The Planning and Zoning Commission (PZC) found itself in uncharted territory at a PZC meeting recently. Months after approving a site plan for a Southern Connecticut Gas (SGC) Company satellite office in town, questions of zoning and permitted use have left the commission in precarious waters as it contemplates the possibility of rescinding the approved plan.

The issue, while convoluted, has to do with how the property in question, located at 299 Long Hill Road, is zoned. While a majority of the property, owned by Mack Management, is zoned industrial, the zoning line does not follow the property line, leaving part of the property zoned industrial and a small section zoned residential.

The existence of the split zone was missed when PZC approved the site plan for the SGC Emergency Response Center on July 20, 2016. While the window of time for an appeal of the approval passed, a neighboring resident, Carl Moritz, brought the zoning issue to the table in late September and requested the approval be rescinded, saying industrial work in a residential zone is a non-conforming use.

Moritz said that he is mainly concerned about his loss of property value due to the change in view from his property as well as increased noise and vibrations emanating from the SGC site. The SGC site provides service from Guilford to DEEP River for new installations, maintenance, and any emergency events.

To address the site plan approval error and the resident’s concerns, PZC held a show cause hearing on Dec. 7 to consider rescinding the site plan application for Mack Management. Town Planner George Kral said there was no clear precedent for a situation like this.

“There is nothing in the law that says what PZC should do or can do to remedy the situation like the one we are in right now,” he said. “Clearly no one is going to contest that the plan was incorrect and therefore approved based on inaccurate information—the question is what do you do after the appeal period is over.”

Before the hearing could get underway, the attorney for Mack Management Marjorie Shansky submitted an application for a zoning map amendment and a special permit. The zoning map amendment, if passed, would move the zoning line to have the entire Mack Management parcel zoned industrial.

“I determined that while there were a couple of ways to rectify the regulatory disarray that we were in, [one] was to seek to undo the split zoning of the parcel,” she said. “The public utility substation, which is the reason we are here, is a use permitted by special permit in the R5 zoning district [the residential zone] so one way or another there is a solution.”

Shansky said that many of the complaints described by Moritz are circumstances related to the site, not actual violations, but that all involved would work towards a solution.

“We are trying to solve the problem,” she said. “We take this very seriously...We will find what works for all parties.”

PZC voted to table the show cause hearing to allow the zoning map amendment to move forward. Kral said the error in assuming the entire property was zoned industrial may have been in large part due to the history of the parcel as industrial, but said he was unsure what changing the zoning would do to address some of the concerns brought forward by the residential property owner, Mortiz.

However, when a residential zone and an industrial zone meet there is a designated space setback from the line. According to PZC regulations, no structure in the I-2 Industrial zone can be closer than 75 feet from a residential district boundary. Because of this, Moritz said he would like to see the industrial zone line stay where it is.

“In my ideal situation the line should stay where it is...and there is an additional setback from there as well and I believe it is there to protect me from encroachment of the industrial activity that is occurring,” he said. “There is some heavy activity back there and I think the buffer needs to be there.”

Lawyers for both parties, Mack Management and Moritz, are currently in contact to see what can be done about the situation but Mortiz said he is not optimistic.

“I don’t know how they are going to fix this,” he said. “...They may reconfigure things to maintain compliance but I don’t know how they can possibly make it so that it is something I could live with.”

“This is a really bad position we are in,” said Commissioner Richard Meier.

The zoning map amendment is scheduled for public hearing at a January PZC meeting.