After a long regulatory review and protracted court battle, Metro Realty Group is ready to begin building a 130-unit apartment complex near the UConn Health Center in Farmington that it says will be a substantial boost to the Route 4 medical sciences and technology corridor.
The state Appellate Court on Wednesday announced it had rejected two neighbors’ appeal of the zoning decision that authorizes Metro Realty to build a three-story apartment building behind the Hartford HealthCare Medical Group’s office at 406 Farmington Ave.
The costs of financing and construction have risen sharply during the three-year court fight, but Metro Realty said its project is still completely viable. Even during the appeal, the company was able to clear the land for a foundation because the town issued a blasting permit.
“We will be proceeding. A year’s worth of site work is complete and we will be able to commence vertical construction very soon,” company President Geoff Sager said in an emailed statement Thursday.
Neighbors organized an opposition campaign soon after Metro Realty initially proposed a 146-unit, four-story project in November of 2020, a time when construction costs and interest rates were vastly lower. They spoke at length against it when the planning and zoning commission held hearings in 2021, arguing that it would ruin the character of the nearby area, generate dangerous traffic and potentially pollute nearby groundwater. A particular point of criticism was the height of the proposed building: four stories rising 46 feet.
Commissioners agreed in part, and granted a permit for only three floors. Metro Realty downsized its original plan by redesigning the building and converting some area designated for parking into space for additional apartments instead.
Douglas and Kimberly Zeytoonjian, owners of a nearby Prattling Pond Road home, argued that commissioners violated their own rules when they approved the permit. The Zeytoonjians appealed in Superior Court in 2021, asking Judge Edward O’Hanlan to overturn the approval because, they said, the vote was illegal, arbitrary and an abuse of commissioners’ discretion.
In their appeal , the Zeytoonjians said the project would “loom over their property by its height, massing and incongruous architectural character, and destroy their peaceful enjoyment of their home by light and noise (caused) by its excessive density and adjacency to their backyard.”
O’Hanlan rejected the appeal in November, concluding the commission protected the rights of the opponents and granted them a full hearing. O’Hanlan ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to prove their accusations.
The Zeytoonjians submitted a request to argue against O’Hanlan’s ruling in the Appellate Court, but Wednesday’s decision ends that possibility.
Attorney Marjorie Shansky, who represents the Zeytoonjians, did not reply to an email Thursday. Attorney Timothy Hollister, who represented Metro Realty, said the outcome of the case reinforces the state and town’s strategic plan for developing the Route 4 technology corridor near the UConn Health Center.
“This development arose from the town of Farmington’s realization in 2017 and 2018 that after approving hundreds of thousands of square feet of medical office and research lab space, the area needed modern ‘live, work, play’ rental apartments with nice recreational amenities,” Hollister said. “Metro Realty stepped up and met that call. This plan will succeed because that vision was correct and far-seeing, and still is.
“This brings additional balance in land use to an area that has been successful by any economic or biomedical campus standard, but that still needed a residential component,” Hollister said. “This will make the area even more attractive to the community.”
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