A use variance application has been approved so that Northford’s iconic Millpond property can return to use as a restaurant.

The property owner sought a zoning use variance needed to bring the facility, once home to the popular Millpond Tavern, back into compliance for use as a restaurant. Most recently, the space was used as a counseling center (2010), which operated for a brief time. The building has since been out of use.

On Feb. 19, the Planning and Zoning Commission (PZC) voted to notify the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) that the PZC looks favorably on the request for a variance use to allow the Millpond property to be used again as a restaurant. On Feb. 23, the ZBA approved the variance application, according to Zoning Enforcement Officer Carey Duques . The next step in the process will be a formal site plan for PZC review.

The owner wants to create a restaurant at the unique, three-story riverside building with an eye toward booking events and celebrations, said North Haven attorney John Lambert, speaking to the PZC on Feb. 19. Lambert represents the applicant, Cedars Millpond LLC.

The restaurant, at 1565 Middletown Avenue, is a stand-alone facility accessed by a private bridge.

“The Zammariehs, my clients, purchased it and tried to run it as restaurant, and hit the buzz saw of 2008,” said Lambert.

The restaurant, then known as The Cedars, closed down. In 2010, the town approved Cedars Millpond LLC principal owner Elee Zammarieh’s request for a special permit allowing the former restaurant site to be used as a counseling center.

Lambert said potentially feasible uses for the revived restaurant would include those “...more like the County House (East Haven), where you rent it for a wedding.”

Duques said she went to visit the Millpond site recently, and the building still has the bones of a restaurant facility.

“It still felt like a restaurant,” Duques told the PZC. “I didn’t see commercial-sized kitchen (equipment) but the kitchen itself is still there and it could be fitted out again. That being said, I know it wasn’t their intent to abandon the use; they wanted to continue it. My position is that more than several years had passed since they operated it as a restaurant. But from a planning side, I think it would be great to run as a restaurant.”

The application brought to light a confusing recorded history of use and zoning for the site.

“It took well over a year to figure out the history, because the record is so poor,” said Lambert.

Once a button factory and then home to a brush company, by the 1950’s, the area was zoned as a water district and belonged to the former New Haven Water Company, explained Lambert. In the 1960’s, the company got permission to sell the parcel, approximately 16 acres of what Lambert described as “...90 percent wetlands, next to a river.” It was sold it to a private owner, Bud Thomas of Wallingford.

“He sought to change the district for something he could use it for,” Lambert explained to the PZC. “The district which fit well was a Planned Business District, which no longer exists.”

The change was approved by the town’s then-separate land agencies, the Planning Commission and the Zoning Commission; and the Millpond Tavern restaurant era began.

Interestingly, Lambert said, no town zoning maps from the 1960’s showed the area as a designated planned business district; and, following the recommendation of the town’s Plan of Development in 1970, the area was drawn into zoning maps as a residential district. The Millpond Tavern was allowed to continue to operate as a restaurant in the district.

Even though the restaurant was later permitted to be operated as a counseling center, Lambert said, it appears the special use permit was never recorded by the town. He also said the type of use allowed by the permit, described by the town as “Adult Day Care,” didn’t fit the counseling center’s use.

“To me, it has never been used as an adult day care center – you’d have to torture the English language to call it an Adult Day Care,” said Lambert.

Receiving the new use variance clears up some muddied waters and allows the riverside property to return to its restaurant roots.

“They have always wanted to operate this as a restaurant,” said Lambert of his clients. “The reason (for) a use variance is they don’t want it rezoned. It’s a strange property with heavy wetlands, so it’s not really useful as business district. There is a vastly repaired, engineered bridge, which replaced the old covered bridge. (For) one piece of property, if you develop it as a house, it would have to require the headache of maintaining a substantial bridge.”