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January 31, 2023

Plans for 216,000-sq.-ft. Waterbury medical office complex move forward

Contributed A rendering of 84 Vistas.
By Michael Puffer

A developer floating a proposal to build a 216,000-square-foot medical office complex between a busy retail-lined street and a neighborhood in Waterbury won a key land-use approval last week.

The city’s Zoning Commission, meeting Jan. 25, approved a petition by 84 Vistas LLC to change the zoning of 40.2 acres from residential to arterial commercial. It is a victory for the partners behind 84 Vistas, whose plans for the property had been thwarted for years by legal challenges coming from a nearby residential neighborhood.

This approval, if it stands unchallenged in court, will allow for commercial development, following staff review of as-of-yet unsubmitted plans to ensure they conform to the new zoning. Any adverse wetlands impacts may also require a public hearing before the city’s Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission.

The developer paid $210,000 for the property in 2015, according to assessing records. It lies between the Reidville Drive retail corridor to the north; Interstate Lane to the east; the busy, residential-lined Prospect Road to the west; and a thickly settled single-family neighborhood to the south.

As it sought a zone change, 84 Vistas submitted a conceptual design showing a campus of four buildings ranging in size from 26,400 square feet to 100,000 square feet. 
This isn’t the first time 84 Vistas has won a zone change for this property, however. The Zoning Commission first approved a change to commercial use in 2016, at a time when 84 Vistas shared its intention to pursue a large-scale retail complex. 

A judge overturned that zone change following a legal challenge by an area resident.

City Planner Robert Nerney said the crux of that reversal was the court’s finding the property did not have adequate frontage, despite the city’s willingness to grant an easement through city-owned property onto Interstate Lane.

The court found the easement did not constitute adequate frontage, Nerney explained. That challenge was overcome last year, Nerney said, when the city agreed to sell 84 Vistas a 7-acre property along Interstate Lane.

The zone change approved last week maintains a 50-foot buffer from residential properties, Nerney said.

Medical offices are not anticipated to be heavy traffic generators and could serve as a “transitional buffer” between the heavier retail development of Reidville Drive and the neighborhood to its south, Nerney said. 

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