New Britain, CT Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Section 230-170 folds a light-trespass rule into the supplemental controls the Common Council applies to motor vehicle sales operations, motor vehicle repair garages, motor vehicle wash or automatic car wash facilities, and motor vehicle towing and storage lots, whether the site plan covers a brand-new use, a re-licensing, or a modification of an existing operation. Section 230-170-40 states the rule plainly: no lighting that would result in glare or light spillover onto adjoining residential properties may be employed on the site. That single sentence sits inside a package of related site standards for the same uses, including a requirement that customer parking stay separate from vehicle display spaces, screening for any wrecked or partially dismantled vehicles kept on the lot, a paved or City-Engineer-approved surface for all parking and storage areas, and drainage systems with oil and grease separators for shop floor drains and vehicle wash water.

New Britain applies comparable light-spillover language elsewhere in the Zoning Ordinance to other special-exception uses; Section 270-40-40.130.10 limits golf course outdoor lighting to the area within 100 feet of the main building, the parking lot and the pool, barring general course lighting altogether, and Section 270-40-40-145.20 tells health, fitness and recreational facilities that outdoor lighting shall not spill over to adjacent properties. Taken together, these sections show New Britain regulating light trespass use-by-use inside its special-exception and supplemental-controls framework rather than through one citywide outdoor-lighting ordinance, so the specific standard that applies to a site depends on which supplemental-controls section covers that use.