This house at 3 Morningside Lane in Westport was razed and replaced with a brand-new, Colonial-style home. Such tear-downs are becoming increasingly common throughout Connecticut.

The Connecticut Shoreline is starting to look a lot different.

Five years ago, most families in the upper-middle class could find homes to suit them, from ranches built in the 1970s to cottages to Colonials. But as the rich increasingly populate the area and land becomes scarcer, many of those homes are getting the axe, literally.

The practice of tear-downs – older homes demolished to make way for new, usually larger homes – has become commonplace in Connecticut. Real estate professionals and town planners started to notice it four or five years ago along the waterfront in Fairfield County. The trend has moved east, is now common along the entire Shoreline and, in towns like Guilford, has started to move inland. The construction of larger homes is often controversial and has resulted in lawsuits brought by individuals and changes in town zoning regulations.

“We’re seeing [tear-downs] more and more and I think we’re going to see that even more [in the future],” said Cash Mitchell, vice president at H. Pearce Co.’s Guilford office.

Mitchell first heard of tear-downs 20 years ago, when a good friend and fellow real estate agent on the West Coast told him how popular they had become on California’s waterfront. His friend predicted it would happen here, too, Mitchell said, and he wasn’t wrong.

The tear-downs in Fairfield County started around the end of the 1990s with developers buying small, low-priced homes and demolishing them to build larger ones, according to Ken DelVecchio, broker at Re/Max Heritage in Westport and Region One vice president of the Connecticut Association of Realtors.

But developers these days are buying $1 million homes and replacing them with homes worth $3 million or more, DelVecchio said. In some cases, developers have purchased two or more adjacent lots and combined them.

The homes built after tear-downs vary. In Fairfield County, the resulting homes tend to be “McMansions,” DelVecchio said, and have significantly changed the character of some neighborhoods.

“We [had] some real quaint neighborhoods … now, you’ve got some of the older homes and all of the sudden, bang, there’s a mansion,” he said.

The practice is not always controversial, but tear-downs often become an issue when the new home is much bigger and higher than the original. When tear-downs first became common, developers mostly bought big lots, but now, mansions are going up on a parcel as small as a quarter-acre, leaving very little yard space, DelVecchio said.

“It got very controversial down here,” he noted.

‘Sensitive’ Issue

The trend concerns Westport Director of Planning and Zoning Kathy Barnard.

“We have had a lot of tear-downs,” she said. “Anytime you see a for-sale sign go up on a ranch house, you know what’s coming.”

Westport, a town of nearly 26,000, already has the fifth-highest single-family home price in the state, at $860,000, according to statistics from The Warren Group, the parent company of The Commercial Record. And the tear-downs drive that up even more. Barnard is concerned that the town is losing its variety of housing stock, which she believes will result in a population that is less economically diverse.

DelVecchio agreed.

“I don’t know how normal people are going to be able to afford houses,” he said.

The town’s Planning and Zoning Commission also has taken notice. They tried to pass more stringent regulations in 1998 that would have changed the ratio of building space vs. open space, which would have resulted in smaller homes, and reduced the height of new construction. Community members are often unhappy when a big, new mansion is built on an old, small lot, leaving little green space, Barnard noted. But, although many community members aren’t happy when a new mansion goes into their neighborhoods, they spoke out against the proposed regulations six years ago because of the restrictions that would have been placed on their own properties, Barnard said.

“The community came out in force against those [regulations],” she said.

The commission withdrew the proposal, but Barnard expects they will resubmit similar proposals in the next few months.

Although Westport’s Planning and Zoning Commission still hasn’t been able to pass stricter regulations, its counterpart in nearby Greenwich has succeeded in doing so.

The Planning and Zoning Commission in Greenwich passed new zoning requirements about two years ago that changed the ratio of building space to green space, requiring more green space, according to Larry Bradley, assistant town planner. The regulations do not specifically target tear-downs, but tear-downs are affected, he said.

The municipal government in Guilford hasn’t yet considered those kinds of regulations, said Town Planner George Kral. The issue is usually more localized.

“It’s a sensitive neighborhood issue,” he said.

Community members often become worried when developers demolish small, seasonal cottages in favor of bigger, year-round homes, Kral said. The new waterfront construction sometimes results in the loss of scenic views for the neighbors.

Because many tear-downs in Guilford take place near the shore, the Planning and Zoning Commission has to consider them because of a state law that requires public hearings when there is a proposal for coastal construction. The hearings give community members a chance to speak out about the construction, but the law doesn’t take into account neighbors’ private viewing pleasures, Kral said. Neighbors often become upset with the commission, but under the law, commission members can’t deny a project because it would ruin a private view, Kral said.

Such controversies arise about six times a year, he said.

“It’s something, from time to time, that’s an issue,” Kral said.

In Guilford, available land lots cost between $250,000 and $300,000 and usually are not near infrastructure such as roads or electricity. Guilford does not offer municipal sewer or water systems, so it’s a bonus to developers to buy a lot with an existing house so they can use the septic system and well, Mitchell said. Therefore, developers often buy homes in the community for around $350,000, demolish them and build bigger homes on the lot, Mitchell said.

The types of houses that result from tear-downs are more varied than they are in Fairfield County. The zoning in communities between Guilford and New London is fairly stringent, Mitchell said, so the tear-down process is not quite as easy there.

“We have found that local zoning is very tough,” he said.

Some zoning regulations allow new homes to be built only in the footprint of the original home and there are already strict height restrictions in some places, he said. Those regulations, plus the historic feel of communities on the eastern Shoreline, have meant that McMansions aren’t always the best course of action to take when it comes to developing projects there.

“This is classic Colonial country,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell noted that he sees a mix of McMansions and custom-built houses. Some new homes there are very customized, with amenities such as gyms, first-floor master bedrooms and indoor/outdoor living, he said. Homeowners on the eastern Shoreline are getting away from cookie-cutter houses, he said.

“From an identity standpoint, that’s great,” Mitchell said.

DelVecchio, for his part, said that even with all the controversy surrounding tear-downs, they won’t soon go away.

“It’s part of the changing of time. You can’t fight it; it’s here,” he said.