Minutes of the West Norwalk Association
July Board Meeting at Dolce
July 17, 2017
Anthony called the meeting to order at 7:28pm.
Board members present: Anthony Carrano, Ken D’Arinzo, Brian Forschino, Isabelle Hargrove, Rob Notley & Kristin Clemens. Ted Stepanoff was not in attendance.
Anthony introduced the concept that Dolce would like to rent hotel rooms to the general public. Currently rooms can only be rented to people who are attending events on the property.
The property is currently owned by a hedge fund that has the property up for sale. The property is managed by Wyndham resorts. To date the only interested party has been a school. The property could be converted to homes, limited office space, etc.
Wyndham has indicated that to rent rooms in order to make the property profitable and more appealing to purchasers. To date no one has provided audit financials for the property. We do not know what the is currently on the market for.
Potential options:
- Could we get an additional public easement in exchange for the ability to rent rooms to the general public?
- Could offer that the West Norwalk Association won’t oppose certain proposals if there are concessions made to the residents of West Norwalk.
Property is AAA zoned plus Research & Development zoned (One of two in Norwalk – Dolce & Grant Capital in Rowayton). Can be used for its current use, a school or for limited office space (30 people per acre & property is 65 acres).
Only an owner can request a variance from the City.
Fundamentally West Norwalk needs to decide whether or not we want to support rooms being rented to the public. Allowing rooms to be rented to the public would increase the value of the property. We need to decide whose problem we are trying to solve.
Currently we are just speculating on what could happen with the property. Maybe we need to ask for a concrete proposal from a potential buyer so we are not negotiating against ourselves.
Residents on Weed Avenue have filed complaints for excessive noise past midnight over the past year.
Should we develop an overall larger scale plan for the property?
Dolce is required to report on a semi-annual basis about the usage of the property. A neighbor noted that this was not done during the first two years.
The meeting was ended at 8:25 pm.