Town Adds Voice to Route 7 Discussion
As many groups and agencies look at Route 7's future, Ridgefield forms a group to assert its opinions.
By Kira Goldenberg | reprinted from The Ridgefield Patch | August 10, 2010
Seeking to lend Ridgefield's voice to a conversation that's expected to have future economic, aesthetic and transportation-related consequences for the town, local officials this week formed a working group to make recommendations on the Route 7 corridor.
As planned, the Economic Development Commission on Monday formed an interdepartmental Route 7 Task Force. The group's purpose will be to decide how Ridgefield's land use stakeholders can assert its vision for the Route 7 corridor as various state and regional agencies gauge the area's development potential.
"We see that the state and county and other regional agencies have moved forward the planning effort to look at this further," said Economic Development Commissioner Chris Fisher, the task force organizer. If Ridgefield doesn't get involved, he said, "change will happen to us."
The task force includes: Fisher, EDC Co-chairman Magda Fincham, Town Planner Betty Brosius, First Selectman Rudy Marconi, Dave Goldenberg of the Affordable Housing Committee, Town Engineer Charlie Fisher and Planning & Zoning Commission Vice Chairman Patrick Walsh. The WPCA will also be represented.
They've got their work cut out for them.
Goals include a study of Ridgefield's Route 7 as a whole as well as the feasibility of developing Branchville as a transit hub. The work will involve looking at the corridor's zoning to see whether rezoning would make it more amenable to the small businesses the town hopes to attract and the mixed-use buildings that categorize transit-oriented development.
Members will also identify ways to bring sewer service to Branchville, seeking to balance a need for sewer capacity for any substantial development to occur with a fear that excess sewer would open the area to unwieldy affordable housing applications. (Under state law, towns that have less than 10 percent affordable housing must approve such building proposals unless something in the application egregiously violates zoning regulations.)
The idea is for Ridgefielders to forge a vision of Route 7's future here as a multitude of other groups study and weigh in on it.
Two area regional planning agencies—the South Western Regional Planning Agency and the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials, of which Ridgefield is a part—are in the midst of studying Route 7 from Norwalk to Danbury. Areas of scrutiny include Wilton Center, the Route 7/35 intersection and Branchville. Focus groups held earlier this year showed that attendees were eager to see walk-able, attractive development with a village feel on Ridgefield's portion of Route 7.
The state is also conducting research on transit-oriented development on Metro North's Danbury Branch line. A draft report from January notes that a lack of sewer and the fact that the station is cut off from the west side of Route 7 by the Norwalk river form impediments to an otherwise development-suited area.
The January report also notes that the town did its own Branchville study in 2002 that recommended expanding the area as a transit hub, but no action was ever taken.
The state Department of Transportation is meeting with town planning and emergency response officials in October to discuss revamping Route 7's curb cuts, Brosius said.
At the town level, Route 7's importance as a town gateway is addressed in the latest Plan of Conservation and Development, which takes effect later this month. Gateways are prominent entry points to the town, and the hope is that drivers entering Ridgefield form a positive first impression.
The POCD, written by the Planning & Zoning Commission, echoes the new task force's desire to look at rezoning and bringing in sewer. The document, which must be submitted to the state, acts as Ridgefield's blueprints for planning in the next decade. Like the SWRPA/HVCEO study, the POCD looks at considering aesthetic improvements in Branchville to create more of a village feel.
Branchville has become a Board of Selectmen focus recently, too, with the recent approval to start charging to park in the Branchville station lot, reflecting town officials' belief that the lot needs serious work and improvements.
All this study and action is happening shortly after the state admitted that a Super 7 highway from Norwalk to Danbury is not going to happen. The state has started selling land parcels long banked to build the project, which would have seen a highway through town east of the current Route 7. A multiple-town volunteer group is planning a greenway that will trace the path of the defunct highway.
The town's new Route 7 task force will meet monthly in the midst of this Route 7 activity buzz so that Ridgefield's preferences for the area's future are thrown into the fray.
"At a regional level, active planning for change is happening, and what do we think as a town we want to see happen?" Fisher said at the EDC meeting last month that spurred the task force creation.
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