Image courtesy of KTGY

Dallas-based developer Trammel Crow has been approved to build 175 apartments on a Darien office property next to Interstate 95.

Darien’s Planning & Zoning Commission approved the project earlier this month. The Hartford Business Journal was the first to report the decision.

The 8.5-acre site at 1-22 Thorndal Circle is occupied by five small office buildings, one built in 1986 and four built in the early 1970s. Trammel Crow’s project is taking advantage of a town zoning district intended to encourage the conversion of offices to commercial space amid huge vacancy rates in the regional office market, making this one of many teardowns and redevelopments of the region’s dated housing stock.

According to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, the 555,000-square-foot Darien-New Canaan office submarket only had a 6.5 percent vacancy rate as of Dec. 31, but almost half the 5.67 million square feet of office space in Norwalk and nearly one-third of the 15.97 million-square-foot Stamford submarkets, on either side of Darien, are vacant.

In line with town affordable housing rules, 20 percent of the units will be set aside for renters making 80 percent of the state median income.

Designed by national architecture firm KTGY, the apartments are split among five 3-story buildings surrounded by surface parking lots, plus a clubhouse with a pool.

The project’s location will also serve as a form of amenity, Trammel Crow wrote in its project filings, with the Darien Public Library, Darien’s town center commercial district and its Metro-North train station all within walking distance and an I-95 onramp also close by.

Darien’s town center is in the process of being redeveloped by Baywater Properties in a large, multi-phase project that received financing this summer for its next phase.