🔒Duncaster withdraws Bloomfield expansion application, plans to refile

A Bloomfield senior living community has withdrawn its application to expand its campus, ending a nearly two-year legal fight over the project while saying it intends to start over with a new proposal. Duncaster, a nonprofit Life Plan community, formally pulled its 2023 special permit application in a June 22 letter to the Bloomfield Plan and Zoning Commission, surrendering the approval it won from the commission in 2024. The move follows a Superior Court ruling last fall that threw out that approval and ordered the commission to hear the matter again. Duncaster, which has operated a continuing-care community for the elderly on Loeffler Road since the early 1980s, filed the application in November 2023. It sought to build out the east campus of its property at 20-80 and 90 Loeffler Road with a 61-unit residential apartment building and 32 cottage units for residents over age 62, along with a 14,200-square-foot addition to its existing buildings. The plan also asked the commission to amend the community’s master plan to raise the maximum residential density to 386 units and to increase permitted building heights. The commission approved the application on a 4-3 vote in June 2024. A group of eight neighboring property owners on Loeffler Road, led by Wendell and Nancy Wallach, appealed the following month, arguing the commission acted illegally and that the public hearing had not been conducted fairly. Superior Court Judge Edward O’Hanlan agreed on the fairness question. In an Oct. 28, 2025, decision, he found that technical failures during the hybrid public hearing on May 23, 2024, left roughly two hours of the proceeding inaccessible to people participating remotely and impossible to transcribe. The judge also faulted the commission for letting a member who missed that hearing, Commissioner Kevin Hussain, cast a deciding vote. O’Hanlan remanded the case, requiring a new hearing conducted in a fundamentally fair manner, but did not rule on the neighbors’ underlying zoning objections. Rather than go through a second hearing on the old application, Duncaster chose to withdraw it. In the withdrawal letter, attorney Joseph P. Williams of Shipman & Goodwin wrote that by ordering a new hearing, the court “in effect, vacated” the commission’s approval, returning the application to pending status. Duncaster “intends to file a new application for a special permit for the Property, and thus withdraws its prior Application,” the letter said. Kelly Papa, Duncaster’s president and CEO, confirmed the organization plans to move forward with a fresh proposal. “Duncaster remains committed to expanding our campus and addressing the shortage of reliable, safe and high-quality senior housing in the area, and plans to submit new applications before the Bloomfield Town Planning and Zoning Commission,” Papa said Wednesday. Attorney Kenneth R. Slater Jr. of Halloran & Sage, who represents the neighbors, said his clients were aware of Duncaster’s plan to file a new application. With the application rescinded, the neighbors moved on July 13 to withdraw their appeal, telling the court there is no longer any live controversy to decide. All parties agreed. A hearing on that motion is scheduled for July 28.