Stafford Springs, CT – June 20, 2024
The house at 6 Corcoran Avenue has seen many iterations. After a recent special use permit approval from the Planning & Zoning Commission, its next life will be as a three-family home. Darren Owen of EO Associates went before Stafford’s Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC), representing the property owner, Glory Homes, to discuss the conversion plans for the property during a public hearing.
While the property has most recently been used as a one-family dwelling, it was a two-family in the past. To turn the home into a three-family unit, a special use permit is required.
Owen said the work will not impact the outside of the building and that the renovations will be entirely internal. He also said he talked to the neighbor at 5 Corcoran Avenue and shuffled the parking plan to address concerns about the property boundary line. PZC Chair Dave Palmberg read a letter into the record from those neighbors, and that letter stated that they were worried the property would be used to rent individual rooms or a boarding house.
Owen says the 3,000+ square foot house will have one unit with four bedrooms, a second with one bedroom, and the third will be an efficiency. Still, another neighbor, Michael Bigwood of Center Street, expressed concerns that the private way (Corcoran Avenue), which he lives at the top of, is not plowed by the town. He worried that more traffic on the road would put more pressure on him to clear his part of the road in the winter. He was also concerned about bringing more multi-family properties into the neighborhood, which already has several. He also expressed the same concerns about the owner trying to turn the property into a boarding house.
Zoning Enforcement Officer Andy Marchese said he talked with the owner, who originally wanted to turn the property into a boarding house. He told her that was not allowed under the town’s regulations. Just in case, commissioner Richard Shuck read the formal definition of a family into the record. Stafford’s regulations define a family as “one or more persons living together as a single non-profit housekeeping unit, including domestic servants and gratuitous guests.”
The commission also discussed concerns surrounding trash pickup. At first, they wondered if the new garbage trucks that pick up trash in the Borough could make it down the private road. However, buildings with more than two units no longer receive trash pick-up. Emergency access in the winter was also a concern, as the town does not plow the private road.
Ultimately, the commission voted to approve the special use permit with a few caveats. There should be no individual rooms for rent, trash, and recycling must be provided by the property owner, a fence of at least four feet high must be installed between the property and its neighbor, and the bedrooms will have no door locks other than what would customarily be in a residential building.
An Apartments.com listing for 6 Corcoran Avenue says the four-bedroom unit will cost $2,300 monthly and is available on August 1.
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