Members of the Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission by a unanimous 5 to 0 vote approved the final site plan and a special permit to allow conversion of an office building at 530 Old Post Road to house 10 apartments.
An application by the entity 530 Old Post Road LLC had been working its way through the approval process for several months. The site plan does not call for changes to the basic structure of the three-story building but there would be cosmetic alterations to the exterior. The interior would be redone to create six two-bedroom units and four one-bedroom apartments. One of the one-bedroom units would be priced as affordable housing.
The office building has been listed as having an occupancy of 96 people. The current 37 parking spaces would be reduced to 13 spaces to meet code requirements of one parking space per one-bedroom apartment and 1.25 parking spaces for each two-bedroom apartment.
The developer said that solar panels could not be put on the roof of the building because the roof would be turned into a terrace for use by residents. The property is 20,014 square feet and would be improved with additional landscaping and new lighting. Seven trees, 47 shrubs and various perennials, ferns and grasses would be planted around patio areas.
There would be 13,572 square feet of usable space on the inside of the building. A new retaining wall would be constructed and a common outdoor recreation area would be created.
A traffic analysis submitted by the applicant shows a proposed reduction in traffic volume with the adaptive reuse. The existing business traffic generation calculations for the office building included 30 trips during the peak morning time and 32 at the peak afternoon time. With the change to residential use, traffic generated would drop to only four trips at the peak morning time and five trips at the peak afternoon time.
The developer planned to install two electric vehicle charging stations to serve the residential conversion.
