By Thane Grauel

WESTPORT — There won’t be shovels in the ground any time soon, but parts of the plan to add 10 residential structures to the Glendinning Place corporate campus, including units for people with special needs, were approved Monday by the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The proposal by Glendinning Westport LLC calls for eight detached market rate single-family homes on a northern portion of the 16-acre property. Two other buildings would contain three efficiency studios in each to house five special needs individuals, plus a support staff person.

In split votes, the zoners approved a text amendment that would allow the housing, a waiver of a 1966 special permit that allowed the offices, and a general development plan. All the votes passed 5-2.

Each vote shook out the same way. Chairman Paul Lebowitz and members Amy Wistreich, Nicole Laskin, Neil Cohn and Michael Calise voted in favor. Patrizia Zucaro and John Bolton were against.

The public hearing was closed during the commission’s last meeting two weeks earlier, so no one from the public could speak at the work session.

Still to come, as Planning and Zoning Director Mary Young took pains to point out, was the need for the applicant to resubmit an application for a special permit/site plan review, and a slew of other checkoffs/approvals from other agencies.

The special permit/site plan vote had been expected at Monday’s meeting, but the applicant hit something of a bureaucratic speed bump and withdrew that portion.

Peter Gelderman of the Town Attorney’s Office said that before that application was filed with the P&Z, it should have first been filed with the Conservation Commission. And until Conservation is done with it, it shouldn’t be approved by the P&Z.

Calise broke with fellow Republicans in approving the resolutions, but made it clear he wasn’t happy about it.

“This is a very serious zoning issue for the town of Westport,” he said. “We are taking a very sensitive area in a prominent part of Westport, that surrounds the Saugatuck River with a great deal of wetlands, and we are allowing a greater development than was initially approved.”

“Bear in mind, that initial approval was based on the right to build a very, very large office building, which is not allowed in that zone,” Calise said of a 1966 P&Z decision.

“So, this was sort of a handshake, ‘you let me do this and I’ll do that,’ ” he said. “And the ‘I’ll do that’ was ‘I’m going to preserve the rest of this land for future generations.’ Which goes beyond the neighbors, it goes beyond the Saugatuck River, it really speaks to our word as a community.”

“I’m voting for this, but I’m not happy about,” Calise said. “I’m doing it based solely on the assisted living provisions that are being made.”

Cohn pointed out the earlier special permit allowed even more office space to be built on the property.

“It would be a far more intense use of that land,” he said of the housing. “What we’re approving here is a relatively modest construction of some homes.”

“This is not a travesty,” Cohn said. “What we’re doing here is actually a very good use of land that could have been used otherwise.”

“I don’t think that 15 units is a modest development,” Zucaro said. “If that’s a modest development, I’m curious to know what would be, like, a standard development?”

“This is a painful vote for me,” Laskin said. “But I feel like the positive outweighs potential negatives. It hurts to see increased density in an area that’s so beautiful, but we have to do what’s necessary sometimes to get the special needs housing.”

Wistreich said her thinking aligned with Calise’s, but …

“I’m just extremely inspired by the special needs portion of this application in the sense that not only do we have a deep need for this type of housing,” she said. “The applicant is proposing to do this type of housing in the most dignified way. With the best quality of life … to me it’s the model — cottage-like setting, park-like setting.”

“I don’t like the fact that I’m voting against this,” Bolton said, noting he was uneasy with its review.

“I personally think this is a commodity the town needs and I said earlier it’s regarding a constituency that doesn’t always have the ability to speak for itself. However, I’m voting against it for what I think is an unusual sequence in the process,” he said.

Thane Grauel grew up in Westport and has been a journalist in Fairfield County and beyond for 36 years. Reach him at editor@westportjournal.com. Learn more about us here.