After Decade Of Wrangling, West Hills Senior Housing Gets OK

A long, contentious battle between the City Plan Department and a prospective builder of a new elderly housing complex in the shadow of West Rock came to a quick and quiet end.

Almost three years ago to the day that they first unanimously denied an application to build 124-units of senior housing on Whalley Avenue, members of the City Plan Commission Wednesday night unanimously approved site plans presented by the builder, Larry Wladorf.

Waldorf, who has been trying to build the development for at least a decade, had sued the City Plan Commission after it for the second time denied his proposal to build an elderly housing development on the top of a steep strip of land running from Whalley Avenue, near the intersection with Emerson Street, down to the West River.

The commission staff had expressed worry that frequent river flooding would endanger residents. The developer argued he has submitted extensive data to allay those concerns. A Superior Court judge ruled that the commission and developer had to ​“engage in a full discussion concerning whether the regulations have been satisfied,” before City Plan either approved the application, denied, or approved it with conditions.

And they did engage in that discussion. They did so for the next three years, during which time they seemed to overcome the initial concern of flooding, but more so to focus on how the applicant had not submitted a complete and accurate site plan for review.

Those discussions came to a head at one acrimonious meeting in October where the builder insulted a city staffer and contractor by suggesting that they didn’t know how to read architectural drawings. The insult came after staff had characterized Waldorf’s plans as sloppy and bafflingly incomplete.

But there were no sharp words Wednesday night. According to the City Plan staff report, now ​“the application meets the absolute minimum requirements of the City Plan Commission Site Plan standards, Soil Erosion and Sediment Control, Stormwater Management Plans, Exterior Lighting, Reflective Heat and Inland Wetlands and Watercourses with exception as noted in the Conditions of Approval at the beginning of this document.”

In fact, there was little discussion at all. The approval was given in under four minutes.

City Plan Director Karen Gilvarg said at the meeting that the applicant had finally submitted a conformed set of drawings and studies that represented the most up-to-date and complete version of the application and that’s how the department was able to arrive at a decision of approval with conditions.

The approval came with 26 conditions to be exact broken into two sections.

Before the City Plan department signs off on building permits, the builder has to meet 21 conditions, including providing a construction operations plan/site logistics plan to the city’s traffic and transportation department that addresses traffic lane/sidewalk closures and a construction worker parking plan, among other requirements. The builder also must remove a note from all of his drawings that states that the limits of the buildings walls shall be determined by a field engineer. Any design and detailing for a site wall adjacent to the West River must be reviewed and approved by the city engineer, according to the staff report. The City Plan Department also seeks to review full copies of the existing slope rights easement, which was a major concern at the October meeting.

Before the City Plan department signs off on a certificate of occupancy, the builder must meet five more conditions including providing a flood elevation certificate that certifies that the finished floor elevation be submitted with the request for the certificate.

Attorney Williams asked for a slight amendment to one of the conditions that the builder be required to obtain a general permit for the discharge of stormwater and dewatering waste waters from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Williams said he doesn’t believe that DEEP will require such a permit, but if it does, his client would obtain it and provide a copy. The condition was amended to add the word ​“if” to it.