The landlord that owns the buildings where Stop & Shop, Walgreens, Equinox and other nearby stores are now located wants to add about 90 apartments, more retail space, over a hundred more parking spaces and a lot of landscaping to the 8.6-acre tract.
According to some documents filed with the Planning & Zonning Department, Federal Realty will present its ideas for redeveloping the site, which takes up much of downtown Noroton Heights.
See also: Federal Realty Presents Ideas to Redevelop Its Noroton Heights Property
The ideas will be presented at 8 p.m. to a joint meeting (open to the public and broadcast by Darien TV79) of the Planning & Zoning Commission and Architectural Review Board in Room 206 at Town Hall. The presentation is scheduled to last until 9:15 p.m.
Here’s a first look at the proposal, presented in a few large, illustrated pages currently in a file at the Planning & Zoning Department. Pictures of other places, presumably meant to suggest the way parts of the redevelopment would look, are included along with maps of the site. Some highlights:
- A total of 31,749 square feet of retail space would be added to the existing 96,582 square feet on the property.
- Equinox fitness club and the building now housing Citibank on Heights Road would remain in place
- About 90 apartments would occupy one or more upper floors of a retail building located where Stop & Shop and Walgreens now sit. (A total of two apartments occupy the land today.)
- A single retail building would be located where Noroton Barber Shop and the Subway restaurant are now located, across Heights Road from The Depot youth center.
- Another retail building would be built in an “L” shape where the current Heights Road entrance to the Stop & Shop parking lot now sits, with one wing of the building, farthest from Heights Road, turning in the direction of Edgerton Street.
- Pedestrian walkways and stairs would lead from West Avenue to the new development, and
- Parking on a “retail level,” “lower level” and “upper level” would have a total of 680 spaces, compared with 547 at present.
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See also:
- Proposed Noroton Shopping Center Replacement Project: Maps & Renderings
- VIDEO: Watch the Full Presentations of the Downtown, Noroton Heights Redevelopment Proposals
- Proposers of Corbin Dr/Post Rd Project Describe It on New Website
- Statement by David Genovese on His Post Rd/Corbin Dr Redevelopment Project
- Two BIG Proposed Projects Would Change the Face of Downtown, Noroton Heights
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Captions for these images, taken from the three-page presentation document, have more information:
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The 8.6-acre site would include a swath from Edgerton Street on the west to the Equinox building in the east, and south, bordered by the Heights Road entrance to the Stop & Shop parking lot and continuing east along Heights Road until just before Chase Bank (not included in the tract). Here's an aerial photo of the present-day site.
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New buildings for retail use (at least on the first floor) would be located roughly where Stop & Shop and Walgreens are located today, an "L"-shaped building to the south on Heights Road and another building to the east, just southeast of Equinox fitness club.
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Ninety apartments (in yellow on this map) would be located on upper floors of a building where Stop & Shop and Walgreens now stand.
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The retail building replacing Stop & Shop would have a wide arcade facing the parking lot.
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From West Avenue, pedestrian walkways and stairs with landscaping would lead to the shopping area.
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Open space with wooden benches and even an umbrella are suggested as street-level amenities for pedestrian shoppers.
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A "gateway and corner pocket park" would be located at the southeast corner of Edgerton Street and West Avenue, an entrance to the apartments (and presumably to the shopping area, for pedestrians).
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Access from Heights Road to the central parking lot would be on either side of the building where Citibank is located. Across Heights Road from The Depot youth center would be a "free standing retail building" that developers suggest might look something like the Darien Whole Foods Market supermarket.
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More of the document
Correction: There aren’t “hundreds” more parking spaces in the proposal, as an earlier version of this article stated, there are 133 more.
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