Zoning Workshop Reveals Competing Visions for Old Lyme’s Sound View Beach

OLD LYME, CT – Old Lyme residents at this week’s zoning workshop agreed the Sound View Beach area has room to improve. 

They disagreed about almost everything else, including whether the neighborhood needs more development, more infrastructure or more time to evolve.

The debate came during a Sept. 15 workshop on the town’s commercial areas as part of an overhaul of zoning regulations meant to bring the rules in line with current realities and a shared vision for the town’s future.

The Sound View Village District, a roughly two-block span along Hartford Avenue between Bocce Lane and the beach, is intended to accommodate small-scale mixed-use development combining shops, restaurants and housing.

Sound View Commission Chairman Frank Pappalardo said the village district offers flexibility not seen in the town’s other commercial districts. The change goes back more than 20 years, when regulations were relaxed to encourage property owners to renovate their buildings. 

“If something fits well within the area and it’s appropriate for the area, it can be approved for the area,” he said. 

Pappalardo said several Sound View property owners since then have developed proposals for mixed-use buildings with businesses on the first floor and condominiums above that his commission believes would fit well in the village district. Those owners, however, have not brought the proposals to fruition.

A question from one person about what it’s going to take to incentivize growth in Sound View was met with a loud chorus: “sewers.” 

A plan to install sewers in the private beach communities of Old Colony, Old Lyme Shores and Miami Beach are moving forward despite a December referendum that failed to authorize the necessary spending in Sound View, which is governed by the town. 

In the room were some of the big players in the years-long sewer saga, including Old Colony Board of Governors Chairman Douglas Whalen and Miami Beach Association Water Pollution Control Authority Chairman Scott Boulanger. 

But for Pappalardo, who has long opposed the expensive project borne by ratepayers, it’s not the lack of sewers that’s stalling growth.

“It’s the uncertainty of what’s going on,” he said. 

Amid continued state pressure to address septic systems alleged to be polluting Long Island Sound, he said owners are reluctant to invest upward of $40,000 on septic systems if they’re going to have to take them out and tie into even more expensive sewer lines. 

“It’s not a matter of ‘we need sewers’ or ‘we don’t need sewers,’” he said. “It’s a matter of not knowing.”

An Underused Asset

Local businessman Tom Larson described Sound View as one of the town’s most significant underused assets.

“My life goal is to see that be developed and be a beautiful community that can be an asset to the town, not the black sheep,” he said.

Larson failed to win approval several years ago for a small development combining housing and commercial uses at the nearby corner of Cross Lane and Shore Road. The site sits in a separate commercial district governed by different regulations that did not allow mixed-use development at the time. 

He argued the town needs to pay more attention to Hartford Avenue through parking improvements and public restrooms to make the area more attractive to visitors and families.

The town in the last budget cycle funded a study for public restrooms in the Sound View public parking area and began setting aside money for construction. 

“We could be a mini Niantic or a mini Mystic or something along those lines,” Larson said.

Audible jeers rang out at Larson’s comparison to the region’s more built-up tourist areas. 

But others agreed with him. 

Maureen Swarts said she bought property in Sound View decades ago. 

“And we were told in 1990, ‘wait until you see what they’re going to do with Hartford Avenue. It’s going to be absolutely beautiful,’” she said.

She cited the Carousel Shop and Vecchitto’s Italian Ice as the main attractions and said she doesn’t see much else going on. The area does little to draw residents from other parts of Old Lyme or inspire pride in the town, according to Swarts. 

“Nobody’s proud of the Sound View area,” she said. 

For Mary Daley, a vocal critic of the plan to bring sewers to Sound View and the current chair of the Old Lyme Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA), Hartford Avenue has changed considerably from the bar- and club-lined street that fed a seedy reputation for much of the 20th century. 

“I’m not sure how recently you’ve walked down Sound View, but if you do, you’ll see people maintaining their properties, upgrading them, maintaining their lawns, taking care of everything,” she said. “It’s an environment that has grossly changed from what it used to be when there were bikers and lots of bars.”

She described Sound View as a family community in the making. 

“You just have to give it a chance,” she said.

Dennis Melluzzo pushed back on the idea, expressed multiple times during the session, that Sound View is filled with literal and figurative “trash.” 

Melluzzo sits with Daley on the WPCA as the group explores a new focus on regulating septic systems rather than bringing in sewers. 

He said his family has been in Sound View for generations. He’s been there for three-quarters of a century himself. 

Melluzzo blamed the poor condition of some of the buildings on the lack of a blight ordinance. He suggested such a measure could address deteriorated properties throughout town, not just in Sound View.

“We take pride in Sound View,” he said. “To us, it’s not a trashy place.”