A real estate developer who was dissatisfied with conditions placed upon Planning and Zoning Commission approval of his plan for an apartment complex including affordable rents has completely redrawn his plans, favoring a smaller, more compact design more likely to pass muster.
The developer, Michael Eppoliti of Eppoliti Realty Co. Inc., scaled back his plan from three buildings on nearly one acre to only one building on the land at 7 and 9 North Salem Road. It was the third time he had revised plans for the apartment complex since his first approval in 2011.
Eppoliti presented his revised application to the Planning and Zoning Commission May 19, hoping for an approval without stipulations about storm water runoff to neighboring properties like he had in his previously approved plan.
Eppoliti had unsuccessfully appealed those stipulations through the courts, and is back with a completely different looking concept that seriously reduces the construction footprint on the property.
He is planning one three-and-a-half-story building of 13 units, with eight two-bedroom apartments, four one-bedroom apartments and one three-bedroom suite. Parking would be located mostly underneath the building, which is designed to look like a Victorian farmhouse that now stands on the property. Eppoliti has owned the property many years and said the old structures would be razed.
“It looks like an existing homestead house,” architect Jeff Mose of Mose Associates said of the new design.
Four of the apartments would be reserved as affordable under Connecticut General Statute 8-30g, which means the units would rent for anywhere from $1,160 to $1,564, according to Betty Brosius, the town’s planning director. The rest of the units would rent for more.
The revised plan was well greeted.
“The commission likes the overall plan better than the one that was approved,” Brosius said, but questions about the storm water runoff from the property must be answered as the application is processed.
The public hearing drew no opposition from neighbors. The hearing is continued to a meeting on June 16.
It is the latest apartment project filed under the state’s controversial 8-30g statute, which is intended to create more affordable housing in the suburbs. Developers may bypass many local zoning restrictions as long as a percentage of the units are reserved as affordable, according to a mathematical formula based on median incomes.
The town has a state-granted moratorium on new applications brought under the law, but this application was in before that moratorium was granted.
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