By Brandon T. Bisceglia
Orange resident Missy Hackett addressed the Inland Wetlands and Water Courses Commission during the Oct. 3 public hearing over a controversial housing development off Turkey Hill Road. Image courtesy of Orange Government Access Television.
The cafeteria at High Plains Community Center in Orange wasn’t big enough.
That was where the Inland Wetlands and Water Courses Commission decided to hold the first in a series of public hearings on a proposed housing development off Turkey Hill Road that has drawn intense scrutiny from residents. The hearings had originally been set to begin in September in the lower lever meeting room of Town Hall but had to be canceled with no notice because of a procedural error by the town.
The cafeteria was chosen for the new hearing because of its larger capacity. Even so, over 100 people filled the room, with many standing in the back for what became a three-hour point-counterpoint between representatives of the developer and skeptical neighbors.
At the heart of the controversy is a development proposed by a team representing town resident Richard Meisenheimer, who wants to build 10 multifamily residential buildings and a single community building on a compilation of parcels on the 22.5-acre property that he owns.
A different proposal for the same property was the subject of vociferous opposition in 2018. That first plan was eventually denied by the Town Plan & Zoning Commission.
The Inland Wetlands meeting was tense from the start. Landscape architect and site planner Jeff Gordon of Codespoti & Associates began his presentation to the commission by delving into a history of Orange’s founding and development from its time as a rural spur of Milford, until a member of the crowd cut him short, saying, “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“As you know, these things are not decided on popularity or politics, but the preservation and protection of our natural resources determined by science, engineering, and by statutes,” Gordon told the commission.
The developers continued over the course of the first hour to give a detailed presentation, including all the things one would normally expect a wetlands commission to be concerned about: drainage, disturbance of wildlife, the design of piping and septic systems.
Once they had finished, a parade of residents took to the microphone to voice their concerns.
They began with Missy Hackett, who presented a thorough list of questions that she and residents of eight other neighboring properties had created. The questions were tailored for the wetlands commission, though she qualified that some might have been addressed by the developers already that night.
Among other things, the questions asked that the public be informed of and invited to a site walk of the property; that a wetlands agent be hired to oversee the project; how a proposed retaining wall would be built without disturbing a wetland identified in the vicinity; and who would be responsible in the event that the septic system fails.
The audience broke into applause as Hackett finished.
After her, numerous other residents came up to speak, sometimes more than once. Some of the harshest remarks came from Amir Mohammed, director of the town’s health department and an area resident.
“I just want everybody to be considerate about the fact that we all, as the town residents, are not going to be accepting this type of construction, and we will come in in gatherings to make sure that our voice gets heard,” he said.
At one point, murmurs ran through the crowd as it became clear that the properties would likely be rentals, not owned. Several speakers argued that renters would not treat their units with the same care as owners would.
Toward the end, of the meeting, Gordon – who himself is a town resident – became agitated with the residents’ characterizations of the proposal.
“That’s the problem that we have here,” he said. You’ve heard of NIMBY, but now we’re talking about the drawbridge mentality of I’ve got mine and nobody else gets to come in here too,” he said.
After the meeting, Turkey Hill resident Ron Michaels, who also was active in the opposition against the earlier, defeated proposal for the site, said it was telling that Meisenheimer declined to attend the public hearing in person.
“I think he’s aware of how the public feels about this,” Michaels said. “He could have put six nice houses on this land. But this is designed to maximize his profits.”
The commission has two more public hearings on the proposal scheduled for Oct. 17 and Nov. 12.