Paul Bass Photos
Alder Jessica Holmes announces last-minute shift …
… while City Hall’s Karyn Gilvarg, John Rose take it in.
Two sides geared up for a night of battle over a plan to revolutionize how New Haven regulates Yale’s building projects — until one of the generals announced a temporary retreat.
East Rock Alder Jessica Holmes announced that retreat as the first person to testify at a two-plus-hour public hearing held by the City Plan Commission Wednesday night at City Hall.
The commission met to consider a plan drawn up by Holmes and her colleagues on the Board of Alders Legislation Committee. The plan would create a new category of zoning approval that would require Yale University to go through a new layer of review — and detail a wide-ranging list of “community impacts” — before it builds anything in New Haven. And it would transfer some zoning authority from the Board of Zoning Appeals and City Plan to the Board of Alders.
The plan has ignited outrage among city government staffers and Yale defenders who call it an illegal power grab aimed at holding the university hostage. Meanwhile, supporters of the Board of Alders Yale union-backed majority call it an overdue injection of public oversight to hold New Haven’s largest institution accountable. The bill’s backers had sought a sped-up timetable to review it, leading to further argument about hidden agendas. (Click here for a previous story that details the bill as well as the arguments for and against it.)
In the end, Holmes rendered most of those arguments moot, for now. She announced in her testimony Wednesday night that, in the face of vociferous objections like those laid out in this City Plan Department staff memo, she and her colleagues have decided to put almost the entire proposal on hold. They will no longer (for now) seek to create a new category of “high impact” special exception that would give new powers to the Board of Alders to stop any building project proposed anywhere in New Haven by Yale based on, say, proximity to mass transit or promised “community benefits.”
Commissioners and staffers at the hearing.
Instead, Holmes said, the committee plans to whittle down the proposal to contain just two elements:
• One would create a general new category for university development. Even the critical City Plan staff memo agreed with the general need to amend the city’s zoning ordinance to address the impact of university development. Right now Yale can build in most city residential and commercial neighborhoods “as of right” without undergoing zoning review. Holmes noted that other cities have university zones or elaborate rules governing university development. And she noted that Yale has become the major player in city development. She argued the city needs to “ensure that universities and colleges are not allowed an antiquated exemption to develop without a public hearing or commission consideration.” She noted that Yale has built over 1 million of square feet of new uses, such as dorms and health centers and police stations, in the past 15 years.
“Music schools have more regulation. Barber shops have more regulation. Gyms have more regulation,” Holmes told the commission. “This is a reflection of antiquated zoning that did not consider the many different ways a college or a university could grow and how it would impact the surrounding community.”
City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg, who has spoken out against what she called widespread illegalities and other problems in the original proposal, said after the hearing that she and her staff agree “in principle” with this part of it. With this caveat: “We have to see the specific” details. For instance, her staff argues that the university should need to obtain “special permits” (that get reviewed by the City Plan Commission) rather than “special exceptions” (that get reviewed by the Board of Zoning Appeals), as proposed by Holmes’ committee.
• The other remaining part of the proposal would remove one step in the approval process for people seeking permission to build projects with less parking or bigger signs than permitted under zoning rules. Right now applicants need first to present to the zoning board, which refers it for an advisory opinion from the City Plan Commission, which then sends it back to the zoning board for another meeting and a vote. Holmes’ committee proposes no longer requiring the City Plan referral. That would cut a month or more out of the approval process without sacrificing public review or input, she argued. Gilvarg agreed: “We’ve been talking about getting rid of [that] for along time.”
Commissioners Adam Marchand, Ed Mattison and Elias Estabrook.
Despite Holmes’ announcement, the entire original controversy proposal was technically still before the City Plan Commission at Wednesday night’s hearing. So the dozens of people who showed up to testify ended up spending hours anyway reading their passionate prepared arguments.
Yale’s point person for New Haven affairs, Associate Vice-President Lauren Zucker (pictured above), argued that “no evidence” exists to show a need for any version of the proposal. All of Yale’s projects — such as the two new dorms, Commons student center, and biology building all recently approved and/or currently under construction — underwent lengthy public reviews. She called the time devoted to considering the new zoning proposal “unfair to New Haven and to the people who care about this city.”
“I want to have a greater say in how the city grows,” proposal supporter Eleazer Lanzot, an administrative assistant at Yale, testified. “I wonder if one day I will recognize the city I have come to love.” He said he wants to avoid having “commuters mowing me down” as he rides his bike.
Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell submitted this written critique which details city and state laws the proposal would violate and the vagueness about its impact on convenience stores and professional offices, among other objections.
And former Westville Alder Nancy Ahern (at right) decried “a union effort to force Yale to capitulate to an effort to unionize graduate students.” She argued that the proposal “puts special interest before public interest.”
In the end, the City Plan Commission unanimously voted to not to recommend approval of the original proposal and to urge the alders to rewrite it, consult with the community about it, and return with an improved version.
City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison said that while he found problems with practically “every other line” of the original proposal, it is “still talking about something important.”
“We would welcome the opportunity to consider a more thought-through piece of legislation,” Mattison said. “Let’s start all over again.”
Commissioner Leslie Radcliffe urged Holmes and her committee to run the proposal by community management teams. She noted that the bill seeks to increase public input and tackle “community benefits” of development. So the public should help shape it, she argued.
The alders’ Legislation Committee is next scheduled to meet on June 19 to discuss the bill. If the alders rewrite it along the lines suggested by Holmes, it would return to City Plan for an advisory opinion. Which means that it won’t get approved on the sped-up timetable originally envisioned by its proponents.
Even in its to-be-reduced form, the bill will “move forward a very significant change” in how the city makes zoning decisions, Holmes said after testifying at the hearing. The other elements of the proposal remain to be raised and debated at a later date.
This is great progress. Clearly something needs to be done to make Yale more accountable to New Haven. I'm glad to see so many great folks are deeply engaged in the process and I'm excited to see the next steps.