you head into the main portions where we're proposing development.

I'm just worried about the corridor effect, you know, losing losing some of that corridor. But uh I I understand what you're saying. Those are all my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Commissioner Marshall Neely.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Most of my questions, excuse me, have been addressed, but I I do have uh I want to ask a qu a clarifying question to the staff regarding signage. Do we normally uh do you normally uh request that the proposal has some kind of signage where uh some sign outside says what kind of building it is, what kind of uh business it is.

It's not a requirement, but it would be wise to just get it, you know, uh through the commission now as a site plan if they're proposing a freestanding sign. um just because if you know they would have to come back for a site plan review just for a freestanding sign. So um just to ensure that it meets the requirements for location height um but if they're not sometimes they're not ready to submit it. They don't have the design um they're not too sure of you know what design they'd like. So, it's kind of hard. Um, and and I understand they I believe they weren't ready to provide us with with a business sign.

Okay. Yeah. I want to walk back to the sidewalk um discussion and I wrote down 30 employees and your hours of operation will be 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Correct. Yes. Okay. anytime during the day. Do you think maybe a couple of employees might want to go out and walk?

Given the proposed use here, it's it's very unlikely. Um, given it's a contractor yard, so most of the employees here, they will be coming in first thing in the morning. They may be uh, you know, picking up their equipment or filling up, you know, whether it's a a soil material or similar, and then they're leaving the site and going to a formal construction site. You know, it could be a paving job here in town. could be somewhere an hour or two hours away and the vast majority of employees will not be spending much time on the site. They'll be coming in parking their personal vehicle, picking up a company vehicle and and leaving the site. Um, so that certainly is part of the the factor why we feel uh the waiver may make sense. Certainly from a macro uh or I'm sorry, a micro standpoint. The macro obviously we discussed a little bit but um we feel there's very low likelihood that any employees from the site would be walking or riding a bike around this area.

Okay. I I I do um I do agree that uh the chicken and egg I I do agree that you know if we're going to do something we should uh plan for it now as opposed to having to go back and readress it. So would that be something that you would be hesitant with if the waiver isn't approved?

Uh it certainly would be a challenge for us to fit the sidewalks throughout uh both frontages uh given the restrictions we have with the narrow ride of way with the the wetland area and the the storm water basins. Okay. Well, those are all of my questions. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Commissioner Balden. The joy of being last, Mr. Chair. All all my technical questions have been answered. Um, assistant building director Laurana, do does the town of Bloomfield have any policy in place for trees that are removed and being replanted elsewhere throughout the town like the city of Hartford does?

Um, we don't. So, we do have a regulation um for existing vegetation. Um and I think this came up at the last public hearing with uh the verbiage on that. Um it while the intent I believe was to replace them, the regulation uh wasn't clear on that. Um, it states that any trees that are significant trees that are to remain must be noted on the site plan. And I believe that under the conditions of approval, I stated that um the significant trees to be removed were marked but not the ones that are to remain. And so that would be missing. Um all the it would have to be preserved. Um and if damaged then replaced and if it couldn't be replaced then you would have to replace them elsewhere.

Yes, understood. We do have uh our survey does show all of the the significant trees. I believe our demolition plan does show the ones to be removed. Um and that was actually a comment that came up in inland wetlands as well is providing protection. So we do include details in our plan set that show what the tree protection looks like. Um, and I believe we have a note on the plans that says if trees are damaged or uh destroyed that they do need to be replaced. And I I believe it's a match for the the caliber to the maximum extent practicable and that would be great. But if the revised plan can actually show uh you know the significant trees on the plan to be preserved.

Sure, we can do that. Required. Thank you. To the applicant. Is this the only um storage staging location that Burns Construction has for their operations overall? Uh they do have I believe it's Well, John, do you want to respond to that?

They are they're a company out of Stratford. So there I know they have one facility down there and I apologize I don't have their other ones but their intent is as they get more business in the northern central part of the state they need some place here so they're not taking equipment from Stratford to Bloomfield or Windsor or Enfield. And so that's that's the intent here. Uh and kind of goes to the question that you had about the employees. The employees come, they pick up their stuff, and they work at at job sites, not not in the building. There might be just a couple people at maximum in the building, I I believe, if anyone. So, um, because their headquarters is in Stratford. That's where all their accounting and, you know, administration is.

So, I'm I'm I'm assuming they own all their equipment or Yeah.% however it works. Sometimes they Yeah. and they're most likely staged overall out in Stratford. And so that's their main location. The capacity here that you're going to have for both material storage and equipment storage will be suitable today for their current capacity. That yeah, when they were looking for a site, they felt that this would satisfy their needs. I I don't think not just for today, but for their business needs going forward. And and based on the wetland restrictions, do you have do you have the ability to develop further? as that

I I think it would be a challenge to to do anything more on this site. And then as Tim pointed out, you know, the way you know that that contractor yard is going to be uh sort of hemmed in, fenced in. There's going to be a physical barrier. Then there's going to be all the new plantings and obviously we can't mess with the the detention basin, you know. So, you're kind of looking at a almost, you know, max buildout scenario for this site. Um, yeah, and they've, you know, they when we started, they're like, "We don't need any more building space. We just we need some place to park our trucks to be somewhat flip." But that's really what they're they're looking for. and and they understand that, you know, as part of redeveloping this site, they have to do all the things, the storm water upgrades, the the landscaping, you know, and uh bringing it up to code.

Last question. You said they're a roadway contractor. Are they roadway only or do they do utility work as well? Uh I think they I think it's really mainly roads and maybe some utility like sewers like but it's big projects for DOT and I apologize. They have a general counsel who's involved in the project. He couldn't be here. I'm more zoning guy. So, no worries. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Okay. Thank you. Uh, one quick question for staff. I noticed they didn't submit a lighting plan and I just wanted to note if the staff is satisfied with the current lighting would be adequate for the current structure in addition to the new structure. I believe I we requested that they submit a light lighting plan. Even if it's existing, we'd like to see it.

Yeah, it it's our understanding that, you know, there's there's building there's lights on the building, but there's no intent to put lights in the contractor's yard, and we haven't been asked, you know, Tim, you know, when we're going through that planning phase, lighting, new lighting in the parking lot wasn't, you know, requested by by the applicant. So, but we can you can we can have that as a condition of approval. So, we can show what's on the building and what's currently there and if there's anything. Um, I believe that's part of the conditions of approval is for you to submit a lighting plan. Oh, okay. Yeah.

All right. Thank you. That's all I have. At this time, we'll take any comments from the audience. Anyone have any comments regarding this application? And if you can check online, see if there's anyone online. No comments. All right. We'll start with the commission. We'll start at the other end. Uh, Commissioner Bolton, any comments?

No. First, um, I guess not to the applicant, but just to remind the commission that I think we should definitely, um, require or stipulate some sort of material height restriction. These things can these stock piles can can actually get pretty high. And so just from my own experience, but we should definitely have have that incorporated. So that's it. Great. Thank you. Uh, Commissioner Marshall Neely.

Thank you. I I agree with Commissioner Bolton. I also think that maybe we want to think about the materials that are stored there and put conditions on there so that no other materials other than what was stated in here would be allowed to be stored there. So, we we're talking about the height and we're talking about where it's stored, but you know, if someone else purchases that building, we want to maybe put it in place so that these are the only um only materials that can be stored there, you know. And there was one other thing I wanted to I can't think of it. I didn't write it down. That's what happens when you're 25.

That That's it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, uh, Commissioner Goff. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, yeah, I certainly agree about the height and I guess I would ask ultimately what our staff recommends for that in terms of I was I was a little surprised with the six I I know exactly the wall structure because I've gone to these places and bought mulch or some, you know, whatever. So I was a little surprised that it from a six-foot sort of base it could go up to 15 feet before you had phase change and things went down. But whatever I I think that I don't think we have a huge concern other than just having a max so that it can't get beyond a certain amount and I would look to staff uh to recommend something that would be a condition of approval. I also just glancing through it I don't think we have a condition of approval in there in terms of marking. I it's mentioned in the staff report, but I'm not sure we have a uh a requirement that they mark the significant trees in the final map. Um, and I guess I'm I am I am a little confused. I know we I know that the conservation energy and environment committee is going to take up re looking at that ordinance again and passing it on to us. But I think from what you said if um if they take down significant trees and don't replace the caliber with some of the buffer area, they would have to do it they would have to provide trees somewhere else. Is that correct? That's the impression I'm getting from you. I I that was not my understanding. Did the inland wetlands commission impose a condition.

I'm not sure. I think that they wanted them to provide a buffer between the wetlands and the development. Right. The and not Yeah.

Yeah. The condition of approval for wetlands was to add um vegetation between the uh Yeah. where Jordan's showing like on the around the edge of the the yard. It's not it doesn't have anything to do with significant trees. That's not their regulation. They were looking more towards, you know, providing native wetlands or wetlands adjacent species uh because that's an upland review area. And so they just wanted that more densely planted to provide a buffer between the active area and the and the wetlands.

Yeah. and provide that that mix of um vegetation that Tim talked about for the wildlife. So, you'll have more bushes than you have now. So, uh and and that's fine. You know, as uh Commissioner James has pulled up our our regulation, and I thought what was said a minute ago is if they didn't they took down trees of significant caliber and did not replace those and replacing those could be in the buffer area obviously. um suit free location is not available on the site. replacement should be planned at a location with the town designated by commissioner its agent and I think that's what you had said earlier and

it's it's my understanding that that regulation so when you have a site like this you have to mark all your significant trees and you have to show the commission you're going to we're going to take these significant trees down and and we're going to protect these other significant trees. are everything. You know, the significant ones in the white area where the, you know, the yard is, those are coming out. We will mark the ones that are slated to to remain. And the way the regulation reads is if, you know, if I uh if we designated, you know, this tree over here to remain, but during construction, we backed into it and knocked it over, then we have to replace it. But the regulation does not require us to replace every significant tree that is intended to come out. And that that's I believe is how the regulation is written. Um I I guess that um we're not going to obviously solve that tonight and and I I understand there's some there's some vagueness in this regulation at this point. Um I I think that we just want a condition of approval that they will we'll you know comply with this and we'll get you know legal repres legal um opinion on that. Um uh go go from there. So um that's not this is really not your fault. You know your not your fault. We're just trying to to hash that. And I guess my only other comment is um you know on the sidewalk part I I do understand and and I I think the commission will grant the waiver um but I also I'm I am wondering because we we keep going through this process just as a general comment maybe what would the commission should do in coordination not as part of not as included in the plan of conservation development because we want to get that done but maybe one of the things we should undertake is to

designate made some areas where we think it would be good to build connectivity. And again, the only reason I really bring it up in this site is because yeah, North Northwood Drive is very much contractor area, but the area on Blue Hills we hope to be more of a commercial area. U you mentioned walking paths. our town engineer since he started I know has made a walking path from the back of the DPW area down to Samuel Wheeler Reed Park. So um you know there are there are possibilities here. Um uh so I think that's something the commission may want to undertake so that we have better idea of when we should require these things and we should thank you.

Okay, Miss James. Um, yeah, I appreciate the thoroughess of the applicants application. Um, I am, uh, kind of disappointed in the sidewalk waiver. Um, I mean, there is a school nearby. I could imagine, you know, people want to take a loop around, um, during lunch or before or after school. Um, so while we can't envision it today, it's not that it's impossible for something like that to happen. Um, but I mean, I'm going to pick my battles and this is not one of those. Well, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien.

I'm I'm going to take a little different take on the sidewalk and um I've been in this business a while and you know, if if we keep saying we're not going to put a sidewalk cuz there's no other sidewalk there, we'll never have one. Um so, you have to take a stand someplace. And if I'm riding a bicycle on there and I found my way there, wouldn't it be great if a triacle truck is coming down the road loaded with asphalt that I had an area of refuge and I could get off the road or do we have a handicapped van that may be coming there to for an employee that they would like a pl that somebody would like a place to stand and wait. So I can definitely see a need for establishing a policy that we're going to move from an autodependent vehicle dependent society and we're going to start and recognize the need to have um complete streets. Um, and if the commission wasn't going to support full sidewalks there, I would argue strongly that we ought to uh provide the rightway for the sidewalk and that ought to be cleared and so that I I walk many rural roads in the town of Bloomfield and there are places where there is no area of refuge and if you get a FedEx truck and a and a UPS truck trying to pass one another and you're on that on that street as a pedestrian, you're looking to get out of the way of them. And if we did nothing else, we could provide a right away that's cleared uh maybe was gravel, but uh we can't simply say there's no sidewalk there, so therefore we're not going to have a sidewalk. I would not vote for a sidewalk waiver.

Thank you. Uh, Commissioner Mlette,

I do like the idea of maybe reserving some space. Um, I I would not be in favor of of uh forcing what is it 5 foot concrete or uh what is it? 8 foot multi-use path. I um it's just not connected to anything. I I think it falls within our waiverss. Um so I would be in favor of of providing the waiver. The other conditions I think I'm I'm okay with um combining the laws establishing the maximum height. Um it's already in the the recommended conditions for the light plan even though it's probably not changing. Um the update to making sure the plan shows the significant trees um and whether they're designated for destruction or um saving u and and then also noting on what we are approving the the types of materials which I think it was represented as sandstone and whatever highway material is um I would assume that's some kind of soil um or aggregate of some sort related to the highway but that the big thing would be no u storage of hazardous materials. Um nothing than that um fully in uh in support of the project.

Okay. Thank you. Um I don't have much more to add. I think uh the commission has pretty much um made their their case on this. Uh I'm I'm okay with uh the waiver for the sidewalk. I also can can agree to uh establishing a rightaway. So either one of those are I'm flexible with. Uh but other than that, I have nothing else to add. So at this time, if you want to make any closing remarks before we close this public hearing. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The um in in regard to your comments, I would I would just ask you to consider or reconsider. I don't know how uh the idea about limiting the materials to be stored. I mean, we asked our client specifically and you know, it's their intention, sand, stone, the highway debris material, maybe some aggregate, but to to Tim's point, anything that's has any that's regulated isn't going to be it has to go to a, you know, a licensed uh processing facility. So our client would be in a lot more trouble, you know, not with just this commission, but with D, maybe EPA if they brought anything that has to be handled in a certain way to this site. And as I said, they're an established contractor. They're not going to do anything like that. But they may I don't you know want to have wood chips one day or I they also sometimes store like uh and I don't know if this is what you were thinking of like they might store a whole bunch of catch basins like the pre cast concrete you know they might have 50 of them if they're doing a road and those might be stored as they start you know that they can't have on site or concrete pipes or things like that you know that

are being staged that you can't leave you know on the side of I95 on I91, you know, when uh you're doing the work, you have to leave them somewhere, you pick them up in the morning, you bring what you need, and the rest are stored on site during the course of that project. So, I would I would ask that you not, you know, put handcuffs on this that we can't store, you know, any kind of building materials or anything that's really non-toxic on the site. We understand the height limitation. Um but you know just to to just be a stone and gravel you know storage space I think is is a little limiting uh because I know they do store like I said materials that go into um into their projects and I remember specifically they talked about precast concrete catch basins things like that. So that that's my point uh on the materials. I think uh everything else um all seemed you know reasonable to me on behalf of my client. Um so I really don't have anything else. I I'm very happy for your attention and your your um um uh thoughtful comments and concerns about this. Uh we think this actually will be a a benefit to the town. It'll take sort of an underused parcel and and in a area that's meant for this type of development and bring in a you know reputable uh state locallyowned business. Um and we'll make a good use of this uh uh these lots. And so we had asked that you would approve it uh with the conditions uh mentioned by the staff but without a limitation on the on what can be stored there beyond you know anything that's

toxic. Um can I ask the applicant a question? Um question. Well I guess uh just considering the the waiver the sidewalk waiver would they be open to providing that area of refuge refuge?

It's nothing we discuss. So I I I I don't have an answer that I can say is what they would would want. I I kind of feel they would agree with with me and the engineer that it's a very tough site to to get a a sidewalk on and it's very unlikely, you know, that they feel that it would be of use to the public or to their employees. Um so we would ask that the the waiver be granted as requested. Well, I'm saying if if the waiver if the waiver is granted. Yeah. Are you open to having some area? Oh, like a little like step in. I I suppose it's something we could look at.

Um I mean there'll definitely be, you know, between the driveways that's going to be now a more right appropriately landscaped area. Grass that'll clearly be place someone could step to. As you said, we're not trying to do too much. you have the sort of the the two sides on the corner of West Dudleytown and the first part of the as you go down uh Northwood. We're trying to leave that as is. We don't want to disturb it. So, we don't want to do, you know, we don't want to do more cutting or clearing. Um so, we would want to leave that as is really the only PL and we're trying to leave most of the the front boundary as is and then fill behind it with vegetation as a buffer. So, we're trying not to disturb the the appearance of the roadway. So, there might be a few places where we could do a little cutting, I guess, but we don't then we have we don't want to cut any significant trees. You know, we're trying to minimize that clearing as much as possible. So,

okay. I'm going to ask staff if they can work with you on that and see if there's something that they can come up with to satisfy a a simulation of a a right away. Okay. I will talk to the town engineer. Mhm. Yeah. We don't we don't have to take up the sidewalk waiver tonight. We going to approve it without addressing the sidewalk waiver and come back with a what would it look like? I'm going to I'm going to let staff work with them on that.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I I have nothing further. Again, thank you for your time and questions and uh we ask you to approve the project. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. At this time, chair entertain a motion to close this public hearing. So moved. Second. It's been moved and second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I.

Oppos. Absention. Chair votes sign. Chair will now entertain a motion on this application. Mr. Chair, I make a motion to approve the request by Burns Construction Company, Inc. for a special permit and site plan application to allow a site development for a contractor's yard with outdoor storage as accessory use with the uh conditions stipulated in staff the staff report dated August 25th, 2025 um with the um additional or request that that staff recommend a a maximum maximum height for material storage uh on the premise uh I believe that was it the trees go ahead

significant trees need to be added to the and that the significant trees be marked I believe Mark on on the final uh plan resubmission and writing just include all the staff comments that's what I did from the memo let's not interject with his his motion that's Can I just ask for clarification? Clarification. You're you're not you're not including sidewalk waiver at this time. I was going to ask um at the at a later point when when you ask for any additional questions the procedural question of how are we going to incorporate that into into uh this this approval is is a separate approval needed? Right. So

I I don't have that answer. That's a procedural question. I believe that the commission has to vote, you know, uh, agree or at least, uh, give the waiver prior to approving this, I believe. Mhm. I don't I don't believe so. The sidewalk waiver can be granted at any time. Okay.

Uh, you can approve the project um and be silent on the waiver and they they could work with you and you could they could bring it back. The regulation states that um if you know the applicability of that section is whenever someone is submitting a site plan application that they would have to request that waiver. So if the commission is going to approve a site plan, you want to remain silent on the waiver and come back.

Yes. Should if that is what the commission would like to agree then uh it should probably be noted um in in the approval that uh the site plan was special permit and site plan was um approved and that the waiver that the applicant will come back at a later time with the waiver or decision will be made. Sure. Okay. So, it was my understanding that that that this uh motion did not include the uh the sidewalk waiver. And so, I I did not

the motion that I read did not uh I it was my not my understanding um nor my desire to to incorporate that into this motion. And so, I I did expect that to be a separate um motion and uh um review and or discussion and then the vote for approval. But, I it's not It it definitely isn't clearly written in this motion that I read that the sidewalk waiver was incorporated. Someone going to add that as an amendment or would you like me to add that? Yes. Just include that in there. We're going to approve it.

We're going to approve it without the waiver and we're going to have Linda work with the applicant on establishing either a wide array or some sort of waiver and then we'll come back and and deal with that. Would you like to add that as a friendly amendment? Sure. So add it. With that with that amendment, I'll second the motion. I accept the the friendly amendment. Okay. It's uh it's been seconded by Commissioner O'Brien. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. I.

Oppose. Extension chair both side. Motion carries. Congratulations. Okay. Next item on the agenda is a withdrawal. Applicant with withdrew the pending text amendment application to remove existing sections 4.7. C.4. C and 4.7.D.4.B B and amend existing language in section 4.CB notes uh-1 on the zoning regulations. Applicant is Lel Road Companies LLC having a legal interest in Landon Bloomfield. Is there a motion to approve that withdrawal?

So moved. Second. It's been moved and second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. I.

Oppose. Abstension. Chair votes. I. Next item on the agenda is an information presentation by BSC Group regarding potential affordable housing residential development at 1151 Blue Hills Avenue. Okay. Would you just state your name and address? And for the sake of time because we also have a second presentation, can the presentation be at least like between 20 25 minutes so the commission can have an opportunity to uh to ask some questions regarding this?

I will try to keep it shorter than that if possible. I'll I'll provide as much information as I can. Uh I'll try to keep it as short and if you obviously have questions by all means uh we'll go from there. Yeah, we figure 20 25 minutes and then we'll do some questions. Thank you, Linda. Am I able to share promoting rest?

One moment. There we go. Hold on. Did you promote me because I'm still just a audience member? I see you as a Yeah. Yeah. Just

did I log into the incorrect meeting? I don't see him in either as a participant. I don't I I may just because I'm not a host, but you could probably see him. I just left. I'm going to try to relog in. One second.

I have a mess. Is that where they want to do the No, we're looking for this. Oh, yeah. Back in here, I think. Oh, that's a little far. I joined the webinar through the invite. Was that the correct way to do it? Oh, yeah. You're Oh, you're shown as as an attendee. Um, you have to Let's see. I'm going to promote you again.

Oh, yes. Here it goes. Have to accept. There we go. Okay.

I think I'm in now. All right, there we go. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the commission. For the record, my name is Francis Vodka. I am a professional engineer at the BSC group in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Uh I am here this evening uh to provide an introductory presentation informally to the commission for uh the first for on behalf of the first cathedral uh located at 1151 uh Blue Hills Avenue for a property master plan uh potentially in support of a uh zoning map amendment for uh the potential improvements associated with their property that they would like to pursue. This evening I have uh we are not all here but I have a few members of the project team. First we have from uh first cathedral we have uh pastor Roy Bailey the third who's the executive pastor of first the first cathedral uh from grow America. We did have a few members online. Not sure that they were there but uh other part members of the team Matt Wexler, Marian Campbell, Jeffrey Pearson who is here in person and Naloya Thakar from uh Grow America who are providing additional support with regard to the affordable housing component of the master plan that I will speak about momentarily. I myself from BSC group I am the site engineer and uh permitting engineer associated with the project. We also have the architect uh representatives from Paul P. Bailey Architect. Uh Susan

Odell was uh planning to be here. Unfortunately, she had an emergency immediately prior to the meeting. I will have I'm going to do my best to present her portion. I am not an architect, so please bear with me on that one. I do have some notes uh and I will go through them as best as I could. And uh also not here this evening but as part of the uh the uh team associated with the development is uh David Marowitz Esquire a partner from Hassid and George. He is the land use attorney who'll be providing support uh at the time. We are hoping to come obviously next month to formally present uh the presentation to you for the development meeting Jenna tonight. Uh I am asking I'm going to ask Pastor Bailey to come up and just give a very brief uh background on the first cathedral and the desires that they have with regard to uh the development. I'll go through some quick existing conditions of the site just to refamiliarize anyone to the commission that may not be aware. Uh and then obviously review in detail the desire for the zoning map amendment to the design development zone 2 DDZ2 some of the zoning considerations associated with it and how they relate to the overall master plan for the property and then I will go through the the three components of the master plan on the property in detail. the affordable housing and community daycare component, the empowerment center component, which Pastor Bailey will speak a little bit more about what the empowerment center is, and then a proposed storage facility and auxiliary parking component, which will be the last of the phases for the development. At this at this point, I would like to ask Pastor Bailey to come up and just introduce himself.

Yes, if you can just state your name and address, please.

Good evening. My name is Pastor Leroy Bailey III from the First Cathedral. I'm the executive pastor there 1151 Blue Hills Avenue in Bloomfield. Uh just thank you for this opportunity first of all to come in front of the commission. We have been in existence for over 55 years and have been a member of Bloomfield community for over 26 years. Uh when we bought the property, we bought 40 acres of land in which we wanted to uh build a future and develop it. Um over these past five I want to say about five years we have had dream nights and community nights to say where do we want to go as a facility and where do we want to well what do we want to do to develop our land um tonight I'm excited for you to see what we are planning would like to do and um hopefully uh we have some good questions from you and that we can answer. Thank you. Thank you, Pastor. To briefly review the existing site for those that are familiar with it, let me see if you can see my cursor here. All right. Uh I'm sure a number of the commissioners are aware of First Cathedral. It is the one that's located uh at the corner of Blue Hills Avenue and Winonberry Avenue. It's the large circular uh cathedral with the main entrance that faces towards the uh faces towards the intersection of both of those state routes. Uh there is a rather large parking area associated with the development. But what the commission may not be or may be unaware of is that the actual property is 40 acres and does come all the way down essentially to where the line is where I'm identifying on my plan. So there is a southern half of the site which is almost which which is greater than 50% wetlands at this point. But there are two smaller pockets where we have on the southwestern side of the property is an auxiliary parking

area with 552 parking spaces and direct access onto Route 187. And then there is a uh a small uh field complex uh that is uh a few tennis courts and a small softball field that is also component uh on the property of the church. And uh if we move on to the next uh the view you're actually looking at here is even though it's a little bit shaded back, this is actually an an ortho a drone ortho photo of the site. So it is a true accurate horizontal representation of exactly how the site um is in now this was in January of 2025. We did fly this and the point behind that was we now have accurate information on the entire uh planetric all of the horizontal area associated with the site so that when designing the master plan we had the most amount of information to provide the most detailed background and information for the uh proposed master plan throughout the entire site. we could essentially plan for any type of building or layout or so on that the uh that the church would like to to pursue. So I wanted to provide that just to show we will have a formalized A2T2 survey but to go with that we also have the ability to have uh orthopos directly related to the site in its current condition. The property line is identified here uh in magenta. So you can over see the overall it does the the flight area is actually not the entire 40 acres because there's um the the very bottom of the site is essentially all wetland area. In fact the wetlands on the site are represented here in green and you can see the two pockets on either side. So this is the field complex on you can't really see my cursor as you can see the field the field complex. Let me switch to my other cursor.

You can see the field complex on the southwest and then this is the auxiliary parking area on the south uh east and then the main church complex here with the main parking associated with that. There is also a conservation easement recorded on the land record which has very strict requirements associated with what can or cannot be built within the conservation restriction areas. So beneficially uh the entire development design that we are proposing uh is entirely located outside of the conservation easement area. And I would further like to indicate that all of the proposed development is uh smaller in total footprint than the previous impacts in particular associated with the uh auxiliary parking area. So reducing impervious coverage and then the the we are increasing coverage for the the uh intended land uh the um excuse me for the field area. However, there are the the field area is not utilized to its full fullest potential and uh it is it's actually to my understanding in previous conversations it's actually it's it's become more of a hindrance to the cathedral at this point. they they've they've had to deal with a lot of in issues as a result of the uh vandalism and so on associated with the the the uh uses of the field. I also would like to bring up and one of the main components uh of the reason why we're presenting for you this evening is uh currently the site is split into two different zones. The yellow identified here is a PO zone and then it's the R15 zone uh in the red. the rather strange complicated dividing line between the two. There was a potential development I believe at some point in the past there. They had modified the zoning for the

intention of moving forward with this development. While the development fell through, although the zoning had already changed, but we've done an extensive review with town staff since January or so to kind of go through the different options and the different zone potential that we could use for all of the various desires that the church is pursuing. and we've settled I we believe that the DDZ2 is the most appropriate zone uh to pursue for what they are hoping to achieve. Pardon me. I will not get into super detail with this because I can present this more obviously during the formalized meeting. But the the highlight the like the the aerial view portion of the DDZ development zone section 5.6 six uh a of uh of the zoning regulations the intent the creation of a combined work service and then residential environment I'm highlighting the the basically the the main desires that the church were trying to pursue so the combined work service residential environment that promotes the maintenance of quality open space reduces the traffic and enhances the quality and proximity of the facilities to employees and and so on uh and then general for the the DDZ2 to zone will be governed by the master plan in accordance with these regulations. And what we'd hope to do is over this presentation and the formal presentation hopefully next month uh is to prove to you that we have satisfied all of those requirements. Bulk requirements for the DZ DDZ2 zone would be a 10acre lot area. We have 40 acres, so we've satisfied that. Um the lot width, frontage and sideyards, we're substantially over that given the size of the property. Um the height as 60 foot requirement and then the maximum stories is five for the DDZ2 zone. We are proposing uh fivetory affordable

housing uh buildings. We will get to that momentarily. Um I know that there will be question with regard to heights and so on, but we believe that we've addressed that with the locations that we've placed them on the site. And then for principal uses and structures uh again we wanted to focus on for those uses that the church is hoping to uh pursue authorized by site plan. So we're proposing category 2 medical clinic or facility and that will that's associated with the empowerment center. It's the closest office relation to the empowerment center and they can speak more about that. Category five land use type. It's churches obviously because of the cathe cathedral schools and daycare facilities. We are proposing a community daycare center as part of the development. And then uh category 7 multif family dwelling units provided that the maximum number of dwelling units is permitted at 16 per acre. We have satisfied that requirement. I will get into more of that during the formal presentation. and category eight accessory uses to those permitted including without limitation storage facilities which is the final phase of their uh hopeful uh master plan. Now with all of that here's a enlargement of the uh existing property uh the drone survey and this is essentially what is being proposed uh for the overall master plan. I know it's super tiny. We're going to go over all of the different components in detail. So on the the southeastern portion is the affordable housing and community daycare component category 7 and five. I'll talk about this momentarily. The first cathedral and empowerment center. So the cathedral stays the same but there is a minor addition that is uh essentially appended onto the corner of the cathedral which will address the the office portion of the empowerment

center. And then the final stage uh of the proposed master plan is an auxiliary parking area to account for some of the uh some of the parking associated some of the parking that has been removed from the auxiliary lot that is coming going away and then the uh accessory storage which is a 6,000 square ft storage facility simply for the use of uh the church facilities. they do uh own uh some uh transportation vehicles, buses and so on uh for the purposes of uh currently right now it is parked outside and they would like to just store it for maintenance and so on. At this point I am going to ask Jeffrey to step up just briefly just just talk about the the the desire behind the housing and daycare component and I will review more in detail of the the uh design of the area. Hello. For the record, uh Jeff Pson, uh Grow America. Uh address is 63 633. Uh I'm blanking. It's in New York. It's the company address. 633rd Avenue, New York, New York. Uh 117. So, uh Grow America, we are acting in the capacity of a development advisor for the first cathedral. Uh we're moving towards a co-general partnership in order to help develop the property with the church. We are a national nonprofit. We've been around for more than 60 years. Uh we have a syndicated fund where we invest in loan housing tax credits, historic tax credits. We run a state program with the state of Connecticut, the Connecticut Small Business Boost Fund, a $150 million small business lending fund. Uh we're developers. uh were advisers for several municipalities and we're located or working in more than 100 communities across the country. So the why for this project, why affordable housing, why

daycare. Um when I got introduced to the church a couple years ago, they talked to me about the plans that they were looking to do at this point, especially in the state in Connecticut, affordable housing. There's an acute need in Bloomfield. I believe it's a uh 11% affordable housing stock and there's been a lot of luxury development going on um very very close to here. Um I should also mention too that I'm a resident of Windsor. So although I work with a national firm, I'm right next door. Um so in terms of this plan here, it's one thing to go through the plan and draw nice pictures and that sort of thing. We're looking to build communities, but what's very important with affordable housing projects is that you work with your state and federal partners in order to make these dreams essentially come true. So, we have a very good relationship with the Department of Housing. They are supporting this project. They've already made some pretty significant um investments in the project, but it's very very important that we um that we obviously go through the process with the town to make sure everybody's on board here. So we're looking at um on the housing part 146 units altogether. We're looking to do this in two different phases. Uh the first phase is 101 units. You see that on the southernmost part um southernmost part of the the the picture here. We're looking at um restricting the units at all 60% AMI units or below. So we're talking about true affordable housing here. Folks typically making less than $70,000 per year. In Grow America, we have a portfolio of investments in Connecticut. Uh probably about 10 at this point, some in Harford, Newport, um a few of the other communities around the state. The um for the second phase, so the first phase is what we're really focused on initially. That's what we're looking targeting to to get done first. The second phase is pretty interesting. this the L-shaped building um on the on

the the northern part of the the slide here that has 45 units, but there's also a daycare component which Frank will go over a little bit. The church currently has a daycare facility, but this is going to allow them to double the capacity potentially of the of the daycare. Um so we're really really excited about that. But um in our conversations with the uh potential funding partners here for the affordable housing project, we feel really really confident about being able to get something of this scale that's done. Again, there's an acute need of affordable housing, especially in Bloomfield, Connecticut. So, we're really really excited to be a part of this endeavor.

Thank you, Jeff. If I can talk briefly uh about the actual site layout itself. As you can see the red line, I know it's very hard to see on the on the screen, but there is the red line that was originally identified in the earlier slide with regard to the conservation easement. We are located entirely inside the conservation easement. There is no development proposed outside of it. There is also no development proposed in any of the wetland areas. We are within the wetland buffer. I will present that a little bit more in detail at the next meeting. But the one component, the one point I would like to make again is I to reiterate all of the green space that you see the lighter green space along the majority of the buildings, building A, building B, a lot of this green space, the majority of that currently now is all the auxiliary parking area. So we will be pulling back a substantial amount of of impervious uh just through the development of uh what is being proposed on the screen at this point as far as some specifics of it. So um building A obviously to the south building B there is a large terrace in between that will interconnect the two of them public uh public amenity space and this space will also be usable obviously by the members of uh uh building C. Uh the playground is associated with the community daycare. Uh as far as site circulation and so on, we thought about that in in detail to ensure because it is community and because it's not dedicated to just this development or to the church, we wanted to ensure that it was fair to the residents as much as possible. So uh because it is all one property we would be essentially directing uh through the operations we'd be directing the users of the community daycare would essentially enter through the church parking parking lot and they would cross through the minor uh bridge crossing from the church proper down through here

and they would make a loop around to a I believe this is a 14 space drop off area so they can immediately drop their children off and get back out the spaces associated with this row of parking is dedicated to the community daycare as well. There are 251 spaces in total associated with this development. uh I don't remember the exact number but I know I believe we are proposing 19 for the daycare which is not explicitly in the regulation but is um uh we still have adequate capacity given all of the latest statutes associated with uh one and twobedroom housing uh to ensure that we have satisfied all the parking for that dumpster area is uh is located over here away from any of the uh build uh main building areas. And then obviously one of the most important things is we are uh because they are five-story buildings, we are at the closest point at building C about 250 ft from Blue Hills Avenue and any vista associated with associated residential views or anything like that. In addition to the main reason I put the large amount of green greenery and trees, these are all existing trees associated with the wetlands area. None of these are being removed. We do have existing entries onto Blue Hills Avenue already with adequate traffic capacity and so on. So we are not proposing major uh reductions if any of any of the existing trees to assure that we are screening as much of the development as possible to any of the uh associated uh residences residents areas. Oh, let me go back one second. So the two red areas that arrows that you see will represent the renderings that we have provided for the buildings. So the first one will be the uh southernmost arrow which will show buildings A and B and then the second rendering will be the uh second arrow

identifying the front portion of the community daycare and building C. These are the buildings if you would bear with me momentarily. This is a bit of information that we got from uh Susan Odell from Paul Bailey. Uh I will read some of her notes for this again. Unfortunately, she apologized for not being able to be here. Uh so the design of phase phase 1 buildings includes lively colors in warm tones that blend in well with the natural surroundings with pops of blue and emphasize the entrances as identified down on this bottom portion here. Design breaks down the size and creates visual interests by varying the planes of the facade with projecting bays identified here. So in other words, it doesn't look like one great big giant factory. And then the different colors and material textures also add to the visual variety defined and subtle hor uh horizontal bands that are stepped throughout. So that's the main that is the main building A which is this building and then this is a portion of building B. This is building C. So this is again fivetory. You can see where the majority. So, so that this upper level and then this main entrance here is associated with the residential portion whereas the first two stories and this large entry area here is associated with the daycare center. So these so essentially this ground portion and the entry is again the daycare and then coming again from Susan here. Phase two includes a large two-story daycare center that is integrated with the five-story residential building. Same warm colors are used here and the building is angled to decrease its apparent size. That's why it has that shape. And the horizontal banding is made more prominent to add variety to the overall site design while emphasizing the daycare location as a prominent more I say commercial, but it is it's more of a you know focused that that's separate from the residential portion. At this point, I'm going to jump into

the next phase, which is the empowerment center, which so this is the first cathedral existing. The empowerment center is the portion that is identified here in yellow. And if I could please have pastor Bailey come, may he just explain a little bit more about what the empowerment center is proposing.

Sure. To keep it high level. Uh basically uh we've running out of space at the current facility in terms of classrooms and um things we want to do. We've been giving away um clothes. We have a bi boutique and we have food um um pantries and and also we've been doing counseling and we noticed the need for more counseling. So our empowerment center will be a place for counseling, a place for the community to come, a place where we can do workshops to empower our community. Thank you pastor because it is a defined separate entrance and so on. We have uh defined a new main entry point here. Um and if I Yep. So the addition uses materials color I'm sorry the design follows existing radi of the existing grand circular building but our addition is much lower and is broken down into a step shape to maintain the prominence importance of the church building. So it's although the church is substantially higher if I can flip to the next image here. So this is it's not a rendering but it's basically the elevations view. So it basically matches the existing shape of the current cathedral, but it's only two stories tall and it is uh with with the main entrance to ensure there is a prominent entryway into the uh into the empowerment center directly. The only major changes that occurred with I know this has all been rendered but the only major change that occurred is associated with the parking directly right here. Uh this used to be a dumpster area. We've converted that the dumpster has been shifted to another open space on this side and this is now uh adequate parking. We are not increasing or decreasing parking in the uh area for the first cathedral. The empowerment center essentially will

function separately and at completely separate times from the church so they can equally share parking without any detriment to either use. And then the final phase and I've presented all of these phases in order. So the m the starting phase phase A would be all of the the initial housing. So uh buildings A and B of the housing then it would be building C then we would move on to the empowerment center and this is uh what we were proposing for the last for the last component. We don't have any time frame associated with this. We're going to kind of follow that sequence that is intend that is essentially what the church is uh hoping to provide is a 6,000 foot storage facility. Uh we don't have a architectural design on this yet, but we are more than willing to work with the town and work with uh the community to ensure that it's it's the most appropriate for what is being proposed. And then it is essentially just a a parking area that will provide auxiliary uh parking uh to make up some of the spaces that were lost associated with the um the reduction in the 552 spaces that are removed. Uh this also makes up a component of the parking requirement associated with uh the church due to its size. Uh that being said and I'll present this more during the formal meeting. Um we are through all the development we are still satisfying the requirements of the zoning regulations from a parking standpoint. There is not going to be a time when there will be a deficiency. We have a path forward to uh achieve uh satisfactory parking throughout the entire development uh process. the entire master plan development process. I tried to keep it as short as possible. Now, obviously, I'd like to turn it over for uh any questions and definitely we would love to take any input, feedback from the commission. We again, we would like to come back in uh uh next month to present on behalf of uh formally on behalf of

the church uh for the request for the uh uh zoning map amendment. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you. Very nice overview. Uh, we'll start with Commissioner Mallette if you have any questions or comments. I I don't think I have any major concerns from, you know, what was presented. U generally, it's exciting to see uh type of affordable housing development being proposed. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. Yeah. And I I just like you to clarify for me because you keep talking about five buildings, but I see three structures. So where are the five buildings? So it's the first phase will be three of the housing and daycare. Then the second the I'm sorry, the fourth building will be the empower empowerment center. It is technically a component of the main church. So it is it's essentially just an addition.

And then the third building uh the fifth building I'm sorry is the uh is the small storage facility associated with development. So those are those are the five buildings. Okay. And the the other question was when you talked about the two southern buildings you said they were at 60% of AMI and you never told us what the other building was going to be at. Jeff.

Yeah. So, uh, our intent is for the site to be all affordable, but at this time when we're talking with the various subsidy providers, we can only do so much at a time. So, we're looking at different programs for building C, which again at this point is 45 units. Um, we would very much so like there to be affordable housing there. Um, but again, we're we're focused on the first the first phase, which is 101 of the of the units out of 146. So that the third building could be at market, right? It could be at market. Um but the thing is it's market is very hard to pencil out from an economic feasibility standpoint. Um very very difficult to do. So

or it might be at 80% rather than it all depends on the various funding sources that that we're looking at. But our intent would what would be the easiest would be affordable housing. But um we're

the only other question I've had is whether you're architect and they're not here. So maybe it's just a question to take back, but um if you you guys have incorporated the concept of defensible space into the into your units uh which is basically come out in terms of residents must have some sense of security and defensible space. And we want to avoid like long corridors that residents don't know who those people are in the corridors. So I don't I haven't seen your interior layouts and I'm sure you haven't even got that far, but I would just ask you to look into that concept um and to try to incorporate it.

Definitely. We got that. I I took a note. I don't have that information directly. We do have some of the interiors flushed out, but I will definitely bring up the defensible space as as a potential uh to discuss uh with the team as we move this forward and prior to our uh formal presentation. Thank you. Uh Commissioner James. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, um of the 101 units, um those would be deed restricted affordable units. Yes. For how long? For what duration of time? So under the program might stay. It's actually my first public hearing. So this is pretty exciting.

So for the record, Jeff person supposed to say that. Um so under the for the first phase, it's going to be at least 30 years. Um that's that's by the the low-inccome housing tax credit program, which is run out of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority. Um sometimes it's longer, but minimum has to be 30 years. Mhm. Um, and do you have a sense of like what the mix of bedrooms would be? Yeah, we actually have that broken down. Um, we I I you know, I don't have it directly in front of me. We have a full mix. I tried to keep it as high a profile as possible that we have all the information. Um, if you want me a second, I can get it for you. But it's one of those

I guess I I guess just overall is it like mostly studio, onebedroom, or is it more Yeah, it's it's a mixture. When we spoke to the town a couple years ago, they had indicated the mayor at that time, I think she might still be the mayor. Does she want to see some three bedrooms? So, for the first phase, we have five threebedrooms out of the 101 units, but there's the majority of the units are ones and twos and maybe two studios out of the 101 units. So large concentration one twos and five threes out of the 101 units. Great. Thank you. Um and maybe it's just like visually it just that looks like a lot of parking. That's the minimum amount or that this is for the for the lower the lower portion.

Yes. Excuse me.

No, that's a problem. It's it is the exact amount. Let me go up to the actual main portion of that. that is the exact amount that you would need uh for to satisfy the requirements associated with the um the state statutes on the latest versions of one and two-bedroom housing. Uh we do have we have argued in the past the ability to have um to reduce parking to request parking waiverss um because we had I mean there so there's 251 identified here there were 552 on the original site so essentially what we were doing is well what given the size that we have how much can we pull it down to exactly satisfy what we need so that is what we've done with this we have not investigated potentially reducing beyond that given the fact that we had the enough spa enough enough space to account for it also besides the fact that we are substantially reducing the impervious cover um in fact I haven't finalized this with the town engineer yet but I'm proposing because of the the the reduction and we have to complete the calculations but as far as the storm water system I don't know that a detention would be required I believe there was already adequate detention provided for the storm water system because of the initial uh parking lot design. Now we we will be adding substantial water quality treatment to this but to answer your question directly we have not pursued anything less than this but it could be examined if possible but you know it it's it's we we felt for the what we were what is being proposed and for the reduction in impervious and and coverage that we are providing that providing the correct number was adequate given the amount that we were reducing it.

Great. I mean, interesting. Thank you. Um, and um, I do consider myself a safe driver, but just looking at the way it's oriented, it looks like a racetrack. Um, so just something to consider. I I to I totally get it. Um, again, and that's part of the reason why we tried to to delineate the daycare portion to this airuit. So essentially, and this will have to be an operations. So that would be something that the daycare themselves would have to coordinate. But again to reiterate, the users of the daycare facility will be required to enter and exit via that separate loop road to essentially to the best of their ability separate themselves from the the residents.

Okay. Uh and my last just comment, I'm guess I'm just thinking you pointed out uh kind of a garbage or Yes. Um area here to the left. Um I that kind of seems like not a lot of I guess if I'm in building a way in the corner, you got to bring out your trash all the way down there. Kind of seems far.

Yes. I It It doesn't look like a lot. It's actually, you know, this is a 40 scale drawing, so it's actually I believe we have I think that's I think that's four dumpsters worth there. And yes, I do recognize that there is a a a distance component to that. we can investigate if there's a possibility to basically split up the locations of the dumpsters. It's a possibility. Um the issue that you run into with that type of thing is now you need to provide the access for the dumpster truck to be able to get to it, but it's something that we can definitely examine as a potential, you know, if we move a couple of spots over there, can we get the dumpster truck to get in over here? So, it's definitely something I can investigate. Okay,

great. Thank Thank you for the presentation. and I'm uh just a housing person, so I'm very excited for the for the increase in affordable units. So, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Goff.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um actually, what I what I you know, this is an interesting project. What I what I really commend uh commend everyone for is, you know, you create something what 20 almost 30 years ago. Um you're looking at what works, what doesn't work, and what can be done now. So, I think you know this kind of change is good and and you know going from 552 parking spaces which obviously aren't needed at this point because you wouldn't be getting rid of them otherwise to 251 I think you know as you know as as rough numbers now with conceptual design I think um this kind of uh thinking head is good. Um I guess I have two two questions. one and we sort of you mentioned in the five story obviously that does not compi comply with our height regulations. I think our height I I didn't pull it up. You had it up. I didn't read it. I think our height regulations is actually a height, not a story regulation. Oh, no. M I'm sorry. M max Oh, it's five stories.

Yep. Max. Okay. So, we are we are Okay. And the height is is So, this this does comply. Yes, it does. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought you'd said earlier it did not. And I saw the 60 foot. Okay. Um, I guess my other question is, um, so currently the property you showed the the zoning map. There's a current zoning. You have an R15 area and you have a a professional office area. You're looking at reszoning the whole thing. DDZ2, what is the current since this currently is, I think, all church use with, you know, ancillary land. Currently this is all taxexempt under church property. Is that correct?

Current currently it is. However, um and this is part of the next presentation. Uh as part of this and we've already coordinated this with town staff, we will be subdividing the property. So the housing parcel will be subdivided. Um essentially it's the housing and the daycare center will be subdivided and we have subdivided it appropriately to satisfy the zoning requirements to to ensure that we are still satisfying the 16 units per acre because it's 40 acres. we can subdivide. It's approximately 14 acres for the housing and um for the housing and daycare parcel and then the church empowerment center and the storage is going to be on a separate plus or minus 24 acre parcel. So that has already come up and we have already addressed some of the concerns that kind of came out with regard to the fact that uh the church is currently taxexempt.

Okay. So so let me just read back to you what I just heard. Sure. Uh cuz I think I get it. Um you're going to reszone the whole Well, you're going to subdivide the parcel into two parcels, both of which are going to be zone DDZ2. That is correct. Right. And one of those parcels will be a DD2 zone that the church sits on with the storage facility and ancillary parking that would still retain a tax exempt status because of the church use. That is correct. and the other uh the other subdivided parcel would be a DDC2 zone but would be taxed in the normal manner uh the town would tax it at that is what I believe is what is being right okay yeah go ahead Jeff

you know and I would just add with affordable housing typically typically there's a pilot that's requested uh payment in le of taxes so instead of paying full taxes like for example um with market rate housing you might be charging $3,000 rents $3,500 rents um and you're able to operate that way. If we're restricting the rents down to 12, 13,400 bucks, the property is not able to pay full taxes and also bring together all the financing that's necessary. So, it's customary and affordable housing and there's um thousands of projects that point to is getting a a pilot. So, we're actually approaching the town had preliminary conversations about what that structure can look like. Um so, yes. So the so the housing parcel will no longer be tax exempt. They're going to have to pay taxes definitely. So there's going to be increment there, but full taxes even for a lot of market rate developments, that's that's tough. So that's where the conversation with the town happens so that we can make sure that we're able to raise the amount of debt that we need in order to build build the improvements.

And and actually Jeff, the financial piece is is out of our jurisdiction. Okay. So, we're we're not even involved in that. Got it. Right. Right. Thank you. Yep.

If I may just add for the record, uh the under the DDZ2 zone, you are able to subdivide the parcel as a component of the DDZ2 zone. So, that is we've been negotiating that with the town as well to determine, you know, the appropriate way to subdivide. In other words, it will be subdivi there will be two subdivisions. We are subdividing the housing parcel and then we will subdivide the housing parcel a second time because of the funding process. This second time you can subdivide it. It is written to the regulations that you are not required to satisfy the you know the bulk density requirement of each individual subdivision as long as the net total still satisfies. and that will be part of the uh uh subdivision request that will ultimately come in front of the commission at some point.

Thank you. Sure. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Marshall Neely. Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. You said you have five three bedrooms. Uh then a what was it? Uh three studios. Um I don't know. Could you refer Could you refresh my memory on this? How many bedrooms there going to be in the

Can you pause one second? I think I can grab that for you and I apologize I didn't have it directly in front of me because I would have had that. I'm sorry. Um while while you're looking that up. Sure. Absolutely. the um three bedrooms, are they going to be in building C or you know, are they all going to be in one building? Are the five bedrooms going to be in a particular building where you have u I guess I would say more family driven with a if you have a five- bedroomedroom I think you know parents and children kind of thing.

I apologize. I was looking and you were nodding. You probably should respond to that. Yeah. So, I'm not sure which building it is. I will try to find the the unit mix here. Each of the five bedrooms, they're all going to be in in one of the buildings. In one building. In one building. The same building. Same building. Yes. Okay. So, um and the current plan now has two studios for the first phase, which is 101 units. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you for clarifying that. As far as uh emergency vehicles like a fire truck or something like that coming through, is there enough space with the parking and and uh one of the large, you know, a fire truck or whatever coming through there?

Yes. So, as part of our designs, what we do is uh we uh obviously we speak to the fire department. We we request the largest fire apparatus for the town and we have a program as part of our design that allows us to essentially plug all of the information for that firet truck into the design and then basically it drives it around. It's it's kind of like a game. Um but it allow it's it's true to life with regard to the size and the turning radius of the vehicle. So, we have already run that and the largest fire apparatus for Bloomfield is able to tra traverse all the way around that parking area. One of the reasons why I don't want to transition back. One of the reasons why there's a larger pavement area directly adjacent to the uh dumpster portion is to allow for the fire truck swing around that. Um, we've also we have we haven't formally coordinated in detail with the fire department yet because we are not at the site plane uh site plan stage. But as part of that and as part of prior experience with other developments I've worked on, we have we have adequate space to allow for the correct lengths of hose to essentially get around the corners of the building. Again, we haven't gotten through the full utility design yet. there will be adequate uh fire hydrants and so on placed on the site to ensure that there is adequate spacing associated with uh fire department connections to the buildings and so on and to allow for adequate hose streams and etc. So we have coordinated all of that. It's part of the big picture plan and it will be finalized when we are in the process of coordinating the site plan uh application with fire department.

Thank you for that. Uh, correct me if I misheard, but did you say something about garages?

The the storage facility that is proposed is um it is a storage building that is essentially going to be flex space. It's it's not going to have it's not going to have like water utilities type of things. It's not going to have a restroom. It's essentially a storage place to provide a space for uh some of the there I believe the church has two uh shuttle buses that currently just are parked on the site. There's maintenance and there's uh deterioration and depreciation associated with parking their vehicles just outside. So one of the one of the uses of the potential storage building would be to store the um shuttle buses for portions of the time but also utilize you know additional storage space for various you know functions or so on storage of props or something like that that they would use at the church proper and so on. um they don't they don't have a formalized a formalized plan for it yet and it's also part of the reason why it's the last phase of the the master plan and again to reiterate we don't have a time frame for this yet it's a lot of it is based on the process associated with receiving funding and so on so it was a desire it's what we're proposing but we you know I can definitely get more information for the formal uh presentation on what the potential uses of the uh the storage facility will have.

Okay. And uh just for clarification, the people who live in the apartments will not have a parking garage. Correct. That is correct. Okay. All right. So, uh, I live in building C and I have groceries and I'm going to have to walk a certain distance to get to the building to bring whatever in. Okay. I was just thinking about, you know, layman terminology for

I understand I understand where you're going. I I I didn't recognize yes though there is not a parking garage associated with a development. Um and al although it's it is not the intention of like essentially reserving spaces, it's uh the general by providing the adequate number of spaces for the the um the units in the development. The the you know the habit of people is I'm going to park as close to where I live as possible. So the the general you know if I live in building A I'm going to park in building A whereas I'm not going to park in building C. So I'm not parking in building C. So the people that live there have space. The daycare facility has dedicated parking devoted to it. Uh there is an adequate and it will be part of the operations for the daycare as well as the leasing office for the housing to say that this is the reserved portion for the daycare. Please residents please don't park here and vice versa. Uh but again by providing the adequate number of spaces there shouldn't be a situation where I'm I have to park way over there to walk way over there. You know what I mean?

Okay. Thank you for that. And and what about guest parking? You going to did you take that into consideration? You have the parking for the people who live there, but what about guest parking? I know I'm probably going overboard with this.

Nope. No. We have consulted that and we have the benefit of the main church has 778 parking spaces. That's directly across the walkway. So we did not directly build in parking associated with visitor spaces because we have the potential availability directly. Well, it's not even directly. It is on the same site. It's across the wetland area, but it's still available to use the likely and again there we there there's there's 1300 parking spaces currently provided for the church and the current existing auxiliary lot. My understanding in our so you've been here 20 some odd years you said I think over that time frame they have never filled both lots entirely and at most under the largest events that they have they may have I think they've said between 25 to 50% of the auxiliary lot has been filled. The number of spaces that have been provided are to satisfy the parking regulations, but it's one of those if the commission is more than if the commission is willing to listen to a potential waiver to for the church parking, we have the potential to reduce parking even more. In particular, associated with the the final phase that shows that larger parking area. that larger parking area is to accommodate some loss in the parking associated with the um uh with the loss of the auxiliary lot. So there is the potential for us to lose additional parking spaces in that auxiliary lot if it is agreeable to the commission based on information provided by the church that the capacity of spaces are not required.

Okay. So, I'm I'm not going to compromise any more time and I'll reserve my questions regarding security for another meeting. No problem. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Commission. I'm sorry. This is the unit mix and parking if you wanted to just understand. Do you want to go through the unit mix because I said two studios? There's one or do you want me to go into it real quick? Really quickly. I know we're running out of time.

So, for the first phase, that's buildings A and B. There's one studio. Is that two? There's one. There's 43. uh one bedrooms, 52 twobedrooms, and five threebedrooms. That's the first phase. And in the second phase, which is building C, there's three studios, 21 onebedrooms, and 21 twobedrooms. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Bolton.

Well, all the good comments and good questions have already been posed. So um I I guess because I do work in this space as well, I am curious. Um first of all, thank you for the presentation and and and the work that you guys are doing in this space. Are any of the units going to be AD accessible or any cap accessible units?

I yes they all yes I wish the architect was here. Uh my un I don't know the specific requirements. I do know that a large portion of the ground floor will need to satisfy what I believe is called typea uh handicap accessibility. I don't know the unit count. Um I do know that we have provided additional handicap parking as a result of that. We will definitely have that information at the next meeting. But yes, we to answer the question directly, yes, there will be there will be ample handicap parking uh handicapped accessible units available. Does your design consider any type of PV or solar um distributed energy sources as a as a part of this project?

Yes, we're considering we were actually on the phone. We were actually had a meeting with the Connecticut Green Bank a few days ago. Um, so we want to make sure it's financable, but that's that's one of the goals. And back to your question about the ADA accessibility. These this project has to be built according to the Connecticut Housing Finance Authorities construction and design standards. So it speaks to their standards have a higher level of um requirements than than building. Are those dedicated units or are the units just handicapped accessible? So, I'm not the I'm not an architect either, but I'm just saying I we'll we'll have those answers when when uh when we come back next month.

As you're considering uh solar um as a as a power source in terms of um your heating, is it gas fired or you going to are you considering 100% electric? So, we've we've hired we're hiring an energy consultant to go through this. There's actually depending upon the energy source we go with, it also impacts the subsidies that that's available in order to get these projects done. So, we're literally going through those those um those considerations now. Well, if you definitely if you include any of the PVs your your roof structure, we'll have to incorporate that structure load. But yeah, no, that's all I had since all questions were already asked. Thank you very much. And again, thank you guys for your presentation.

Uh thank you. Um I don't have any questions. I'll just comment. Uh thank you for the presentation. Think you did a great job with that. Um, I'll just say the commission has been struggling the last couple years with affordable housing. So, we recently passed regulation that included an affordable housing piece in all new development. So, your timing with coming in with a huge affordable housing project is perfect. Um, for us, that's like music to our ears. So, so thank you for that. And uh I'm just looking forward to seeing the full presentation. But thank you.

Any further and then we got to wrap it up. We got another presentation.

Um I just have a a comment following up on Commissioner James's comment about all the all the impervious pavement. My question would be is where's the open space for the residents in terms of we're going to have a gathering? Do they have to have that in the parking lot? Uh if a kid wants to go out and throw a ball around with somebody else, they're doing it in the parking lot. Where is the open space for the residents to use? Um I don't see that on there. Maybe you just haven't got to that, but I would would like some consideration given to those items. Um, we give a lot of consideration to how many parking spaces we have, where are the spaces for the kid to go out and throw a Frisbee with his friend to pass a ball around or if we're going to have a group from one building, have a outdoor picnic. Where are they having that?

There's a large terrace area here that is intentionally designed for that. No, I I don't need you to tell me that. No, that's fine. That's fine. would be a concern I'd like to see. And then the other thing about the point about the the delivering the groceries, you could designate some short-term parking for uh the the resident can park in near wherever the elevator is in the building.

Uh so somebody could park there and get their things up. And that was the other question, the other comment I had about uh the length of corridors because if you're only going to have an elevator at one end and then the other end and you got those long buildings, uh that's going to be a schliff somebody to carry bags of groceries up and go way down the corridor. So that goes to that defensible uh space comment I had made earlier on. Uh so that's sort of the the human touch to it and obviously we're all very happy to see the proposal and we want to be as supportive as we can. These are all comments to make it better.

Absolutely. At this time I'm going to wrap this presentation up. We have a second one coming up. That's that's fine. It's Thank you very much. Uh we appreciate it and we're looking forward to next month. Okay. The full presentation. You just answered my question. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, commission. I appreciate it. And thank you, sir, for your patience. I hope we can all carry the same enthusiasm for this.

Okay. Next item on the agenda is another informal presentation by CEK Solar regarding a potential solar farm at 141 Wintonberry Avenue in the R30 residential district. Just uh state your name and address, please. My name is Kevin Costello. I'm with CEK Solar. I'm a developer. I mainly handle This is weird. I mainly handle site selection due diligence as well as interconnection for our projects in the northeast. Wanted to talk to you today about a potential project at 141 Winenberry Avenue, which is not too far away from a project we just looked at. So starting off just to give everybody some quick background on CEK. We have been in Bloomfield since the company started back in 2011. We began as a small yet humble company mainly focusing on residential installations. But as business picked up and and solar became more and more viable in the state, we graduated to larger commercial projects all the way now to utility scale solar farm projects all across the country. We're active in about 11 different states right now. But uh Connecticut is our hometown, our home base, and we have a huge focus on trying to do as much projects here as we possibly can. uh given the opportunities that we do um with the changing of administrations and the differences of opinions for for green energy and renewable energy that we're we're dealing with now.

Um some folks may or may not be aware of this, but CEK actually completed the very first in the state of Connecticut solar farm project through the old LREC ZRrec program. And this is actually not too far away from where the proposed project is. This is located at the Bloomfield Board of Education. And it's actually a similar size. This is about 2 megawatts DC, which we could equate to about 1.2 megawatts AC. Um, which is very close in size to the project that we would be presenting. In terms of solar farms, the state of Connecticut has a program called NRES, non-residential energy services, which is a counterpart of the RRES program, which is the program that everybody uses for their for their homes to put solar on. Uh the program allows for projects that range from 1 to 5 megawws in size. And this being a one megawatt size project actually falls very much on the lower end of the spectrum. We would consider this to be a small solar farm. Um, this helps to support the state of Connecticut sustainability and energy goals. And this also helps to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs ideally across the entire state as we move away from coal and oil fired power plants and try to instead embrace renewable energy instead. The proposed location is at 141 Wittenberry Avenue. The parcel itself is approximately 19.25 25 acres. The array that we were uh currently planning is around 6 acres including the access road, but that still remains to get finalized with our design. The site was chosen uh primarily for its proximity to the grid interconnection. Um that's one of the main things when we're looking at sites becomes a makeorb breakak factor pretty quickly is if um there's going to

be a positive interconnection with the utility company. What that means is all across the streets um we we're hooking up to what's called distribution lines. And these are the power lines that you see all throughout your neighborhoods, your cities that are just on the sides of the road. They oftent times are singlephase, three-phase power. The larger projects that you see sometimes out west um that are 50 to 100 megawws, those are what's called transmission projects and those utilize the high tension transmission lines that are all throughout the country. This is a uh a smaller project and like I said, the reason that we chose it is um quite frankly, it's becoming harder and harder in the state of Connecticut to find viable places to do these projects. The main reason is um we are part of what's called ISO New England. That is the grid that we are a part of. Basically starts um lower New England, goes all the way up to Canada and encompasses about five or six states. The reason that um it is so difficult to find good good sites for projects is because due to the fact that we are in New England, we were the first area of the country to get electricity. Uh we have the oldest most dilapidated power grid out of the entire country. And we oftent times when we're finding sites have to go to the utility company where they'll tell us how much it'll cost to do a project. And what has happened over the past couple years is interconnection costs have gone through the roof to the point where um sites are just getting harder and harder to find. This site over here at 141 Wittenberry Avenue is what we consider to be in a Goldilock zone because it has um right at the street on Wittenberry Avenue over 5 megawatts of available power which is insanely rare

to find now in Connecticut. So, we would be using um one of those megawws for this project ideally. And like I said, this is going to be a 1 megawatt size project. We're going to be using ground mounted panels, uh single axis trackers. They're actually going to move with the sun as the sun u travels across the sky throughout the day. The panels will alternate themselves to be able to have maximum output all the time. um integrated fencing and landscaping for visual screening. The entire parcel is this rectangle that goes all across the uh west side of the property here down and forms this this large rectangle. We positioned the array as far away um as possible from any residences to minimize any impact that it would have on on their homes on on them being near it. This is a very small system uh 1 megawatt and oftent times um factors like noise are we going to see it? Are we going to hear it come up? Um with a project like this that's very little to no concern. We've done many projects of this size in the state of Connecticut and have actually gone out with other town boards uh in person to view these projects when sound was a concern and it was the consensus of all the board members that a project of this size 1 megawatt very very minimal. Um when people complain about those kind of issues they're referring to much much larger projects which have a great deal of inverters. The inverters um can sometimes be a bit noisy when you're dealing with a a large project as opposed to a small project like this.

Just to give everybody a quick overview of the timeline for 2025 and 2026 is when we would be focusing on permitting and approvals. Also in 2025 and 2026 is when um final engineering and procurement would begin. If all those steps go well, ideally construction would begin in 2027 with the system commissioning and operation also commencing in 2027. So, a total of 12 to 15 months from approval to operation. And we've um been working in conjunction with the town wetlands and inlands department as there are some overlaps of wetlands towards the south side of the array. So, we're considering both on-site and off-site mitigation for those. And we would be proposing a text amendment at the following meeting to allow solar as a primary use in residential zones in Bloomfield. Propose a text amendment to current zoning regulations. I'm sorry. And we would be ideally doing this at next month's public hearing. uh community benefits. This helps to increase local renewable energy generation that creates a plethora of jobs during construction and ongoing maintenance. We sub out locally for that all the time as much as possible on projects that we complete. Supports the state of Connecticut's climate resil resilience and energy independence goals. This um like I said before is part of the NRES program which is a statemandated program to try to meet certain energy goals by 2025 2030 so on and so forth. So this uh this directly coincides with the state's goals to to meet those figures which is why we would hopefully like to be able

to do this project. It presents a long-term tax revenue for the town and even some educational opportunities for local schools and residents if they want to learn about solar, learn more about um clean energy. We would be happy to set up some sort of programs where we can um educate the youth or anybody who wants to know more about solar. We possibly look at seeing that as a career. And in conclusion, um, what our next steps we would hope to be, which would be would be to continue collaborating with the planning and zoning board, submit a formal text amendment, participate in the upcoming public hearings, and address any community feedback uh, concerns that anyone would have, including members of the board, members of the town, anybody. And that's that's pretty much it.

Thank you very much. Um, we're going to start at this end for any questions or comments. We're not going to do two separate things. So, whatever you have, just present it all. Uh, Commissioner Mallet. Okay. Um, the size of the uh project that's being proposed and I'm somewhat familiar with the board of education. So, if I remember correctly, the board of education was split into two. So it didn't get into commercial grade or utility grade is that I don't know. I was I was not with CEK back when that uh when that system was installed.

I think once you get above one mega megawatt um I think it goes into utility. There's a a bit of a different differences of opinions depending on who you not not to uh contradict you but different markets have different definitions. Different utilities have different definitions for what they consider to be utility scale. Um, Eversource, for example, considers anything one to five megawws to be distribution projects and anything above that to be utility scale. So that's that's one thing I would want some clarity on as far as I is this going to be utility grade or not because I think that does

it it starts to change who's got oversight and everything for that. And I know there was definitely some creative accounting or or whatever with the board of education's project to get that done. Um because it was too big in in one um project. So it I'm pretty sure it's split into two. Um, this is a little bit different from if you go down the road, there's there's Seabberry. There's a pretty large That's actually the the land owner for this project,

Cabberry. So, yeah, I think I saw that on the um the property card. Um, so instead of the the ground mount that they have on a little bit further to the east, this would be um pivoting. And how height high would those go? So I I hesitate to give you an exact number until we have the final system design, but a a good rule of thumb I would say would be 8 ft.

Okay. And that would be something, you know, we'd be looking for in the details. So basically, how much can they be screened? Um I I know going back to the other array that was put out there. I I think um you know there there's a a PVC panel fence now I'm I'm pretty sure everybody wanted something a little better than that. Um as much as we love solar so just kind of throwing that out there. In this case, it looks like, you know, it's probably maybe tucked back um in a more narrow lot versus a big huge corner. Sure.

Um but just that would be of interest to me in a formal proposal along with I I guess we're going to have to clarify. Can it even go in, you know, we need a text amendment to even get there? I see. Okay, you can. Sure. Okay, Commissioner O'Brien. The only question I'd have was of staff in terms of if this amendment was to go through, what other areas would it affect?

This isn't working. Yep, that's working. It is. I know. Yeah, there it is. Could could you and Roger could you repeat the question? Yeah. Well, it's a text amendment. So the it's a text amendment. So my question is if we put this text amendment in to this particular zone, how many other areas of the town are we opening up to this type of of development?

I'm sure there are a few. I can't give you the specifics, but I know that that that um the two significant um requirements as I understand it for even considering a site is one the size and of the site and its proximity to a connection to the grid. So that that you know begins to significantly limit um the number of of sites that are realistically available. But I couldn't I don't know that number

there. There's not too many in Bloomfield. As as I was saying earlier, we're limited very heavily as a developer to being able to find areas that uh that have a positive grid interconnection. When you're dealing with projects that are in this range, the 1 to five megawatt range, um it is possible to approach the utility company in cases where there isn't a positive interconnection to see if it's possible to do a feeder upgrade to do a substation upgrade when the megawatts aren't available. But you typically wouldn't do that on a project of of this size. Um, so to your to your exactly to what you were saying, um, the reason that this was chosen is because we are extremely close to a grid to a feeder line um that has ample power on it to actually support that project as opposed to other areas in town where you may have a wide open field that would theoretically be perfect for solar, but right at the street you have a line with u no power on it and the cost to upgrade it is so high that it doesn't make sense to do a project that's that size anymore. And thank you, Commissioner James.

Um, so I don't know if it's for our department, but why not just change the zone? We don't have any um controlling regulations for this type of project in any of our zones. Oh,

and and our goal, if I can just say from from CEK's perspective, our goal when we propose the text amendment wouldn't be to allow unrestricted, unfettered solar development anywhere in your town. It would be we would be looking and we already have done a great amount of due diligence and work on this. Um, researching what other towns have come up with in terms of rules for allowing or not allowing solar in certain zones. And we've looked at primarily areas in the north the northeast of Connecticut where they've had such heavy solar development and they've had a chance to see what's worked, what hasn't worked. So, we've come up with I I think and we I would prefer to get into more of the technical details on the text amendment in the following meeting, but we we've identified three or four towns that seem to have um a set of rules that works works for for everybody. Not I I don't want to say for everybody, but it works for the town and it works for certain projects that meet the town's requirements, but doesn't allow for everything to happen.

Uh quick one for staff. What he's talking about, would that be considered like spot zoning where he wants to basically do a text amendment but limit it to this certain area? Not necessarily. We're not we're not we're not re we're not remapping, right? I know it's not a zone change. That's why I'm saying which is what zoning would be. We are creating a set of regulations that would allow this use as we do now in particular zones under certain circumstances with particular regulations. Okay. Well, that would be different from what he's what he's saying. I mean, he's

it goes back to what Commissioner O'Brien was saying. But whenever you whenever you do a text amendment, it doesn't you have to to recognize that it does not necessarily only affect that particular property that's asking for the text amendment. Right. I'm just correcting what he I think was indicating, right? Okay. Commissioner Goff. Oh, I'm sorry. Were you finishing? Yeah. I have no more questions. I just wanted to say I do enthusiasm for your proud presentation. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, let's see. Um, a couple of things. First on the I I can say pretty definitively that I would not be in favor of a text amendment. Um, I think the comment that was made earlier, I think we need to have some kind of regulations on solar and then we could say it was allowed in certain zones under this regula, you know, under this regulation. I don't like changing the R30 zone initially. So I think that's something to talk about with staff. Um we had a long discussion in a previous meeting about how text amendments get promulgated and I really think they need to arise sort of organically from the zoning body. Um I do think that you're raising an important question. Where do we allow where do we allow solar? So, I just I just raised that um sort of I'm not sure this is the proper way to go about it. Um could you go back to the picture of where you're the maybe the further view of that picture where the um solar the location of the solar panels

that a zoomed out version of this? Yeah, you don't have one of this in the slide. I think I don't have it on the slide unfortunately, but Okay, maybe you're you're right. Seen it on my screen. This is this what you're showing. Okay. So, I'm I'm a little conf I'm a little confused by this also because I do know the field across from Seabberry where which Seabberry owns uh but across the road on the uh south side of uh of Whittenbury. Um if you zoom back on that, isn't there a lot of clear isn't there a lot of area that does not have trees in that?

No. Um so if we I I apologize for not having a better picture. So, if we were to zoom out, um, we would basically be seeing the street just above where this cuts off right here, um, to our to the east side, that's town of Bloomfield open space. Um, right right on to the to the right side of the array. and then to the left side of the array um is it does appear from this picture that it is somewhat cleared but our thinking with placing the array where we did was to minimize any impact we would have um to if that was your question sir I'm sorry so the the road I'm seeing in the picture here is which road

that is Candlewood Drive Candlewood Okay. I can I can do that. That's easier. Well, what when I'm I I guess the point just looking at all this, you know, part of part of my concern is I see all those lines and they're going through the trees. There would be there would be some Yeah. I mean I mean, you know, um

to to give you some background on this exact parcel, this was initially all clearcut pro. I I don't know exactly when, but they they had Seabberry at one point did lease this out to a farmer who had cleared the land. And I think what had happened is after for I don't know the exact details and I I don't want to speculate but that didn't happen. Um they ended up not moving forward with that project. So I think after they had done the clear cutting the years kind of reclaimed the property. So what you're seeing there is there are there are some trees on there. They're not very old and it's a lot of um scrub scrub brush. Exactly. Things like that. And we we

So you're actually going to clear invasives for us. We're we're going we're going to clear there there's a benefit to us clearing this, believe it or not, because we did do a wetland delineation report and survey and it was discovered that there is a number of invasive species that are in uh have taken up refuge. Oh yeah. Basically right where the where the array is. So it would kind of kill two birds with one stone with the sense that we can get all that cleared out, get it back looking ship shape, get the invasive species out of there, and then any I know we're I don't want to step out of my lane, but any wetlands that we might have to mitigate also, we can do that to the left side of the array. So So, so my other my my last question on this is just sort of um this is more of a philosophical question.

Sure. So, u you're going to you're going to put an array in that's going to bring one megawatt of um alternating power online um and to move toward a renewable energy. Can you identify where the one megawatt of nonrenewable power is going to be taken off the coin?

At what exact point? I don't know. The way that these projects work, this is what's referred to by Eversource as a buy all sell project or a BASA or a front of the meter project. So what happens is a new meter is installed at the site and 100% of the power that is generated at the site is directly sent right back to the grid. So the the the benefit is spread out entirely. I I don't know if there's a way to pinpoint it down to a level to say exactly where that's going to be distributed at the local level.

Yeah, I'm not talking about so much about the distribution. I'm just talking about, you know, what I see is just adding what I see constantly with all of this where, you know, we're we're adding energy, you know, we're not we're not balancing. It's sort of like all of this adds to it doesn't, you know, so the idea is we're going to renewable energy. Well, the idea is to replace that. If you look at the graphs, it's just a constant increase. And, you know, at the end of the day, um, that in itself is not sustainable. So I I understand the work you're doing is, you know, predicated on the idea that you're um creating sustainability by moving to solar power. But um you know, I think that I think in the bigger picture, we're not really doing that. And that's not really something for you, but you know, I

Right. I just I just want to point I just want to point that out. No, that's that's that's definitely uh something to keep in mind for sure. We we there are two different types of projects that we can do when one is the one I just described where we're we are kind of adding to we're we're generating more power and sending that back to the grid. Um you could just as well do a netting project where we're we're putting the solar up and we're using that to offset power that's already being taken up on site. That's it's just two different versions of of two different options. So, um, it's possible to do that with a solar farm, but it's just the economics of it. You typically wouldn't do it because you would need to have on-site load to begin with to offset. Got Seabberry across the street. Anyway,

they they have they have a beautiful carport project that they did that they uh I know I I tell people to go look at that all the time if they want to actually go and see an installed car canopy and what it actually looks like and how it's supposed to look. It's they did a very nice project over there for that. Great. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Marshall Neely. Thank you. But, uh, I asked so many questions last time. I'm going to refer I'm going to defer till the next meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Commissioner Bolton. Uh, thank you, uh, Mr. Chair. Um, and I, you know, I didn't get a chance to to get into the the weeds of your informal presentation prior to your presentation. This is a CEK project on on whose land?

This is a CEK project. It's going to be on uh Seabberry Life's land. Are you leasing the land from Okay. Um Okay. No, no issue there. I just I just I just I I just didn't know. Um I'm off of solar. Um I I I thought that there was going to be a direct benefit overall to like homes in Bloomfield or something. But based on what you've just off of what Commissioner Goff asked you and and your explanation of the Eversource program, not not direct. It's it's very similar to what I said that the power is going to go back to the feeder all the grid. So it it in theory would benefit Bloomfield because that's where we are with Is it just adding more resiliency or to

does it does it it adds more resiliency to Eversource's grid. It prevents them from having to Eversource's biggest hangup is the fact that they have to spend their own money to do grid upgrades. When when a project like this happens, uh the developer actually pays for for grid upgrades. So any type of feeder upgrade that would need to be done, any type of uh reconductoring, any if we had to upgrade singlephase to three-phase, if it's not the case in this particular project, but if we did, that's on the owners of the developer to actually pay for that. So there is there is a a bit of a hidden community benefit in the sense that if we were to come in um we may need to upgrade electrical infrastructure that would get upgraded. of course the tax benefits to the town that

is this program um contributing towards the amount of total um green energy that electricity that's being created by renewable energies was there a 10% goal overall that they're going to get if I remember correctly does this contributing to yes this contributes directly towards that yeah all right well that's all the real questions that I have on a higher level but I'm sure I'll have more questions as Yeah, as we get closer and present the text. Absolutely. Oh, I do have a question for staff. So, solar is what is it an accessory use to the to the properties in the town of Bloomfield now based on our rags?

We don't have any. So, well, how how are we building solar farms and other than board of ed? That's sorry. So, the principal needs on the board of ed school. Okay. Is to allow what he wants is to allow uh solar as a principal use. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. And you have to go to the sighting council, right? Because it's over one mega. Not um No, not for this one. We actually would be going to the town because they they do anything that's two megawatts and above for sighting council. Is that is that a new rule for deciding or was

No, it's it's been that way since I was aware. It might be I might have that number incorrect in my mind and it might be one, but since we're we're right at one, deciding council wouldn't have jurisdiction over this. I know that for a fact. Okay. All right. Thanks, sir. Thank you. Just one question for you. Have you had any conversations with our CEC committee regarding um this clean energy project? I I don't believe so. Um so far, all we've spoken to is this board and wetlands as well. Oh, okay. That probably wouldn't be a bad idea. CEC. Yes. Yes. We can help you set that up. That would be great. Thank you. Excellent.

I would appreciate that. Yep. Uh that's all I have. So, if there's anything else you want to say, if not, we can conclude this. I just wanted to keep it pretty high level for our first meeting and just introduce not only myself, CEK, the project, um meet all of everybody on the board here. So, I I really appreciate everybody's time. I know it's very late and uh after everything, you're probably just ready to go home, but I appreciate listening to me ramble on. This was my first um town meeting, so I I hope I did okay. I was a little I got a little nervous in the beginning there, but uh very good. Thank you so much. And we would very much welcome any and all help that you just mentioned with the other department, and uh we look forward to presenting hopefully at the next town meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you so much. Okay. Should I turn this off or? Okay. Okay. Next item on the agenda, we go into old business and that's just an update on the PLCD by staff.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, we did send out a brief memo. Um um succinctly um we have received and we have I and um and um my predecessor have spent a fair amount of time um thoroughly reviewing all of the um comments and recommendations uh grammatical and on up uh regarding the draft POC that we received directly received by email, received in the public hearing, and we um we decided together with Linda that as presently constituted um it would be a disservice for the commission to adopt and release the document. And we have um also decided that it would be appropriate and necessary to do a fairly significant rewrite of the document and uh incorporate um some very significant and and appropriate recommendations both from members of the commission uh other agencies and boards and the general public. and I have um secured funding to um to retain uh consultant services uh for about a fiveweek period uh for about a 100 hours of work. And we think that is sufficient time together with the um the input and work of the staff uh to um redo the document to present back to you a document that reflects your vision of where you want the town to go. Uh and is as it not is Bloomfield centric. So that's where we are. We will um begin in earnest next week. Um I was of course

out of town away for a while and the consultant is away for a week. Um but uh then we'll get at it and we think we can get it done in about in about five weeks with uh our other workload commitments. Okay. Thank you for the update. If there's nothing Oh, sure. Uh sorry, just a question. Um what would be the process once you have those updates? Do we have another public hearing or

we would not schedule another public hearing. We would bring it back to you for action. It then has to be referred to the council under statute. They do not have to have a public hearing hearing either. They have 30 days to comment on it. Um their comments are advisory only and then you can formally adopt it. All right. Thank you. Sure. So when it comes back, we don't going to be expected to act on it that first meeting. We have time to read it and and make comments. We're going to slap it down in your desk and expect

Yeah. Well, you know where I was going with that. We um we will obviously give you all time to review it and um we may even uh reach out at at an appropriate time to get some specific guidance from uh anyone who wishes to give it to us. Thank you. Okay. If there's nothing else, chair entertain a motion to objourn. So moved.

Second. I did I would also apologize for my late arrival. I was um directed and I was had to be staffing the council's special finance committee meeting where they were reviewing of things related to tax assessments and uh housing trust fund. Linda did an excellent job in your absence. You were in far you you were in far better hands.