Demolition, New Construction Planned for 3-Acre Ferris Hill Road Property with Significant Wetlands

The owners of a 3-acre property in eastern New Canaan that since 1931 has included a small-sized home with a log cabin-style exterior are seeking to raze that structure and replace it with what appears to be a far larger house as well as install in-ground pool with patio and attached garage.

59 Ferris Hill Road. Rebecca Serven photo

The 3-bedroom home at 59 Ferris Hill Road sits near the eastern edge of a north-south oriented lot, about one-third of which is wetlands, including a manmade pond, tax records show.

Though no demolition or building permit applications yet have been filed with the New Canaan Building Department, the property’s owners have taken the initial step of obtaining a permit from the town’s Inland Wetlands Department to pursue the project.

The proposed work is regulated under Inland Wetlands, in part, because more than one half-acre of land will be disturbed upgrade of wetlands and a watercourse (in this case, the pond) that is more than 5,000 square feet (see Section 7.4 of the regulations here).

Site plan for 59 Ferris Hill Road.

The property sold in July for $995,000, tax records show. The existing home—long hidden from the road by mostly mature trees, but now visible—had 1,949 square feet of living space. The exact size of the proposed new home is not clear, though a look at a site plan on file at Town Hall shows a building about twice as large as the 1931-built home. It will be located in roughly the same place, according to the site plan.

As noted in the agenda for the Inland Wetlands Commission’s meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, plans call for: installation of soil and erosion controls as construction activity commences; tree and brush removal; septic and storm water management systems; construction of retaining walls; and installation of utility lines and a 12-foot-wide asphalt driveway to replace a current gravel driveway (the existing house is on well water, as will be the proposed new home).

The property last summer had been field-checked for wetlands, which were found through the central portion of the parcel.

According to plans filed by DiVesta Civil Engineering Associates of Roxbury, runoff on the property typically drains south-to-north, toward those existing wetlands and the pond, and the project’s goal is for the parcel, once developed, “to manage runoff so that post-development peak-rate of runoff will be equal to or less than pre-development peak rate of runoff.”

Part of that will involve collecting runoff from the proposed new home’s roof into a new subsurface detention system that will drain into a culvert and existing catch basin, DiVesta said in a report.