The Farmington Town Plan and Zoning Commission on Monday night accepted a formal zoning application for the Enclave at the Farmington River development and scheduled the public hearing for July 13. The applicant of record is National Land Holdings, LLC — an affiliate of Minneapolis-based Crown Equities, LLC.
The motion, made by Commissioner David St. Germain and adopted on a unanimous voice vote, bundled four actions: an amendment to Section 9 of the 2018 POCD addendum; a zone-text amendment to Article 2, Section 32; a zone change from the BRSA, R30, and EE zones to the Mid-Point Development District; and a master plan for 1179 Farmington Avenue and 2 and 3 Bridgewater Road.
In plain English: the applicant wants permission to build a roughly 80-acre, three-parcel mixed-use residential community on what is currently a former sand-and-gravel quarry and adjoining parcels along the Farmington River. Hartford Business Journal reporting put the unit count at between 240 and 296 — single-family homes, townhouses, and apartments — at an estimated $225 million. The Mercury covered the project's informal TPZ review last June and again, after a master-plan presentation, later that same month. Monday's vote moves the project from informal scrutiny to formal review.
Why July 13
Town Planner Shannon Rutherford laid out the procedural runway. Under Connecticut general statutes, an amendment to the POCD must be forwarded to the Town Council and CRCOG — the Capitol Region Council of Governments — for review and comment, with a 65-day window. That clock pushes the earliest possible hearing date to July 1. The applicant granted an extension to the July 13 meeting so the procedural pieces have room to settle.
There is also a parallel review track. Per regulation, the application requires a recommendation from the Architectural Design Review Committee — a body whose review will take place during May and June, with a written report to TPZ ahead of the public hearing.
Rutherford committed to printing nine hard copies of the application binder — six sections, multiple subsections each, including an 11-by-17 plan set — for commissioners and online participants. Chair Liz Sanford asked for one. "I'm a little analog," she said. "I'd like to be able to go back and forth."
What Monday's vote did and did not do
Worth noting what accepting an application actually means. TPZ took no position on the merits of the Enclave proposal. The vote moved the application onto the calendar so the public hearing can be properly noticed and the parallel reviews can run. The substantive arguments happen on July 13.
The 1179 Farmington Avenue parcel is a 48.5-acre former sand-and-gravel quarry that has been used in recent years for equipment storage and material processing by Plainville-based Mizzy Construction, per the Hartford Business Journal's earlier coverage. The 2 and 3 Bridgewater Road parcels are smaller and adjoining.
The Talcott Notch ADU
Earlier in the same meeting, on a separate unanimous voice vote, TPZ approved a special permit and site plan for Christian Winkley of Hartford-based Oxford Builders to convert an existing 1950s-era log cabin and pool house at 222 Talcott Notch Road into a one-bedroom detached accessory dwelling unit. The cabin sits in an RAD zone, roughly 312 feet from the rear property line and more than 400 feet from the nearest residence, behind a long driveway and tree canopy that, per Winkley's testimony, makes it invisible from the street and from neighboring houses.
The footprint is unchanged. Exterior modifications are limited to a rear-facing dormer to add a loft bedroom and a new roof. The site is in an upland review area.
The deliberation was almost entirely about septic. The cabin has its own septic system, separate from the main 1929 house. A 1,000-gallon tank was reportedly replaced sometime in the last 25 years — the paperwork is incomplete, and an inspection at the time of the property's purchase found root infiltration. The leaching field is, per Winkley, unknown. A perk test was conducted last week by Sylvester and Sons with a town health-department representative present. As of Monday night, the design had not come back.
Commissioner Taylor Pogson voiced reservations about approving the ADU before the septic plan is fully laid out. "I would recommend the septic plan be fully laid out before approval going forward on this," Pogson said, "because it does kind of open you up to a lot of issues down the way. And especially being upland review area."
Rutherford laid out the procedural backstop. The Farmington Valley Health District sanitarian, she explained, must sign off on the building permit before any certificate of occupancy is issued — a separate sign-off built into the existing permit chain. If a new septic system is required, the design has to come from a registered, licensed engineer; the sanitarian reviews and approves it; the sanitarian — or the engineer providing photographs to the sanitarian — is on site at installation; and only then does the CO get released. If the new system requires excavation in the upland review area, the work goes to the Inland Wetlands Commission. None of this is contingent on TPZ approval; the gates are downstream.
Two further procedural points came out of the deliberation. First: the ADU is permitted as a regulatory matter regardless of whether the current homeowner intends to use the unit as a guest house — her stated intent — or to rent it out. The Farmington Valley Health District reviews ADUs based on bedrooms. Successive owners can rent the unit if they choose; that is how the regulation is built. Second: the original 1950s septic system on the property predates modern building codes — a fact the commission acknowledged without making it the basis for a vote.
"We're already proceeding down the path of a new septic system," Winkley said. The motion carried.
Three sign permits, one regulatory rewrite
Rutherford forwarded three sign applications to the building-permit process without commission action: a Maple Heart Hobbies aluminum panel replacing the prior Farmer's Insurance sign at 504 Main Street; a full sign-system replacement at 27 Wood Drive, where the senior community formerly known as Brookdale Gables (and earlier as the Gables) is rebranding to Discovery Village at Farmington; and a 4-by-12 cast-vinyl panel for the incoming Village Laundromat — the Terryville-based business expanding into the longtime Best Cleaners site.
All three are direct replacements of existing signs on existing structures. The Discovery Village job includes the small directional and resident-parking signs that any private senior community needs, plus a panel replacement on the directional pylon sign on Farmington Avenue. Rutherford explained that the pylon sign sits in the DOT right-of-way, was DOT-approved at original installation, and is privately paid for; the town has no jurisdiction over the panel itself. "We're like, change out the panel, do whatever you want," she said, summarizing the planning department's position.
Separately, Rutherford reported that her draft revisions to the town sign regulation are nearly complete. Most of the writing happened on a recent flight to and from Kansas. The approach was holistic — text edits, cleanups, and a fresh attempt at the open-signs question the commission discussed about a year ago. Bruce and Garrett (Planning Department staff) get the next pass; commissioners will receive a working track-changes draft by the end of this week.
POCD RFP closes Friday
The RFP for the next Plan of Conservation and Development update closes this Friday, May 1, at 11 a.m. Two entities asked questions during the response period; staff posted answers on the town website and the state DAS RFP portal. The RFP includes a separate price line for a housing growth plan tied to House Bill 8002, structured as a carve-out so it does not inflate the base POCD price.
The selection committee will be Chair Liz Sanford, Commissioner Lisa Fagan, and Commissioner David St. Germain, with Commissioner Phil Cordero as alternate; staff representatives are Rutherford, Bruce, Garrett, and Rose Fonte. Interviews are targeted for the second half of May and first half of June, with a recommendation to Town Council in June (or the first July meeting), so contracts can be signed at the July 1 fiscal-year start. The selection is qualifications- and interview-based, not low-bidder. If between three and six proposals come in, the committee will not shortlist; if eight to twelve come in, a shortlist is likely.
What's next
July 13: public hearing on the Enclave application, with the Architectural Design Review Committee report and the CRCOG comments in hand. Building permit and sanitarian sign-off on the Talcott Notch ADU. Three sign permits move to building permit.
The Mercury will be there.
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— Jack Beckett has covered Farmington's Town Plan and Zoning Commission long enough to know that "accepting an application" and "approving an application" are not the same sentence, and that the difference matters more on July 13 than it did on April 27. He is on his second cup of coffee. The binder is six sections long. ☕
The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering — the zoning meeting that runs an hour-plus on procedural runway, the police log that publishes before most of the country is awake, the school board vote that determines what your kids learn next year, the development hearing that decides whether hundreds of units land on the river. We publish slowly, deliberately, and accurately. Always last to breaking news. Always thorough about everything else. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰