Grace Farms in seeking to continue using its campus in ways that the town never imagined or approved—and in staking out an untenable legal position to defend its misuse—is rewriting the public record and deliberately misleading planning officials, according to those opposed to a new application from the organization.
Contrary to what Grace Farms has said in seeking to amend again its operating permit, and reiterated at a public hearing last month, an entity called ‘Grace Farms Foundation’ never has been granted the right to operate the organization’s 80-acre Lukes Wood Road site, according to a letter filed Friday with the town by an attorney representing concerned neighbors.
When local planning officials approved an amended permit nearly four years ago—an approval followed at Grace by the rise of ‘The River’ structure and, in violation of that permit, the wide-ranging programs that operate out of its various buildings—it was to then-property owner Grace Property Holdings LLC “which actively and expressly presented the application to be solely for the benefit of Grace Community Church,” according to a letter filed with the Planning & Zoning Commission by attorney Amy Zabetakis of Darien-based Rucci Law Group.
So it’s no wonder that Grace Farms Foundation now wishes to come back to P&Z “to obtain the kind of broad expansion of usage for a range of activities they are now seeking.”
“The current application seeks such an expansive set of activities with so few limitations that it is in essence seeking formal approval to convert Grace Farms from a home for a church, under the existing special permit, into an operation with virtually unrestricted capacity to pursue a myriad of non-profit and for profit and revenue raising initiatives, that happens to be home to a Grace Community Church as well (for so long as the Foundation chooses not to revoke its license),” Zabetakis wrote. “Indeed, Grace Community Church has become the ancillary use.”
P&Z is expected to hear from concerned neighbors and their representatives, including Zabetakis as well as attorney Amy Souchuns of Milford-based Hurwitz Sagarin Slossberg & Knuff LLC, during a public hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Zabetakis’s comments address directly assertions made in one key document in Grace Farms’ new application (it’s in the dropdown here)—namely, the organization’s response to a letter that the town planner issued to Grace this summer. In that letter, the town planner said Grace Farms, in its robust programming, appeared to be running afoul of its operating permit.
According to Zabetakis, Grace Farms now is conflating two parts of P&Z’s 2013 approval—namely, finding #4 and condition #12, 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.”
Specifically, ‘the Applicant’ of condition #12 is the property owner representing Grace Community Church, not ‘Grace Farms Foundation’—an entity that hadn’t even existed at the time P&Z gave initial approval for a sanctuary on the site in 2008.
Grace Farms’ attorneys “have twisted the introductory language of the Special Permit in an attempt to argue that it already permits the existing Foundation activities,” Zabetakis said.
“All to suggest that somehow the [P&Z] Commission owes it to the Foundation to grant them greater latitude now, since this application is a pro forma exercise to make it easier for the Foundation to fundraise. The Commission owes them no such obligation.”
Grace Farms in making its case to P&Z for new “club” and other designations beyond the strictly “religious institution” use it now enjoys, has said that it faces a practical problem. Specifically, prospective partners in Grace Farms’ “core initiatives” of faith, arts, nature, justice and community, such as government agencies, are prevented from working with religious institutions.
Yet that’s “a problem of the Foundation’s own creation,” Zabetakis said.
“To the extent that activities the Foundation wishes to pursue are separate and distinct from those of a religious institution, the Foundation is free today to pursue those initiatives at a different location. The fact that the Foundation chose to co-locate its expanded operations at a site in a residential zone that is subject to a Special Permit to operate only a religious institution means that it needs to restrict its operations there to permitted activities.”
The letter from Zabetakis cites specific statements made by Grace Farms’ president, founders and attorneys representing the organization, as well as exchanges between those people and P&Z commissioners, during its first amended permit application in 2012-13.
For example, here’s an exchange between P&Z and a founder of Grace Farms, Bob Prince (husband of the organization’s president, Sharon Prince) during a Dec. 18, 2012 hearing:
Commissioner [John] Goodwin: “A question on the foundation activities. Typically a foundation, and correct me if I’m wrong, but typically a foundation would be you’re looking at opportunities. You’re looking about where you want to position yourself, where you want to donate to, but you’re not necessarily bringing groups in. You’re not necessarily having conferences etcetera, etcetera. It’s been implied that you would do that. Is that correct or not?”
Mr. Prince: “We would only do it – we would only do that as a facilitator for the church, because we are there – the church doesn’t have the ability to operate this property. We are doing this on behalf of the church.”
Mr. Goodwin: “Right.”
Mr. Prince: “And so we would only do that with, in conjunction with the church.”
Mr. Goodwin: “So activities specific to the church, but you wouldn’t be doing a conference where, I don’t know, third world—”
Mr. Prince: “—that’s not the point of what we’re doing.”
Mr. Goodwin: “Okay. It’s important to verify that.”
Along with the letter to P&Z, Zabetakis included a table that details several ways that Grace Farms official at last month’s public hearing appeared to contradict directly statements made during the 2012-13 hearings that led to the operating permit underway they now operate:
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