Compromise, wasted money, in Winsted health center settlement

After an almost eight-month court battle, the Winsted Planning and Zoning Commission approved a settlement with the Community Health and Wellness Center of Greater Torrington (CHWC) at its meeting on Nov. 27. (See story by Shaw Israel Izikson, The Lakeville Journal, Dec. 7.)

The legal saga started in March when CHWC, which is currently located in the Winsted Health Center building at 115 Spencer St., filed a special permit for the center to move to Winsted Super Saver IGA’s former space at 372 Main St.

The former grocery store closed this year a few months after its owner, John Dwan, announced his retirement.

After two meetings and a series of public hearings, the commission rejected the special permit application by a vote of 3-2 on April 10. Before that vote, representatives from CHWC said that if the commission approved the special permit, it would leave 2,500 square feet of storefront space for retail use.

CHWC representatives hoped that this would address concerns raised by commission members over the change of use of a historically retail building to a building for a nonprofit medical clinic.

However, as pointed out by commission members at the meeting, this was not part of the formal application CHWC submitted to the commission; it was not written in the application anywhere.

At the April 10 meeting, the commission members who voted against the special permit said that the proposed clinic would not be in harmony with the retail environment in the downtown area, nor did it conform to the Town Plan of Conservation and Development and the recently instituted zoning regulations. The new zoning regulations were approved by the commission in October 2016 after more than a year of development.

On April 27, CHWC filed a lawsuit against the commission and Dwan joined in the lawsuit as a party in July. After several months of legal motions and wrangling between all parties (detailed on the state’s court database at https://civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/CaseDetail/PublicCaseDetail.aspx?DocketNo...), the settlement was finally approved by Torrington Judicial District Courthouse Judge James Bentivegna on Nov. 29.

The main part of the settlement is that CHWC will take part of the building and use it for retail space. What is troubling in this case is that all of this legal back-and-forth could potentially have been avoided if CHWC had formally put its offer of a retail space in its special permit application  at the very beginning.

This legal battle has cost the town thousands of dollars in legal fees.

The legal battle has also cost CHWC, a nonprofit organization, much-needed funds that it could have used to help its mission of providing low-cost and affordable health care to those in need.

Winsted cannot afford these troubling kinds of legal battles and neither can nonprofit organizations such as CHWC.

While some may breathe a sigh of relief that this legal fracas is now over, we hope that cooler heads prevail in the future, if a situation like this ever happens again, and come to the table to discuss any and all differences instead of throwing lawyers at each other.

One of the goals of both the commission and CHWC is to make the town a better place.

If both parties truly want to make Winsted a better place, then it would be advisable to discuss problems first and try to come to a compromise instead of sacrificing funds to the legal system.