P&Z Approves CATE's 7,500-Square-Foot Addition

Planning and Zoning · Meeting of September 21, 2026

Old Saybrook's Planning and Zoning Commission approved a special exception permit for a 7,500-square-foot addition to the Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center. The commission voted 4-0 to approve the CATE project at 300 Main Street after CATE Executive Director Brett Elliott said the center "operate[s] at or in the near capacity throughout the year," with camps selling out and families waitlisted. Engineer Caroline Manet of Indigo Land Design said the project needs 95 parking spaces and has 181 available within 1,000 feet, "nearly double what is required." Approval carries three conditions: documenting off-site parking agreements with Grace Church and Porter Plaza, pursuing crosswalk and police-assistance measures for Main Street pedestrian safety, and placing temporary cones to keep CATE's loading driveway clear.

In the full story:

• Who Was There
• Organizations And Documents Referenced
• The complete report — 2,334 words

Source: the Planning and Zoning meeting of September 21, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.

Checked against the record: before publication this article was automatically compared with the meeting transcript.

The Full Article

Call to Order and Minutes

The commission opened its regular meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance and a roll call establishing attendance: Chair Mark Caldarello, Vice Chair Eric Kennedy, member Laura Gray, member Derek Staines, and an alternate identified in the recording only as Casey, seated for absent member John Henry. Staff present included a commission officer identified as Chris Costa and recording clerk Joanne Gally. Minutes from the September 9 meeting were approved 3-0-1, with one member abstaining; the commission briefly discussed a minor clerical correction about when a prior public hearing had closed before voting.

Doc and Dine Application

The commission noted that the Doc and Dine special exception application would have its public hearing opened, and likely continued rather than closed, at the commission's October 5 meeting. Staff explained the applicant has separately applied to the Zoning Board of Appeals for variances that would not be heard until October 14, meaning the earliest the Planning and Zoning Commission could act on the underlying application would be its October 19 meeting, assuming the hearing stays open that long. No vote was taken; the item was simply queued for the next meeting.

CATE Special Exception Permit: Background and the Question Before the Commission

The evening's substantive business was a public hearing on a special exception permit for a 7,500-square-foot addition to the Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, known as CATE, at 300 Main Street, Assessor's Map 30, Lot 63-1, in the Central Business zone, a pedestrian node and a Coastal Area Management zone. The agent on the application is Brett Elliott, CATE's executive director. The commission had previously approved a related zoning map amendment two weeks earlier, which Caroline Manet of Indigo Land Design said was reflected in red on the current site plan, with the proposed addition itself shown in blue. The question before the commission Monday was whether to approve the special exception permit itself, and on what conditions.

Elliott told commissioners CATE has operated at 300 Main Street for 17 years and has reached or exceeded capacity: camps sell out, families are waitlisted, and education programming is constrained by space. He said the roughly five-year-old expansion effort is meant to add flexible programming and classroom space, improved facilities for visiting artists, expanded museum space and a second, smaller performance space, while not simply making the building bigger for its own sake. "The goal is simply not a larger building, it's a stronger community resource," Elliott said.

Site Plan, Septic and Stormwater

Manet detailed the site engineering: the addition sits within the footprint of the existing septic system, requiring relocation of a tank and pump to a new distribution box tied back into the original leaching system. A stormwater infiltration system is proposed south of the original leaching field to manage runoff from both existing and new roofed area, supplemented by drywells on the addition's east side. Existing concrete sidewalks near the addition will be removed and replaced with a new ADA-accessible route connecting the parking lot to Main Street and a new patio on the building's west side. The commission noted a clean engineering comment letter had been received from a reviewer referred to in the discussion as Ben Jacobson, with a minor revision added the day of the meeting.

Parking: The Core of the Debate

Parking consumed the largest share of deliberation. Manet said the addition, with an estimated 91 to 93 additional seats (96 used for calculation purposes), requires 95 total parking spaces under town regulation. CATE's statement of use counts 181 available spaces within 1,000 feet of the building, including three handicapped-accessible spaces, nearly double the requirement. No parking variances are being requested.

Commissioners probed how firm those 181 spaces actually are. A member asked whether CATE has formal easements with Grace Church and the Porter Plaza property, which supply a significant share of the counted spaces. Manet said CATE has agreements with both, backed by annual certificates of insurance, but not permanent lease agreements or deeded easements. "According to Grace Church, no one has actually talked about their [agreement] in quite some time," Manet said, adding CATE would need to revisit and refresh that relationship as seat counts grow.

Staff member Chris Costa provided historical context, saying the satellite-parking structure dates to CATE's original permitting, when the town did not know how large audiences would become and created a regulatory allowance for off-site parking agreements rather than dedicated easements. Member Derek Staines asked what happens in a scenario where both remote lots are simultaneously in demand, for instance a Grace Church event coinciding with heavy use of Porter Plaza during a CATE show. Manet responded that such a confluence would be an extreme scenario, and that Porter Plaza alone holds more spaces, 61, than its minimum allocated share for CATE, giving some cushion even if one lot were unavailable. Commissioners asked that copies of the actual parking agreements, written or email-based, be kept on file with the town; that request became a formal condition of approval.

Crosswalk Safety and Phase Two

A lengthy exchange concerned pedestrian safety on Main Street, particularly for patrons walking from remote lots at night. One commissioner, cited in the discussion as Eric Kennedy, raised a concern that the Main Street's existing flashing crosswalk lights create a false sense of security for drivers who assume pedestrians will press the button before crossing. "Now that the crosswalks are there with a light, you expect people to press the light and when they don't, you assume that it's safe to just drive," the commissioner said. Elliott responded that a "phase two" crosswalk directly connecting CATE to the opposite side of Main Street has been in planning for years and is advocated for internally, but he could not commit to a completion date, saying the work is being coordinated with town staff referred to in the discussion as Carl and a contractor referred to as Jameson. Chair Caldarello pressed for a firmer timeline, noting the existing Main Street lights took years to get state approval as a state road project, and suggested the commission ask the town's police department to consider stationing an officer near the crosswalk before and after sold-out shows during darker winter months.

Possible interim measures discussed included a flag system, where pedestrians could carry a visible flag across the street, and a motion-sensor trigger for the crosswalk light. No single solution was adopted; instead, the commission folded the discussion into a formal condition encouraging CATE staff to actively push the pedestrian button during busy evening shows, explore flagging, and pursue police assistance, while a separate condition requires temporary cones or stop measures on Main Street to prevent vehicles from blocking the driveway used by buses and visiting artists between CATE and 288 Main Street.

Accessible Parking and Drop-off

A member asked whether seven designated accessible spaces have historically been sufficient and whether a dedicated drop-off spot could be added. Manet and Elliott said recent restriping of Main Street added accessible spaces in front of the building, bringing the total to three near the main entrance with an eight-foot accessible aisle connecting directly to the sidewalk, up from a single handicapped space before the repaving. They said the restriping also roughly tripled the number of general parking spaces available along that stretch of Main Street.

Architecture, Height and Lighting

Architect Todd Andrews, introduced as a principal working on the CATE design, said the addition follows the Secretary of the Interior's standards for rehabilitation, intentionally differentiating the new construction from the historic building while using a compatible material palette: matching brick, added limestone elements and some zinc, echoing both the existing CATE building and the neighboring Town Hall. The addition's roof form relates to Town Hall's flat-roof sections but differs from CATE's existing hip roof, a distinction Andrews said was reviewed and found acceptable by the State Historic Preservation Office.

Andrews said the building's height of 30 feet conforms to zoning and is shorter than the existing CATE structure and Town Hall. A new interior freight elevator will replace the current exterior fire-escape staircase for loading and unloading artist equipment, and a new interior stairwell will serve as a second means of egress, reviewed preliminarily with the building inspector and fire marshal. Lighting includes four fixture types, continuing the existing lamppost style along the sidewalk, bollard lighting, and building-mounted downlighting and uplighting; the uplighting is contained beneath roof overhangs and a stairwell projection so no light escapes skyward, a design point commissioners said responds to a dark-sky referral from the Architectural Review Board. One commissioner commented that she was raising the lighting question for the public record "in case nobody listened to the ARB meeting and now they're only listening to this meeting."

On zoning coverage, a commissioner questioned whether the project exceeded the 75 percent structural coverage allowance under Section 31.7. After the architect and engineer walked through the math, the parties clarified that while the project's gross floor area is roughly 21,000 square feet, its building coverage remains under the zone's 18,000-square-foot structural coverage cap, resolving the question without further objection.

Community Space and Future Use

Responding to a question about renting community rooms for non-CATE events, Elliott said such use exists informally today, similar to existing arrangements with other local organizations, but is constrained by the building's current capacity; he cited the Shoreline Arts Alliance's "First Thursday" meetings as an example of the kind of community use CATE already supports. He said how much additional outside use the expanded building could support "will have to be realistic" given CATE's own summer camp programming, which runs most weekdays from early morning.

Motion, Conditions and Vote

With no members of the public or online participants wishing to speak, the commission voted 4-0 to close the public hearing. It then voted 4-0 to approve the special exception permit for the 7,500-square-foot addition, based on the facts, representations, plans and materials submitted, subject to three conditions: that CATE provide copies of all parking agreements before a certificate of zoning compliance is issued; that if the phase-two crosswalk is implemented, CATE encourage staff to push the pedestrian signal during busy evening shows, consider a flagging system, and investigate police assistance for crossings before and after shows; and that temporary cones or other stop measures be placed along Main Street to deter vehicles from blocking the driveway used by buses and artist vehicles between CATE and 288 Main Street.

Staff Reports and Other Business

Land use staff reported a scheduled Dark Sky lighting presentation had been canceled due to the presenter's medical issue and would be rescheduled. Staff also flagged a public input session, tied to a roughly $500,000 grant-funded study addressing beach flooding, set for Thursday at 6 p.m. at Westbrook Town Hall. The commission was told its next meeting will carry five applications, including the continued Doc and Dine hearing, a minor modification for "Maxis Place" involving frosted glazing on street-facing windows, coastal site plan reviews for properties on North Cove Road and a Boston Post Road address, and a special exception permit application for a property on Ayers Point Road. Staff also reported that enforcement staffer Zoe Chaffield has begun roughly 16 hours a month of zoning enforcement work and is still in orientation and training.

Implications and What's Next

CATE can now proceed toward construction documents and a certificate of zoning compliance once it files its parking-agreement documentation with the town. The pedestrian-safety conditions attached to the approval tie CATE's operational practices, not a guaranteed town infrastructure deadline, to the still-unscheduled phase-two Main Street crosswalk. The commission's next meeting, with five pending applications, is expected to run long.

WHO WAS THERE

Mark Caldarello, Chair, presided over the meeting. Eric Kennedy, Vice Chair, participated in discussion, including on crosswalk safety. Laura Gray, member, seconded motions and asked questions about joint parking-lot use provisions. Derek Staines, member, questioned the overlapping-lot parking scenario; recorded abstaining on the minutes vote. An alternate identified only as Casey, seated for absent member John Henry. Chris Costa, staff (title as stated in the recording: commission's "officer"), provided historical context on CATE's original permitting. Joanne Gally, recording clerk. Zoe Chaffield, enforcement staff, referenced in the staff report as working roughly 16 hours a month. Brett Elliott, Executive Director, Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (CATE) — applicant's agent. Caroline Manet, land use engineer, Indigo Land Design — presented site plan details. Todd Andrews, architect, presented building design (firm named inconsistently in the recording as both "Centerberg Architects" and, in his own introduction, "Sunbrook Architects"). Ben Jacobson, cited as providing engineering review comment letters on the application. Town staff referenced only as "Carl" and "Jameson," discussed in connection with the Main Street crosswalk project. No members of the public spoke during the CATE public hearing.

ORGANIZATIONS AND DOCUMENTS REFERENCED

Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (CATE) — applicant for the special exception permit discussed throughout the meeting. Indigo Land Design — engineering firm representing CATE on site plan matters. Architect's firm (named inconsistently as Centerberg Architects / Sunbrook Architects) — designed the addition. Grace Church and Porter Plaza — property owners providing informal off-site parking for CATE, discussed extensively regarding easements and agreement durability. Architectural Review Board (ARB) — issued a referral/report cited by commissioners regarding dark-sky lighting compliance. State Historic Preservation Office — reviewed and concurred with the architect's rehabilitation-standards approach, per Andrews. Fire Marshal — approved application September 1, cited in the approval's review chain. Planning Commission — reviewed application August 25 for consistency with the town's Plan of Development. Health Department — issued approval July 15. Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) — scheduled to hear variances for the separate Doc and Dine application October 14. Section 31.7 of the zoning regulations — cited regarding structural/building coverage limits (75 percent provision and 18,000-square-foot cap) discussed and resolved during the CATE review. September 9, 2026 meeting minutes — approved with one abstention at the start of this meeting.