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The Smith Funeral Home, founded by George J. Smith, was a mainstay in the Milford community on the Green since 1886.
Photo: Bill Bloxsom / Hearst Connecticut MediaThe Smith Funeral Home, founded by George J. Smith, was a mainstay in the Milford community on the Green since 1886.
The Smith Funeral Home, founded by George J. Smith, was a mainstay in the Milford community on the Green since 1886.
The Smith Funeral Home, founded by George J. Smith, was a mainstay in the Milford community on the Green since 1886.
MILFORD — A proposed mixed-use development on the site of the former Smith Funeral Home returns to the Milford Planning and Zoning Board Aug. 4, and this time the board will have two designs to review.
The board tabled the application at its July 20 meeting, in part to get a legal opinion from the city attorney regarding whether it can require a public hearing for a project that only needs site plan approval. The board also wanted time to review a proposal for shared parking and to request a traffic study for the project area.
City Attorneys Jonathan D. Berchem and Debra Kelly provided their opinion in a July 30 memo to City Planner David B. Sulkis, and concluded that the board could conduct a public hearing, but with limitations.
Metro 135 LLC, with Robert H. Smith Jr. as member, has submitted plans to construct and renovate buildings at 125-135 Broad St. to create a mixed-use property with three new mixed-use retail and office buildings, with a total of 77 apartments. Since these plans only require site plan approval, no public hearing is typically required.
The 2.28-acre property in the Milford Center Design District is the location of the 6,690-square-foot former Smith Funeral Home, a 416-square-foot office building, and a garage. The plans call for retaining and renovating the funeral home building and the office building, but demolishing the industrial building and garage, and replacing them with three new mixed use retail and office buildings with 77 apartments. The 5,700-square-foot industrial building at the rear of the property has already been demolished.
As part of the original application, Smith proposed a shared parking arrangement between the apartments and the retail/office components. The project requires 154 parking spaces, while only 120 would be provided with the intent that 34 spaces will be shared. Of the 120 spaces, five would be handicap accessible. This parking would be provided through a mixture of surface parking and parking under two mixed-used buildings at the rear. In the MCDD zone, the board has the discretion to agree to a finding of parking adequacy, which it has done on other projects in downtown.
Traffic Engineer David G. Sullivan submitted a written assessment of the shared parking proposal on behalf of Metro 135, in which he said that office and residential parking demands do not peak at the same time. Sullivan noted that office parking peaks during the morning and afternoon, while residential parking typically peaks in the evening and overnight.
“Therefore, we feel that the 120 proposed parking spaces on the site will comfortably and reasonably accommodate the expected parking demand,” Sullivan said in his report.
On July 30, Metro 135 submitted an alternate plan with an underground parking garage located below the proposed surface level parking under the two rear buildings. This new garage along with the exterior surface parking would include 178 parking spaces, which is 17 more than the 161 required. The alternate plans increase the bedroom count, which boosts the residential parking requirements from 109 to 116 spaces, while the retail and commercial spaces remain at 45 spaces. The alternate project lists parking as 33 surface, 66 covered at grade, and 79 garaged.
Hearing ruling
In the legal opinion to the board, Berchem and Kelly wrote that both the state statutes and the Milford Zoning Regulations neither require norprohibit a public hearing for site plan review. They indicated that case law in Connecticut has found that “conducting a public hearing on a site plan application is permissible,” however different timelines apply.
“When a commission conducts a public hearing where one is not required by statute, it must render its decision on the application within sixty-five days of the receipt of the application, not sixty-five days from the completion of the hearing,” wrote Berchem and Kelly. “The commission’s failure to act within this shorter time frame would trigger automatic approval of the application.”
They added an asterisk to this comment, noting that Gov. Ned Lamont’s Executive Order of March 21, allows for up to a 90-day extension to typical land use deadlines for starting, finishing and deciding a zoning application. The governor’s order is in effect for the duration of the pandemic’s public health and civic preparedness emergency.
With regard to the board’s decision-making process, the city attorneys noted that the board’s review of the application is limited to “whether the plan complies with the application regulations,” and note that “the application calls for a mixed-use development in the MCDD zone - a use specifically permitted under Section 3.21.1.8 of the Milford Zoning Regulations.”
The board’s Aug. 4 agenda states the board must vote on this application by Sept. 23. By comparison, the timeline is much longer for the application for a manufacturing facility at 132 Shelland St., which was also introduced at the board’s July 20 meeting. The Shelland Street project has a required public hearing because it involves a special permit in addition to the site plan review. The board has to close that public hearing by Oct. 7 and vote on that project by Dec. 14. This public hearing continues on Aug. 4 because the board’s meeting ran past 11 p.m. on July 20 and the public did not have the opportunity to comment.
The board also is conducting a public hearing for a special permit with site plan review to convert an existing office and residential building at 158 Cherry St. to an all-residential building. Another public hearing is with regard to a previously approved affordable housing project at 526 Naugatuck Ave. The board included the condition that the project include solar panels and applicant is seeking to remove that requirement, due to the cost involved. The final public hearing is for a previously approved affordable housing project at 328 Meadowside Road. The applicant is seeking to convert four of the one-bedroom units into two-bedroom units.
The former Smith Funeral Home was once the home of submarine designer Simon Lake, who used the now demolished buildings at the rear to design and build submarines and submersibles. In June, Winthrop and Bonnie Smith sold their funeral home business to Gregory F. Doyle Funeral Home of Devon. The Smith family had operated the business since 1886. The Smiths sold their cremation business to James T. Toohey & Son Funeral Home of Shelton.
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August 03, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Housing plan for downtown Milford heading back to PZC, with new parking option - New Haven Register
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