By John Schwing

WESTPORT — It was a first.

A requirement that the owner of a Maple Lane home open the house to public tours twice yearly mystified even the longest-serving Zoning Board of Appeals members when a request to nullify that ZBA-imposed obligation came before the panel Tuesday night.

Alan Doran, the current owner of 5 Maple Lane, filed the application seeking to remove a condition that read, in part, the property’s owner is required to allow “access to the house by the general public two days a year.”

He told the board “prospective buyers of the house refuse to buy a house with a restriction of that sort,” adding that he also would not welcome visits by strangers as required by a variance previously granted for the property by the ZBA.

The house, built in 1780, is currently on the real estate market for $899,900, according to multiple online listings.

No one from the public, Doran added, has ever asked to tour the property even though, by right, they presumably could have.

ZBA members were astonished by the public-access requirement, with several questioning how and why the proviso ever had been approved.

Jim Ezzes, the board’s longtime chairman, called it “an unusual situation, to say the least.”

Michelle Perillie, the deputy planning and zoning director, calling it a “very unique application,” explained the requirement dates to a variance granted by the board in 1987.

At the time, a variance was granted to subdivide what was a single lot encompassing 2.7 acres into two non-conforming lots to allow for two houses. 

When that variance was later modified, she said, the board added the public-access requirement for 5 Maple Lane, presumably because the 18th Century home is designated a  “local historic property” by the town’s Historic District Commission.

Perillie said the variance specifies the Maple Lane homeowner is supposed to allow public visits annually on a Sunday in July and again on a Sunday in November from noon to 5 p.m.

And while the requirement technically “is legal,” she said, it “is extremely impractical for the owner and for the town to enforce.”

Both the Planning and Zoning Department staff and the Town Attorney’s Office supported dropping the public-access requirement, Perillie told the board.

Removing that language, she added, would address the hesitancy a new buyer of the property might have about being required to allow public tours.

After listening to Perillie’s presentation on how the requirement came to exist, Ezzes commented, “I’ve never heard of this before,” an observation seconded by member Elizabeth Wong as well as Perillie.

When a question arose over whether the property owner could demonstrate “hardship” in seeking approval of the requested change, Ezzes said it really was a “housekeeping issue” of removing language from the earlier variance for reasons of “safety and privacy.”

After brief discussion of what Ezzes characterized as a “very strange” matter, the board voted unanimously to strike the public-access requirement as requested by Doran.

John Schwing, the Westport Journal consulting editor, has held senior editorial and writing posts at southwestern Connecticut media outlets for four decades. Learn more about us here.