Kutcher v. Town Planning Commission of Town of Manchester
| Decision Date | 29 April 1952 |
| Citation | 88 A.2d 538,138 Conn. 705 |
| Court | Connecticut Supreme Court |
| Parties | KUTCHER et al. v. TOWN PLANNING COMMISSION OF TOWN OF MANCHESTER et al. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut |
John D. LaBelle, Manchester, for appellant (named defendant), with whom were Jay E. Rubinow, Manchester, and, on the brief, Leon Podrove, Manchester, for appellant (defendant Patten).
Charles N. Crockett, Manchester, for appellees (plaintiffs).
Before BROWN, C. J., and O'SULLIVAN, JENNINGS, BALDWIN and INGLIS, JJ.
The defendant Patten owns a small machine shop in Manchester. Urged to expand his operations, which are largely experimental work for the aircraft industry, he purchased a parcel of land on Wetherell Street in the southwestern part of the town and proposed to erect thereon a small shop where thirty persons could be employed. The land is located in what is described by the town zoning ordinance as a rural residence zone. The neighborhood is not thickly populated. Just north of the Patten parcel a brook runs through low, swampy ground. Within a radius of 1000 feet to the north there is an automobile junk yard operated by Pantaleo, and, abutting the Patten property on the north, a large parcel owned by Ansaldi, with a sand and gravel pit and buildings used for storing trucks, bricks, steel, cement and other building materials. These businesses are in a residence B zone and are nonconforming uses, having been in existence before the zoning ordinance was adopted. Since that time, business activities on the Ansaldi property have increased substantially, and a variance was granted to permit the erection of buildings. Just east of the Patten property and well within a 1000-foot radius, a 125-foot right of way for electrical transmission lines of the Hartford Electric Light Company crosses the territory. We take judicial notice of the obvious fact that members of the commission were familiar with local conditions.
The use to which Patten proposed to put the property was forbidden in a rural residence zone. He made application to the named defendant, hereinafter referred to as the commission, for a change of zone of his land to industrial. The commission granted his application. The plaintiffs, adjoining and neighboring property owners, appealed to the Court of Common Pleas. The case was tried on the transcript of testimony and the exhibits before the commission. This was the proper procedure. Hoffman v. Kelly, 138 Conn. 614, 88 A.2d 382. The court rendered judgment sustaining the appeal. The defendants have appealed to this court. The sole question is the legality of the action taken by the commission.
The gravamen of the plaintiffs' claim and of the trial court's judgment was that the change of zone for Patten's land from rural residential to industrial was not in furtherance of a comprehensive plan of zoning in the town but on the contrary constituted 'spot zoning.' Manchester first adopted a zoning ordinance in 1938. This ordinance created nine classes of zone, five of them residential, three business, and one industrial. And examination of the ordinance and the zoning map reveals that every part of the town was originally placed in a zone of one kind or another. The undeveloped and sparsely settled portions were placed in what was described as a rural residence zone. It is the defendants' claim that this zone was intended to be a reservoir for future development and embraced areas which might require, from time to time, further consideration by the zoning authority as the town grew. The fact that the area zoned as rural residential comprises at least half the total land area of the town supports this claim. Then, too, the ordinance establishes four other classes of residence zone.
The original ordinance found industry already established in the town. To deal with this situation, ten separate and relatively small areas in the outlying districts, in addition to other areas near the center of population, were constituted industrial zones. Many of these industrial zones are surrounded wholly or in large part by land designated as rural residence. The regulations for an industrial zone prohibit noisy, noxious uses and all others that can be described as heavy industrial. The commission could reasonably assume that the purpose expressed by the map and the regulations was that the zoning authorities, forced to accept conditions as they found them at the time the ordinance was adopted, planned new zoning in the future which would permit limited industrial uses in segregated areas where the nature of the land and the trend already established demonstrated that such uses represented, in a rapidly growing, industrial community, the best possible employment of the particular area. The 1940 census showed the population of Manchester to be 23,799. Ten years later, in 1950, the population had grown to 33,906, an increase of more than 42 per cent. Obviously, zoning could not remain static. Growth demanded zone changes. The test is whether, in the light of these basic facts and certain others, not detailed here, which were before the commission and the court, the granting of Patten's application was arbitrary and illegal and exceeded the power of the commission.
Section 2 of chapter 17 of the charter of the town of Manchester, 25 Spec.Laws 250, gives to the town planning commission power '(a) To prepare, adopt and amend a master plan for the development of the town * * *; (b) to have all the powers delegated to zoning boards and commissions by the general statutes and the zoning regulations of Manchester * * * (d) to prepare and adopt plans for the redevelopment or improvement of districts and neighborhoods * * *' Section 3 provides that the commission 'shall also make detailed plans for the improvement, reconditioning or redevelopment of areas which in its judgment contain special problems or show a trend toward lower land values.' General Statutes, § 837, gives to the zoning authority power to regulate 'the density of population and the location and use of buildings, structures and land for trade, industry, residence or other purposes'. This section further provides that such regulations 'shall be made in...
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