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Tall apartment building Corbin Post Baywater 9-7-16

Baywater Corbin Announces It’s Filed a New Proposal for Downtown Darien Project

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Baywater Corbin Partners has reapplied for zoning approval to redevelop the Corbin Drive/Post Road/I-95 tract of land downtown, this time lowering the proposed height of its tallest building to 69 feet, with five stories. Baywater Corbin announced the new proposal late Thursday afternoon in a news release (full text below). The 69-foot height, according to the announcement, is within what P&Z Commission members have indicated they are comfortable with:
[T]he tallest portion of the largest building proposed is reduced from our initial request of to 93 feet, measured from the first floor of the building, to 69 feet (a reduction of 26 percent). During their deliberations, the P&Z Commission members appeared to be comfortable with a maximum building height ranging from 65 feet to 75 feet. In early September, after the last P&Z Commission discussion of the proposal, Darienite reported that the commissioners said 55 feet was as high as they wanted to go (measured by the midpoint of the roof, as Darien town officials customarily do).

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Corbin Post Road Corner 6-1-16

Only ‘Retail’ Side of Post Office in Latest Downtown Redevelopment Proposal

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The Corbin Drive/Post Road redevelopment proposal would not include the back-office operations of the present Darien Post Office — just the public, front-end “retail” side of it in a 2,500-square-foot space, the Planning & Zoning Commission was told Tuesday. “We’re proposing to eliminate the distribution center for the Post Office, and have that Post Office move that elsewhere,” said David Genovese, principal (with his father, Rocco Genovese) at Baywater Properties, which has partnered with developer Penny Glassmeyer to propose redevelopment of the downtown block between the Post Road, Corbin Drive and Interstate 95. “We would want to include the retail [part of the] Post Office to serve residents in downtown Darien,” he continued. “So we’re proposing a 2,500-square-foot Post Office retail facility, which would be located probably about where it is today.” Genovese has said in the past that fitting in the non-“retail” parts of the Post Office, with space for storage, sorting and parking for delivery vehicles — would be difficult on the site, but if they couldn’t stay downtown, he would try to help find another location for those operations.

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Corbin Post Road Rendering 4-7-16

Developer’s Hopes for Corbin/Post Road Redevelopment Described to Packed Room

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Although he didn’t announce any changes in the plans to transform the Corbin Drive/Post Road/I-95 block of commercial buildings, the chief developer of the project gave out more details to a packed Community Room at Darien Library on Wednesday night, and answered a lot of questions from the audience. Some information that’s new or hasn’t been emphasized before about the project:

Developers are trying to work with the U.S. Postal Service to keep the Post Office on the block and even hope to keep the delivery postal employees based there, although the post office may need more space than the area that’s been discussed. The Bank of America building has not been bought by the owners of the rest of the site. A late-night email to the CEO of L.L. Bean started the ball rolling in discussions with that retailer to bring that store to town. That L.L. Bean store may include a bicycle shop.