Contract Reached Vacant Land Near SHU

By Andrew Brophy, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

Jun. 23–FAIRFIELD — Sacred Heart University has apparently entered into a contract to buy 4.25 acres at Park Avenue and Jefferson Street, where developers wanted to build 78 condominiums last spring.

Sources indicate a deal is in the works to transfer ownership of the property to the university, where two development proposals have sparked opposition from neighbors in both Fairfield and Bridgeport over the last several years.

Sheila Moseley, an SHU spokeswoman, would not say Friday what SHU plans to do with the vacant property or when ownership might transfer to the university.

Charles Willinger, the lawyer who represents Louis L. Ceruzzi, manager of a limited liability company that owns the property, declined to comment.

“I’m not in a position to make any comment on this matter,” he said.

A development application by SHU would require approval from the Town Plan and Zoning Commission, according to Assistant Town Planner James Wendt.

The 4.25 acres, which once was part of a larger property, is in a Designed Research District, where the minimum lot size for a development is 10 acres.

But the land’s “underlying” zone is Residence 3, which permits developments on smaller parcels.

“If the university is going to make some application, it’s going to be under the R-3 zone,” Wendt said.

Ceruzzi tried to build dormitories for SHU on the property in 2003, but the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals rejected those plans.

The three, three-story dorms Ceruzzi wanted to build totaled 133,000 square feet — more than twice the size permitted by town zoning regulations for the site — and the ZBA refused to grant those waivers from the regulations.

R-3 regulations would permit a development on the 4.25 acres to be a maximum of 55,539 square feet, or 30 percent of the lot’s square footage, while Ceruzzi wanted 72 percent. Ceruzzi’s dorms would have housed 90 two-bedroom units.

A few years later, developers Robert S. Skolnick and David H. Small, who built the 70-unit Stoneridge at Fairfield condo complex, entered into a contract to buy the Park Avenue land from Ceruzzi.

But Skolnick and Small couldn’t get the ZBA to grant waivers so they could build 78 condos on the site.

The lawsuit that Skolnick and Small filed against the ZBA last April is still pending in Bridgeport Superior Court, said Town Attorney Richard Saxl.

Saxl, though, said the developers’ lawyer told him several months ago to keep the lawsuit “on the back burner,” and the town has yet to file a “return of record,” which is usually done right after a lawsuit is filed.

“Usually people are in a rush for that. In this case, we were told to hold up,” Saxl said. “It’s still pending, but I was specifically told nobody was interested in rushing it.”

Residents of the town’s Stratfield area turned out in force to oppose both Ceruzzi’s dorm project and the condo proposal by Skolnick and Small when the applications went to ZBA public hearings.

Opposition to the plans has also come from the Bridgeport neighborhood just across Park Avenues from the property.

Bethel Ann Rooney, the lawyer who represented the Stratfield Improvement Association, said in April that neighbors favor a development of about seven or eight single-family houses on the site.

But Willinger and ZBA Chairman Robert Brennan Jr. said that isn’t realistic because of the development’s cost and the price at which people would buy a house, given the location and traffic.

The LLC managed by Ceruzzi acquired the property at no cost in December 2002 from Alfred Lenoci Sr. and BVS Acquisitions Co., who bought it for $1.6 million earlier that year from 3030 Park Health Center Inc. The property is assessed at $1.35 million.

—–

To see more of the Connecticut Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.connpost.com/.

Copyright (c) 2007, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.