I might say right up front that plans to remake the historic Stone Acres Farm on North Main Street in Stonington, which has been in the family of the wife of First Selectman Rob Simmons for nine generations, are an alluring, even exciting, development with an eye to preservation.

The plans are, at the same time, though, worrisome, a grand commercialization of a section of town that largely has been farmland and open space since before the American Revolution.

The property, as the owners of the farm point out, is an important part of the "cultural landscape" there. Indeed, it is an integral part of the green corridor, North Main Street, a protected Connecticut Scenic Road, that leads from I-95 to historic Stonington Borough.

I just wonder whether the proposed changes are an enhancement of that cultural landscape or a commercial exploitation of it.

The farm owners specifically are proposing in their master plan a significant new commercial footprint, involving many millions of dollars of investment, with detailed development that includes parking lots, a restaurant, presumably with a bar and no limits on its size, a boutique hotel, a brewery serving more liquor, retail sales, a farm market, butcher shop, bakery and large event space, the makings of a big wedding machine.

I would urge anyone who cares about the town, and the implication for the commercialization of other farms, to pay close attention to the review of this big zoning ask, which goes to a public hearing March 21.

It also might be noted that the first selectman has said he has no ownership interest in the project himself and has instructed town employees not to discuss it with him.

Still, the first selectman, whose name is on the deed for the adjacent property, originally a part of Stone Acres, is the big elephant in the regulatory room here. His wife and daughter are among the applicants. One wonders how free town employees may feel to speak their minds and criticize or undermine a big project that clearly is important to the boss.

It reminds me a bit of the predicament federal employees might find themselves in if they wanted to, for instance, raise the rent for the Trump International Hotel in Washington, located in the U.S.-owned Old Post Office.

The Stone Acres project is being steered in part by Jane Meiser, whose husband, Dan Meiser, owns the Oyster Club and Engine Room restaurants in Mystic.

Plans call for transforming the sleepy 63-acre farm, which dominates the corner of Route 1 and North Main Street, with its wide meadows, stone walls, handsome 18th-century mansion and assortment of greenhouses and farm outbuildings.

Other than Jane Meiser and her mother, Simmons' wife, Heidi, the only other publicly identified partner in the LLC that now owns Stone Acres is a neighbor who owns a lot of adjacent land.

The LLC bought the farm from other relatives of Heidi Simmons last November, for $2.5 million, after it had lingered on the market for years.

Lawyers for the LLC said the unidentified owners are a "group of like-minded people who live in the community." I read that as Stonington gentry.

Indeed, I think the owners have all the best intentions for this project that will be, in some cases, apparently, the centerpiece of their beautiful surroundings.

They have hired a Greenwich architect to design the new buildings, a Cambridge landscape architect to organize the setting and traffic engineers. They even commissioned a study to tout the economic benefits of the project to the town.

What they are planning, a hotel inside the historic mansion and a restaurant apparently run by an acclaimed farm-to-table restaurateur, does indeed have the makings to be a wonderful and successful development for the town, a tourism asset even.

And I can't agree more when they suggest that what they are proposing is better than a sprawling subdivision.

I worry about the process, though, and the precedent for other similar projects on the many farms in town.

And what happens if this secret partnership rattles apart, and Stone Acres is sold again? Then you have a big commercial development in what was once a rural idyll, maybe one steered by people no longer in the generations-long chain of ownership of the farm, people who no longer talk about preserving the cultural landscape but who might decide a Panera Bread or even McDonald's is just as farm appropriate as Oyster Club 2, or whatever the current applicants envision.

The applicants have been driving the zone change bus in all this, proposing first a floating zone for farms throughout the town, a change written by the applicants that was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission, after some tweaking by town staff.

They are now applying, under the terms of that new farm provision, for specific approval of a master plan for Stone Acres. If that succeeds, they will need to file a site plan, which will require another public hearing.

The new rules for these farm developments don't seem to offer a lot of protection for farm neighbors, just a 25-foot buffer. Town staff added a provision for noise restraints, but the Stone Acres applicants are asking that to be waived for them.

One adjacent Stone Acres neighbor has written to the Planning and Zoning Commission to complain about the project. I hope others in town play close attention as this moves through a public review.

Maybe the applicants, whose property will become enormously more valuable with a successful decision, should at least put conservation easements on the property and ensure its long-term preservation as open space and farmland.

After all, that is the basis of their principal argument, that they want to preserve the "cultural landscape" and be sure that this historic farm is never carved into a subdivision.

How about putting that in writing?

And if they won't, how about the commission just saying no?

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com