All Aboard: In and Around the Westport Train Station
The Westport Train Station is currently surrounded mostly by parking, but a town plan has called for some improvements to the nearby area. However, the most recent plans for development near the station were rejected.
Just steps from the Saugatuck River and about two miles south of downtown, the Westport Train Station is located in the heart of the Saugatuck neighborhood in town. That’s part of why many locals refer to it as the Saugatuck Station. The station serves more than 3,000 riders a day and is home to two 19th century “New Haven Railroad station houses” on either side.
The station itself is surrounded by eight parking lots. Across the street from the station is a row of restaurants and small businesses. But the area could have seen a massive transformation if the plans for the Hamlet had been approved.
The Hamlet Proposal
As we’ve previously reported, in 2025, Roan Development Ventures proposed a “mixed-use hub for commercial and residential uses” just to the north of the train station. The proposal had called for bringing a mix of retail spaces, residential units, amenities, a spa, a hotel, and more along Riverside Avenue, Franklin Street, and Railroad Place.
The Hamlet project sparked a huge debate in town, with hundreds of public comments, months of review by the Planning and Zoning Commission, along with other town bodies, and multiple revisions to the plans. Ultimately, the commission denied the proposal stating that the proposed design didn’t comply with the standards for the area as it “fails to reflect the style and vernacular inspired by the traditional New England coastal village aesthetic.” It also raised concerns about traffic, parking, water access, and scale.
In addition, in its resolution to deny the commission noted “the numerous changes to the plans caused additional questions by the Planning and Zoning Commission which were unanswered due to statutory timelines. The Commission requested that the applicant withdraw and resubmit the application to allow additional time to review the outstanding issues but the applicant declined.”
After the denial, the developer filed an appeal in court seeking to overturn the ruling. However, according to The Westport Journal, the developer recently withdrew its lawsuit, leaving questions about what could happen to the site in the future.
The Future of the Saugatuck Area
While the Hamlet proposal is gone for now, there has been a desire on behalf of the town to have some development in the area. In 2018, the town developed the Saugatuck Transit Oriented Design Master Plan that aimed to promote “a future for Saugatuck that is vital, livable, safer for pedestrians, that offers diverse entertainment, dining, recreational, residential, and business opportunities and at the same time respects Saugatuck’s small town character and historical heritage.”
The plan noted that the “Saugatuck area of Westport has a split personality being both a transportation hub and a village,” and that previously the town had “addressed this issue in a piecemeal fashion (surface parking lots supporting the train station and restrictive zoning for preservation) and the result has been to create a sea of asphalt and suppression of imaginative development.”
The overall goals of the master plan included:
- Enhancing the pedestrian experience, particularly with an emphasis on waterfront access, additional civic or park space, and sidewalk/streetscape improvements throughout.
- Encouraging multi-modal options for residents to get to the station to reduce the demand for parking
- Promoting a mix of uses that protects the resiliency, vibrancy, and character of Saugatuck
- Providing parking strategies to support commuters and businesses while reducing the appearance of parking as the primary land use
In 2022, the Planning and Zoning Commission approved a new zone for the area—“General Business District/Saugatuck Marina”—which aimed to add water-dependent uses and encourage a mix of residential development, commercial, office, hotel and retail all of which would “enhanced and conserve the area’s aesthetic appeal, pedestrian access,” and more.
The new zone was created in part to allow for a development like the Hamlet, but changes to the project put it at odds with the commission, officials in town, and members of the public. Ward French, who chairs the Architectural Review Board, wrote that the “core architectural issue remains a scale mismatch…achieving genuine New England charm and contextual integrity requires reducing some proposed structures by at least one story.”
What’s Next?
Right now, no pending application related to the area is in front of the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission.
During the months of review, Roan threatened to file an 8-30g application, which could bring large amounts of housing to the area. 8-30g is a Connecticut state law that allows developers to bypass some of the local regulations in towns that have less than 10% of their housing deemed affordable, so long as the proposed development has 30% or more affordable units in it.
However, no application has been filed and the developer recently withdrew its appeal that attempted to overturn the P&Z denial, leaving questions about what could happen to the site in the future.
