Autumn View, LLC v. Planning & Zoning Commission

Citations

• 193 Conn. App. 18

Syllabus

The plaintiffs appealed to the trial court from the decision of the defendant, the Planning and Zoning Commission of the Town of East Haven, denying their application for approval of an affordable housing development. The plaintiffs, owners of undeveloped real property in East Haven, submitted, pursuant to statute (§ 8-30g), an affordable housing applica- tion that sought to amend the zoning regulations to create a new mixed income housing zone and to construct 105 detached single-family homes. The defendant initially denied the plaintiffs' application on several grounds, including, inter alia, that it had insufficient drainage, and the plaintiffs subsequently revised their application to address those con- cerns. At a hearing on the revised application, the defendant presented the findings of an engineer, who had prepared a report on the plaintiffs' revised application that had not been made available to the plaintiffs until the day of the hearing and which raised concerns regarding the revised application's storm water drainage system. Despite the plaintiffs' requests to continue the hearing so they could review the engineer's report, the defendant concluded the hearing that night and denied the revised application on essentially the same grounds as the initial applica- tion. Thereafter, the plaintiffs appealed to the Superior Court, which sustained the appeal in part and remanded the case to the defendant with respect to five issues related to storm water drainage. To comply with the court's remand order, the plaintiffs hired an engineer to assist them in addressing the storm water drainage issues and resubmitted their application to the defendant with a revised storm drainage plan. Subsequently, the defendant denied the plaintiffs' resubmitted applica- tion on several grounds, including, inter alia, that the resubmission failed to address the concerns of the defendant's engineer and that the resubmitted application varied so much from the revised application tha