Danbury homeless shelter zoning controvery continues

DANBURY — A possible settlement is in the works this summer for the long-running controversy over the city’s attempt to shut down the Dorothy Day Hospitality House.

The proposal landed in front of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals this month, setting up what is expected to be a lengthy meeting and controversial vote at the board’s meeting next month.

“We’re not asking for you to approve any change to this property at all,” Dorothy Day attorney Neil Marcus told the board. “Why haven’t (we) tried to comply with the new regulations? We can’t. Period. This allows us to try to comply.”

The city and homeless shelter have been locked in litigation since late 2016 after the city issued a cease-and-desist order to close the shelter and soup kitchen on Spring Street.

Although Dorothy Day received permits to operate when it opened 35 years ago, the city discovered in 2015 the shelter had not renewed those permits each year since and therefore argued the operation must secure them or close.

The ensuing argument boiled over in emotional and divisive public meetings in 2016, at the end of which the Zoning Board of Appeals sided with city staff and ordered the shelter closed. That decision has been under appeal since and is pending before Judge Marshall Berger, Jr., who presides over the land-use litigation docket in Hartford.

In an attempt to settle the case, Marcus plans to apply for a special exception for the operation under the city’s current zoning laws. That request ultimately would need the approval of the Planning Commission, but a series of bureaucratic hurdles stand in the way of even filing the application.

First, Dorothy Day would need to receive approval of 11 “variances” for ways that the shelter’s almost 120-year-old building does not meet current zoning rules. This essentially means it needs permission from the Zoning Board of Appeals to grandfather in the fact that the building is not set far enough back from other structures, has smaller driveways and doesn’t have a modern parking lot, assistant outside corporation counsel Dan Casagrande said.

Marcus pitched those ideas to the board during a two-hour hearing this month, but board members bristled at what they said was a lack of detail in several of the plans, such as formal parking spaces.

The board chose to delay its vote until July 12 to give Marcus time to provide more information.

If the board approves the variances, Dorothy Day will be able to submit its application for a special exception, but the board is not obligated to approve them to help settle the case, Casagrande said. If the board does not approve the variances, the case has to be decided in court by Berger, Marcus said.

“It’s convoluted and it’s a little perplexing, but when you boil it down, it’s very simple,” Marcus said. “What’s there today has been there for a long time and it’s going to be there for a long time, no matter what you do. The question is will we have the opportunity to try to settle a lawsuit by applying to the Planning Commission.”