By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
Metro Realty’s two applications originally on the Middlebury Planning and Zoning Commission agenda for public hearings at its December 7 meeting were moved to the January 4 meeting. As it was, with eight public hearings on the December agenda, including three for the proposed distribution center, that meeting ran more than four hours, so it’s unclear how much longer the meeting would have lasted if the Metro Realty hearings hadn’t been postponed. The distribution center hearings were closed at the December meeting and a P&Z decision on those applications is expected at the January 4 meeting.
The Metro Realty applications are for a zone text change to add Section 28 Planned Rental Housing Development Overlay District to the Regulations (Application #23-67Z) and for a zone map change to change from the current LI-80/R-40/PRD to Section 28 Planned Rental Housing Development Overlay District (Application #23-68Z).
During a presentation to the Middlebury Board of Selectmen December 18, Kyle Richards, an executive vice president at Metro Realty, discussed the 77-acre tract having three different zones, LI-80 (light industrial), R-40 (residential) and PRD (planned residential development). He said developing the land as light industrial is one credible execution. Another would be to build 60 homes. However, Metro Realty focuses on two types of construction, medical offices and luxury apartments.
He said Metro Realty has determined the best way to develop the 77-acre parcel and protect the mature wetlands forest on it is to leave 57 acres undisturbed and construct 200 luxury apartments on 20 acres. Showing a photograph of a Metro Realty luxury apartment complex in Farmington, he said these projects generate lots of tax revenue and have few school children.
He said Metro Realty builds these projects and then maintains them. He also said after Metro Realty has built a project in a town, they have been invited to build more.
The Middlebury project, The Preserve at Middlebury, would have 100 one-bedroom apartments and 100 two-bedroom apartments. Renters would mainly fall into one of two groups, young professionals and empty nesters.
Richards said Metro’s data from their other properties indicated the Middlebury project might have 17 school age students, so the net tax revenue to the town after deducting $21,789 per student would be $588,181. He compared this to Brookside, where homes have more bedrooms (three to five), with 59 school age children. Tax revenue from Brookside is a loss to the town of more than $1 million a year.
St. John asked if there was any contamination on the property due to nearby contamination. Richards said they had tested thoroughly, both groundwater and soil, and detected nothing. He said they did find some pesticide residue from when the property was farmed in the past.
Vance asked about the traffic study, and Richards said the short answer is that the project would have a small effect on traffic. St. John noted a state project to add lanes at the Rte. 63/64 intersection is funded, but it likely will be 2 to 3 years before that is in place. Richards said Straits Turnpike handles up to 13,000 cars a day, and their project might add two car lengths to the queue at the intersection.
Mahr expressed concern that the worst case scenario would be 100 units with 100 children. Richards said the size of the home and number of bedrooms correlate with the number of school-age children and the data doesn’t show there could be 100 kids. He said, “That’s beyond the realm of possibility.”
Richards showed a table that listed Brookside, as mentioned earlier, with 59 school-age children. It has 108 homes, so has .55 school-age children per home. Ridgewood also was on the table. It has 270 homes and 47 school-age children, or .17 per home. The proposed 200-apartment project was listed with 17 school children, or .085 per apartment.
St. John said without the proposed zone change, if 60 homes were built on the parcel, it could generate many more school children. “It could really spike our school population,” he said. At the same rate as Brookside, 60 homes would have 33 school-age children.
In addition to meeting with the Board of Selectmen, Richards has met twice informally with concerned residents of streets near the proposed project. It seems his efforts to allay their fears have thus far been unsuccessful as the group, Preserve Middlebury, still considers the project a threat to the town and has a long list of concerns. They are concerned about traffic on Straits Turnpike and traffic spilling over into neighborhoods, the number of school-age children, the possibility of students using the emergency access road to walk to Memorial Middle School, that there will be lots of vacancies in the complex or it will become low income housing, that town services will be strained, that this will be the largest development in the town, and more. It’s likely these concerns will be expressed at the January 4 P&Z public hearing.
At the November 30 informal meeting, Richards was accompanied by Metro Realty President Geoffrey Sager. They gave basically the same presentation as Richards gave the selectmen, also noting that median home prices here are so high most town employees can’t afford to live here, and there are no lower price alternatives.
One attendee at that meeting said she thought it unlikely there would be as few school-age children as they predicted. Another asked what happens if they don’t fill the 200 apartments. Richards said if that was a concern, they could build the project in phases and start with 125 units. At that time, Richards thought school buses would not circulate through the project, and that was a concern, but he told the Board of Selectmen on December 18 that he had talked to the Superintendent of Schools Joshua Smith, and he said buses would drive into the complex to pick up students.
