The Stamford Zoning Board held a public hearing on three applications: a historic density bonus for a Barrel Lane property, a rezoning of Pacific Street to the VC2 district, and a related text change. The board also approved several coastal site plan applications and discussed administrative items. The meeting began on September 14, 2026, and continued into September 15.
Is Elena? It's a little hard to read. That's I'm assuming that's I95 there. Yes, it's I95. It's very hard to read. I I apologize, but when you go into PowerPoint, that's how it looks. It's just sure. So this is I-95, this is Hamilton Avenue, and this is our lane. And the location is really very nice because you could walk to the beaches, and the end of the barrel lane is kind of very private. Here is some of the neighborhood shots. As you see from uh across the street, there are going to be condominiums along the street. There are some private homes. There are two family homes, there is a um uh big nursing home, uh kind of facing the neighborhood. Uh so uh, but it's it's separated by a lot of greenery, so really nobody can see it. Uh the property is very interesting because originally the barrel lane was uh a part of uh large uh property, and it had a mansion of one of the uh most prominent families in Stanford that was uh Eve's web property. Uh it was built approximately in the beginning of 1900. Um eventually the property was subdivided, the main mansion that you see here was lost, and the only part of the property that was remaining was uh cottage that was occupied by a gardener, but also served kind of like a gatehouse into the whole property because it was located near the entry into the property. So the structure was very simple, but even though it was very simple, it had a very ornate front door. There were, I'm sure there were other details that are lost now because the house is covered with vinyl siding, it has vinyl windows, it has vinyl suffits. Uh, there is very little detail left, but um, as I will show you, we are trying to do something a little nicer with it. Um, if you're looking at the way it looks right now, you will see that there are two windows in the front of the kind of that long side wall. Um and we believe that location of these two windows is the original location. Then there are two windows and a door in the front, which we also believe are original. We believe that starting from somewhere here, the rest is addition, the windows that are located so close together in the rear portion of that you know, long wall, uh, do not look original. This is not how windows would be located in the beginning of 20th century. Uh, they would be located much further apart. So basically, where you see this line, this is where we are cutting off the edition, and we are taking down the rest of the like the later, even later edition on the back, and um and the shed. Um so the property is going to have a bit of a space in a bear. Now, if we were doing development as of right, um, this would be the wall that's facing uh the uh the barrel lane, and this would be the development. It might actually be longer, but something of that nature. Uh if my uh client is not allowed to add this 0.45 units to the property, his financing will be very, very difficult, and therefore the materials used in the building would be much less um of much of a lesser quality um than what we are proposing. Now, if you look at this blank wall and you look at the condominium across the street, it's basically what you see there. Uh, we do not want to repeat that. We want to be better. So this is what we were going to propose that we were proposing to you a year ago. And as you see, historic house here was replaced with uh uh with critical reconstruction, and we were doing quite a big larger, taller uh addition in the back with much more complex um uh with much more complex roof lines. Uh we were going to have dormers, and dormers were providing uh another room, a family room for each of the of the unit uh of the units. Now what we are doing is historical house. Uh it's going to be preserved by my client. The roof on it is not as tall as what we were going to do here. We were going to actually lift it because the house, the way it is right now, has a ceiling on the first floor at seven feet. Of course, we cannot do a nice uh renovation and leave a seven uh seven foot tall uh ceiling. So what we are proposing to do now is to remove that floor and open the house completely. In the original scheme, we had a bedroom on top of it. Now this window is just another light into one big open space. We will reinforce it by having some ties and roof, but it will be one tall big living room. Therefore, we lost one of the bedrooms that was here, and um this is uh going to be kind of our uh compromise to to make the house look um to to preserve the existing house the way it is. Now, if you look here, we are adding uh all um uh to all the windows, we are adding a detail with uh uh with a panel and um crown molding uh above each window. The windows are going to be a historic uh look windows. We do not have original windows, but it will be six over one, and we will be consistent in doing the same thing here.