Yale Farm permit extension for its golf course good for five years

NORTH CANAAN — A five-year extension of a special permit granted to the planned Yale Farm Golf Club was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission July 16.

Attorney Peter Herbst told commissioners the permit it granted July 23, 2003, could be construed as a site plan. Zoning regulations indicate site plans for nonresidential uses are good for at least five years. The commission can extend it up to another five years.

The approved request creates a new deadline of July 23, 2013.

The last news of the development plans for the Yale Farm property in North Canaan and Norfolk came late last year. The developers (a group of investors led by New York’s Roland Betts, who created Chelsea Piers) are hoping to build a world-class golf course and other recreational facilities. They had received a response from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It said that they had not spent enough time searching the 780-acre site for the endangered North American bog turtle.

Herpatology expert Michael Klemens (who lives in Salisbury) completed the survey in 2003.

The federal agency called for a lengthier study, one that would have to be conducted after the turtles’ winter hibernation.

When contacted this week, Project Manager and investor David Tewksbury said the second survey has been completed and submitted to the Wildlife Service, as well as the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We are continuing to move forward. The application is still in good shape,� Tewksbury said. “But I have ceased to give predictions about when construction might begin.�

He praised planning and zoning and inland wetlands commissions in both towns for their work on applications.

The only approval still to be sought is the North Canaan Inland Wetlands Commission. Prior approval wound up in Superior Court earlier on appeal by the Canaan Conservation Coalition, a grassroots group that opposes the project. The appeal was denied for one of about a dozen allegations (a planned drainage pond already determined to be in need of relocation).

Although that seemed to be resolved, a notice that the state environmental agency planned to deny water use permits prompted the Yale Farm group to withdraw its application, rather than risk a local denial.

Betts, Tewksbury and their team of engineers and attorneys have all suggested at one time or another that they are being made to respond to the same issues time and again, and at the whim of the intervenors.

Tewksbury said this week his group will continue to pursue the project.