KENT, Conn.—An ambitious plan to create an 80-unit housing development on the large meadow next to Kent Town Hall will be taken to a 7 p.m. Zoom public hearing on Monday, March 30.
The hearing will consider a Planned Development District, an alternative zoning approach intended to encourage and accommodate unique and desirable development that is not accommodated by conventional zoning.
James Millstein, managing member of Kent Housing Development Associates, presented his application to the Planning and Zoning Commission on March 12. The development would cover about half of the 13 acres of meadow formerly owned by John Casey, with the remainder left as open space.
Because the design and necessary zoning changes have already consumed two years and further delay will only increase building costs, Millstein requested the PZC hold a special meeting for the public hearing.
“Every month of delay makes the project more expensive,” he said. “That expense gets embedded in the cost of the housing.”
He has presented the PZC members with a detailed plan of what the development will look like with all the attendant details such as drainage, roads and walkways and where parking will be.
“There’s a lot of information here, so do your homework,” PZC Chairman Karen Casey advised commission members.
The complex would consist of 14 buildings, with three of them containing 12 apartments each; three buildings would have four three-bedroom townhouses each; four buildings would accommodate four two and three-bedroom townhouses each, and three structures are designed for four two-bedroom townhouses.
Most of the buildings would range along either side of a new thoroughfare between Kent Green Blvd. and Route 341. A manmade watercourse that bisects the property and has made planning more difficult will remain but will be turned from an open ditch with seasonal runoff into a landscaping “feature” through plantings and walkways.
“The ditch has been an interesting discussion,” said Millstein in an interview after the Planning and Zoning Commission accepted the application. “It’s manmade and to our surprise, the soils around it are well-drained and not wetlands soils. Our first thought was to get it out of the middle of the site, but it would be 2030 before we could get permission from DEEP and the Army Corps of Engineers. Then we thought, ‘Can we just cover it and put in a culvert without causing infinite delay?’ We finally decided the best way was to just make it a ‘feature.’”
The developers will still have to get approval from the local Inland Wetlands Commission, which will assess the impact on drainage.
The buildings that line the new streets are designed to fit in with the overall character of Kent’s village center, with clapboard siding and front porches to provide a neighborly feel. The developers have asked PZC to allow the porches to encroach on the front yard setbacks.
The impetus behind the development grows out of a chronic housing shortage in Kent, especially for families who wish to live and work in the town. Kent Affordable Housing has worked for more than two decades to develop affordable housing and currently has 37 units and is planning to add another 13. It has 60 households currently on its waiting list.
While the real estate market has slowed somewhat, the median cost of a house in the community is nearly $1.3 million, a figure driven upwards by the number of large estates in town. There are currently 15 properties for sale, ranging in price from a low of $325,000 to $8 million.
Millstein, a lawyer cum banker who has owned a home in South Kent for almost two decades, has long been interested in affordable housing. Currently co-chairman of Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners, he has also served in the public sector as chief restructuring officer at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2009 to 2011 under the Obama administration.
In that context he proposed changes to the way funding for affordable housing is administered by the federal government but changes in the political climate as administrations succeeded each other stymied his efforts.
He notes that there is an “enormous shortfall” of 3 million to 5 million units of housing in the country and advocates for public-private partnerships to help rectify the imbalance. “We have to break the imbalance between supply and demand,” he said. “Excess supply affects housing costs in all sectors—low, moderate and high-end—and helps drive down costs.”
Noting the tight housing market in Kent, he reached out to Kent Affordable Housing President Justin Potter several years ago to ask what that organization’s biggest problem is in developing new projects. Potter explained that it can take up to two years to put a financing plan in place if a suitable site comes on the market. By the time the money is secured, the property could be sold.
The men went through all the properties for sale in Kent and concentrated on a large lot adjacent to Kent Green that had been on the market for years. Indeed, the town had created a Housing Incentive Zone there to encourage its development for affordable housing. Millstein purchased the land in January 2024 for more than $1 million, aggregating 13 acres.
He had hoped to find a developer familiar with financing affordable housing projects to manage the project but was advised that Kent was not poor enough to qualify for large tax credits. Nevertheless, he found an architectural firm he liked, engineers and a development partner. Together, they have spent two years developing a plan for 80 units, 20 percent of which will be affordable.
The project will be funded through commercial loans, with future residents purchasing the condos and eventually forming a housing association. It is possible that KAH will manage the affordable units.
The Planning and Zoning Commission has already facilitated the project by merging separate lots into one parcel and extending the Incentive Housing Zone. It also has allowed construction of multiple family housing, thereby increasing density while preserving open space.
Casey retained a 10-acre parcel on the hillside behind Town Hall that he recently donated to the Kent Land Trust, opening it up for walking trails for residents.
Millstein hopes to have shovels in the ground in 2027.
