Fifty-Seven Homes Proposed off Miry Brook Road

It isn't Danbury's biggest housing development, and it won't be the city's last, but it is the newest and one of the few making its way through city boards or commissions today. (Here is the other housing development in front of EIC.)

Wooster School is proposing to turn 63 acres of woods northeast of the school into a 57-unit cluster development bounded by Ye Old Road on the east and private properties on the south, west and north, according to the application. The application is now in front of the city's Environmental Impact Commission.

"It's been on hold because of the recession," said Danbury Land Use Attorney Neil Marcus of Cohen & Wolf Lawyers in Danbury. The applicant is the Wooster School Corporation.

Marcus explained that the EIC's job is to protect the brook that runs between Miry Brook Road and the Wooster School property. EIC is the city's Inland Wetlands Commission. The school's exit will be widened to accommodate cars from the 57 homes. The exit includes a bridge that crosses the brook.

Maps of the development show almost no wetlands, except for the exit over the brook. That exit comes out at the "Y" intersection of Miry Brook Road and Backus Avenue.

"Whatever we do, it has to have a minimal impact on the brook," Marcus said. "We have to figure out how to use that intersection without impacting the brook."

The EIC received the plans a week ago, and it has not scheduled a public hearing or public review. The project will require the Planning Commission to approve a site plan and the Planning Department to issue a special exception to allow a cluster subdivision, the application said.

The project's emergency exit will be onto Noteworthy Drive, but Marcus said that will be a gated exit only, and it won't be used.

"We've started to apply, but this is in the very early stages of the process," Marcus said.