Milford Legislator Leads Opposition to Development on Pond Point

Published Nov. 20

Milford State Sen. Gayle Slossberg joined hundreds of residents at City Hall Tuesday night to speak out against a planned affordable housing development at 86 Pond Point Ave.

“When you consult all the factors and hear from all the residents, you will find that the application must be denied,” Slossberg told the city’s planning and zoning board, the local legislative body charged with granting site plan approval.

The 23-unit complex is being proposed under state statute 8-30g, which puts the city in a position where, if it wants the application to fail, it must prove its concerns outweighs the need for affordable housing in Milford, which is real.

“There’s a serious due process problem here,” the state senator said. “The applicant has not done its job.”

Slossberg: Environmental issues not fully addressed

Slossberg said the proposal fails to adequately address such environmental issues as soil erosion, storm runoff and endangered species. She said the applicant has not yet submitted a state-mandated soil erosion control plan.

Echoing a previous speaker’s argument, Slossberg said the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection should review the property before any action is taken on the application.

On about 2.4 acres of the 2.7-acre site exists a wildlife habitat, according to local conservation officials, who have protested that the development would “substantially adversely affect a local neighborhood quality of life.”

Discrepancies over traffic

The applicant’s traffic study looked at state Department of Transportation statistics from January 2008 to December 2010, the latest three-year accident history, according to the engineering company who prepared it for the developer.

The report cited four accidents on the 500-foot section of Pond Point Avenue which would be most impacted by the development. That finding drew a loud round of laughter from the audience when it was shared Tuesday.

“This area has had many motor vehicle accidents over the years,” John Healy, a Pond Point Avenue resident, said later.

Another resident said that data he received from local police showed more than 40 accidents on a larger stretch of Pond Point Avenue over the past 39 months. The applicant’s study did not include the intersection with New Haven Avenue.

Slossberg said the state figures are “certainly not sufficient” and more input is needed from Milford police.

Applicant: Development would help Milford

The opportunity to respond to public comment was not afforded to the representatives of the developer, Colberg LLC, as shortly before midnight the board continued the hearing to Dec. 3.

But before public comment, representatives made their presentation to the board and fielded questions from members.

On the environmental front, Jeffrey Gordon, a landscape architect, said though the site right now is heavily wooded, it’s mostly covered with invasive species, which “most conservation groups want removed.”

Gordon said the installation of a retention pond would mitigate flooding and improve draining in the area. He said there would be wildlife displacement – raccoons, wild turkey, deer – but that comes with any development.

Attorney Danielle Bercury of the Milford firm Harlow, Adams and Friedman said that the property is currently “used as an unauthorized dumping ground more than anything else.”

Fears over property values ‘overblown’

The representatives both stressed that affordable housing is not the same as low-income housing.

Gordon called fears over decreasing property values “overblown.” He said similar approved affordable housing complexes in Orange, Trumbull, Shelton, Fairfield and Milford have not led to area property values going down.

Bercury said the 30 percent of the units that are required under the state statute to be set aside as affordable will probably be bought by the likes of teachers, firefighters and young professionals.

Seven of the 23 units are being proposed as affordable with four of those units for families with less than or equal to 80 percent of the state median income and three units for families making less than or equal to 60 percent.

The annual household incomes that qualify for the affordable housing units will range from $38,000 to $58,000, Bercury said.

The units are only available for sale and will be priced between $111,000 and $258,000, Bercury said. Following the sale of 60 percent of the units, a condo association will be formed that will be responsible for the maintenance of the development, she said.

Gordon said complexes like this one help alleviate the “brain drain” from communities like Milford who are losing young educated people because they can’t afford to live in those cities and towns.

Affordable housing stagnant in Milford

A city official Tuesday said that the affordable housing percentage in Milford is only slightly more than 6 percent – and it’s been dropping for at least five years.

State statute 8-30g, passed in 1990, allows developers to enter towns and cities with less than 10 percent affordable housing and not be subject to local zoning laws.

“We’ve got a ways to go to meet that housing need,” Thomas Ivers, the city’s block grant coordinator, said of the 10 percent threshold.

Of the 23,000 dwelling units in the city, only 1,396 are classified as affordable, Ivers said. That means in order to get to 10 percent the city would have to add 912 affordable units without adding any at market price.