New Haven Independent

“Tomorrow” means a big public meeting Thursday night at which a Board of Aldermen committee will hear testimony and then vote on the zoning regulations, map amendment and other easements crucial to the cancer center project — all of which have now received City Plan’s blessing. That’s when a lot more talk about traffic, urban design and asthma will take place.

Wednesday night’s meeting at City Hall was a dress rehearsal of sorts: Smaller stakes, a smaller crowd, than Thursday’s should be. Public debate was supposed to focus on one question: Should the city change the zoning map so that the $430 million cancer center lies in a “business/medical zone”? The change in zoning map would allow the hospital to build denser, higher buildings than would be otherwise allowed — up to 200 feet high, with 10 extra feet allotted if the building meets green “LEED” standards.

City Plan commissioners voted unanimously to change the zoning map, as well as other easements such as building a pedestrian walkway and a tunnel. They also agreed to let the hospital demolish the Grace Building — something that the panel had previously denied, and the hospital had challenged in court. The court case had been pending until Wednesday’s truce.

People who showed up Wednesday urged City Plan to put off voting on the part of the plan that allows for the 1,300-space garage on city-owned “Lot E,” a block bounded by Legion Avenue, Frontage Road, Dwight and Howe streets. The opponents said they feel they’ve been snubbed amid all the celebration surrounding the city and Y-NH’s new rosy relations. They argued that the garage would harm the landscape and neighbors’ health. They want to see the garage reduced in size or abolished, and alternative parking and mass transit measures put in place. Panel members nodded, but said some comments were off the subject; discussion was supposed to be just about the zoning map.

“Decent concern, wrong venue,” summed up Alderman Joseph Jolly, who sits on the City Plan Commission, after the hearing. Jolly is a member of the New Haven Environmental Justice Network, a group that urges alternative parking instead of the Lot E garage. (Click here to read the network’s proposed alternative zoning amendment.) Jolly supports the approved plan. He noted an oft-overlooked feature of the garage: It will be mixed-use, with stores and apartments. He stands alongside the majority of aldermen poised to approve plans on Thursday.

Such ready approval left Anstress Farwell feeling ignored.

“It isn’t as if they were asked to be reflective,” she said, noting the panel was asked to hear public comment, then immediately vote. “Is anyone actually started to think hard about this?”

Karyn Gilvarg, City Plan chief, assured the public that it would have plenty more venues in which to voice concern: after Thursday’s public hearing, two more hearings will treat parking and another will treat the Land Disposition Agreement, which will detail conditions for Lot E and 55 Park St. when the property is transferred.

But Farwell and environmentalist Robin Schafer did get one hint Wednesday that the hospital has been listening. The two were engaged in discussion with Stephen Merz, the hospital’s vice president of administration, in the hallway after the hearing. Their pleas for creative alternatives to a massive parking structure were met with evasive, optimistic replies. “Come tomorrow!” he urged. “You’re going to hear a number of things that we’re doing… We’ll be addressing a lot of your concerns.”

See what they have to say: Thursday, 6 p.m., at the Board of Aldermen committee hearing at the Betsy Ross School, 150 Kimberly Ave.