Chief Building Official: ‘Pattern’ at Grace Farms of Working Without Required Permits

Town officials are urging Grace Farms to secure permits for electrical and gas work already underway at its Lukes Wood Road campus—the most recent lapses in what amounts to a pattern for the organization since opening to the public last fall, according to those in charge of the New Canaan Building Department.

Permits are needed for a propane tank and fuel line serving a generator that Grace is installing near an administrative building, as well as for an electric service change that already has been completed, New Canaan Chief Building Official Brian Platz said.

Asked to put the non-permitted work into context—for example, whether the problems represent an isolated problem for Grace Farms, Platz said: “It absolutely is a pattern.”

Without securing a permit, Grace Farms did extensive work at a Lukes Wood Road house it had acquired, Platz said, installed a barbecue pit without a permit and opened facilities including a dining area without required Certificates of Occupancy.

“They have demonstrated a disregard for any local authority, certainly with Planning & Zoning, Building and Health [Departments],” Platz said.

Asked about the non-permitted work by NewCanaanite.com, Grace Farms officials spoke to a permit that the organization did obtain (last month, for a generator). Issued through a spokesperson, the statement from Grace Farms is:

“Thanks for your inquiry. This issue relates to a 22KW generator permit that Grace Farms Foundation applied for on Nov. 10, and which was issued by the town on the 16th. We found out there was a filing issue with one of our tradesmen. We cleared this up as soon as the town brought it to our attention. We have resolved this issue and have been authorized by the town to move forward. Grace Farms Foundation is very committed to observing all town and state building regulations in its work on this site.” (See a second statement from Grace Farms toward the bottom of this article.)

According to emails sent last week between the town and organization, Grace Farms Director of Facilities Bill Stonebridge already had been working without permits when he asked for the building department to expedite an inspection.

“The pattern of you working without permits must end,” Platz told Stonebridge in a Dec. 8 email, obtained by NewCanaanite.com following a formal request. “I can’t help but notice the irony in you calling me asking me to do you a favor and squeeze you in on a moment’s notice for an inspection and here you are working without permits.”

The chief building official’s comments come as Grace Farms—suspected by neighbors of having run afoul of its zoning permit, a concern backed up by the town—seeks to amend that permit in order to facilitate its varied and robust activities.

Filed Sept. 26 on behalf of Grace Farms by attorney Edward O’Hanlan of Stamford-based Robinson + Cole, the application—viewable in the dropdown menu here and embedded below as a PDF—argues that Grace doesn’t need to change its permit in order to continue operations, but has practical reasons for doing so.

For example, as O’Hanlan reiterated during an initial public hearing before the Planning & Zoning Commission on Nov. 29, Grace Farms has found that its designation as a “religious institution” serves as a deterrent to governmental agencies and others that may otherwise partner in “charitable activities” deriving from its core initiatives (more on those below).

“There needs to be a secular aspect” with respect to Grace Farms’ social justice initiative, O’Hanlan said.

So, Grace is seeking to add two new uses—as a club/organization and philanthropic/charitable agency—in its amended special permit (see pages 42 and 162 here).

The organization also proposes controlling more closely what happens on its 80-acre site, the application said.

For example, Grace would hold no more than four “large community events” per year with 700-plus attendees, with prior P&Z review and approval, under the proposed permit criteria. The organization also proposes that events with 400 to 700 people would require advance written notice to the town’s zoning officer, according to the application.

At the same time, under a section titled “Sustainability Planning,” Grace notes that it is seeking to find revenue streams in order to offset capital and other costs. It proposes that for-profit entities may “use the property for limited activities” such as commercial photo shoots, team retreats and videography. It also is seeking permission to use outdoor amplification devices (currently prohibited) and to use private flagmen instead of New Canaan Police when traffic control is required.

A new plan for parking at Grace that had been part of the original application is now off the table, pending discussion with neighbors, O’Hanlan said at the hearing.

He also underscored Grace Farms’ firm position with respect to the current permit under which it operates as a religious institution—namely, that activities now underway are allowable and not subject to town approval. In driving home that point, O’Hanlan pointed to finding #4 and condition #12 of Grace’s 2013 approval, which state (respectively):

• “Evidence presented in the record indicates that Grace Farms Foundation, is a not-for-profit charitable foundation established in 2009 in New Canaan, Connecticut, to support initiatives in the areas of faith, the arts, social justice and community”; 
• “While the Commission acknowledges that as part of its religious mission, the Applicant, among other activities, pursues interfaith meetings and charitable initiatives, the use of the property for multi-organizational conferences and/or usage as a conference center is not part of this approval.”

During the hearing, O’Hanlan cited the U.S. Constitution by way of telling P&Z members: “You cannot tell someone that they can exercise their religious expression so many times.”

Grace Farms “operates now under a religious institution use” and “it could rest on that, and your planner and attorney can tell you what First Amendment rights in a zoning context involve,” and that would suggest “the town could not stop it at this point,” O’Hanlan said.

He then described the new application as a concession that would “invite” the town’s oversight “in a way that a religious institutional use does not.”

“And the reason is because that is the truth of what is going on at Grace Farms and that is what the Grace Farms Foundation is about and one of reasons in 2012 for the application. So it is not hiding behind any legal hook or trying to gain an advantage—it is inviting more scrutiny and giving up a legal advantage it might have otherwise because it is its own philanthropic entity.”

Grace Farms officials during the hearing presented a history of the property and highlighted some of what’s happened there in the past year, touching on each of the core initiatives described above. Commissioners commended Grace Farms for its work and, given that hearing itself was recorded and included an address from leaders on each of the organization’s initiatives, urged Grace to make marketing use of a video that will appear on Channel 79’s website.

A real estate appraiser reported to P&Z that Grace Farms has had no negative impact on surrounding property values—one criterion for a special permit application.

For part of the hearing, some P&Z commissioners challenged the notion that Grace Farms is operating within the bounds of the permit it was granted in early 2013, prior to the construction of what is known today as The River building.

To commissioner Dan Radman’s assertion that “there seems to be a misrepresentation” in the use of the site, O’Hanlan responded: “That is severe.”

Specifically, Radman said that Grace Farms Foundation was to be used as a philanthropic organization that was “merely incidental” to the site’s use as a church.

“Which it is not,” Radman said.

O’Hanlan countered that the foundation is “separate but incidental” to Grace Community Church. “They are doing separate things,” he said.

Radman at one point said that during presentations made to P&Z in late-2012 and early-2013, prior to the issuance of the current zoning permit, Grace officials represented that church-related activities would outnumber community activities by a 3-to-1 ratio, “but that ratio has flipped at this point.”

When O’Hanlan said the description was accurate, Radman asked just how he was arriving at his numbers. For example, Radman asked whether “a Sunday service with 700 people attending” was being used to offset more frequent events with 10 to 20 people.

O’Hanlan replied that he “cannot follow a question that long.”

Commissioner Bill Redman said that Grace Farms appeared to have embraced the maxim that “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

Redman said that P&Z “still doesn’t quite know what you [Grace Farms] want to become.”

“There is real concern,” he said.

Commissioner Dick Ward noted that P&Z in 2012-13 “thought we were approving use as a religious institution.”

O’Hanlan responded that P&Z was approving use “under the [Grace Farms] Foundation” which allows the organization to pursue its wide-ranging “core initiatives.”

Redman asked, “You don’t think that was a misrepresentation?”

O’Hanlan responded: “You keep using that term. ‘Misrepresentation’ is a strong term that connotes dishonesty and lack of candor and I have a problem because Grace Farms Foundation wants to do not thing but benefit this community.”

Ward clarified that he “did not mean in any way to criticize the value” of Grace’s uses of the site.

“I think you are probably doing a terrific job, and the presentations tonight show that it is terrific things being done, but we are looking at what was intended” in the existing permit.

Commissioner Laszlo Papp said it was “useless” to try and parse what is a strictly “religious” use of a site from what may be more broadly called church-related.

“Rather than having an unproductive discussion about some language,” Papp said, it was the commission’s job to “identify what should be included” under a new set of criteria for Grace Farms.

Radman added that he wanted a “better understanding of how The Commons works,” referring to Grace Farms’ dining area.

Noting that it is a gathering place for church attendees following a Sunday service, Radman said it also appears to be “open to the public as a paid café.”

“That effectively defines it as a retail space, so how are we going to resolve that?” Radman said.

O’Hanlan answered that the applicant would work on creating a “better description of it.”

Whether Grace Farms officials knew, at the time the first amended special permit had been approved, just what would happen at the site, has lingered as an open question over the organization since the campus opened. A review of the organization’s incorporating documents, drafted even before the 2012 public hearings, called for far more robust activity than what later was presented to P&Z, according to a review of transcripts and videos of those hearings.

P&Z is scheduled to meet Dec. 20, and Grace Farms is expected to appear again before the commission in January.

With respect to the recent electric service change, Platz said that an electrician working for Grace Farms appeared to have moved and reinstalled the meter can itself with no permits. The meter lock on the original can also had been cut, Platz said. While Grace’s electrician appears to have told the utility company that a permit had been obtained for the work, that’s not true, he said.

Asked about the non-permitted work specifically, Grace officials said: “These were all issues that had to do with the permit to install the generator, and the town can confirm that Grace Farms Foundation straightened them out as soon as they were raised.”

The total costs associated with the two permits required likely would come to no more than $200, building officials said (they each start at $75). A timeline of Grace Farms activity (available here) shows that Grace Property Holdings LLC acquired in July 2008 a a 48-acre parcel at 365 Lukes Wood Road for $30 million, and that after Grace Farms Foundation was formed as a charitable trust following an IRS filing the following year, it purchased in December 2009 a contiguous 26.8-acre Lukes Wood Road property for $10 million.

According to Platz, the one exception to working without a permit is during an emergency—for example, if a tree falls and rips off an electrical service on a weekend, a property owner may see to it that power is restored, under the building code, so long as notification is made straightaway to the town.

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