Building-Boom Faceoff Brews

Who gets to park or build where? And who gets to decide?

Those broad questions about New Haven’s building boom — with the city’s main political power bases on different sides — are tucked into three legalistic land-use proposals headed for the Board of Alders following yes votes from a city commission.

The votes took place at the end of a three-hour City Plan Commission hearing at City Hall Wednesday night.

The commission voted 4 to 1 to change New Haven’s zoning ordinance map and language governing 20.6 acres of land where developer Randy Salvatore hopes to build new apartments, stores, labs and offices in the ​“Hill to Downtown” district. The commission voted 4 to 1 to approve the transfer of the land disposition agreement governing those parcels to Salvatore from their current owner.

The commission also voted unanimously to recommend approval of a proposal to amend a section of the city’s zoning ordinance. The amendment would require planned developments with 100 parking spaces to come under review by the Board of Alders rather than simply need the OKs of City Plan and/or the zoning board. Representatives of Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital objected to the proposal Wednesday night; the proposal was introduced by City Plan Commissioner and Westville Alder Adam Marchand, a member of the Yale union-backed majority on the Board of Alders.

The separate votes touched on broader questions about how officials should go about changing the landscape of the city during the current building boom. Those questions, as Wednesday night made apparent, pit labor-backed alders and neighborhood activists seeking more say in such decisions against city government along with the university and the hospital, which may be looking to expand.

Salvatore & ​“Hill To Downtown”

Two of the votes had to do with Salvatore and the land known as ​“Hill to Downtown,” which stretches from Route 34 to the train station between Church Street South and College Street/Congress Avenue. Surface lots there and old buildings remained untouched for decades despite efforts to build there; now Salvatore has stepped forward with a plan, and the apparent dough, to make it happen. (Read about that here.)

Salvatore (pictured at left in the above photo) is looking to construct at least 100 apartments along Gold Street above ground-floor public use/commercial space, and rehabilitate the Prince School Annex into as many as 40 apartments, while tearing down the Welch Annex, which are a block away, as part of an extended plan for about 80,000 square feet of commercial offices and bioscience facilities, and some structured parking.

To do that, he needs the area rezoned to allow for a busier mix of apartments and offices, labs and storefronts.

The proposed zoning change calls for extending the Business D‑3 District-Central Business District Mixed-Use, or BD‑3 District, which was created by the Board of Alders in 2012 as part of the Downtown Crossing Corridor, and extending it south. A text amendment is needed to change the zoning language to complementing the changes to the zoning map.

“The BD‑3 zone text requires specific pedestrian friendly building characteristics along the streets that now cross the corridor or will cross the corridor in the future: Orange, Church, Temple and College streets. The proposed text amendments extend these building design requirements to building in the proposed new BD‑3 area that face Church Street South (between Columbus Avenue and South Frontage Road) Lafayette Street, Washington Avenue and Congress Avenue where the city desires to encourage a pedestrian friendly streetscape,” according to a report from City Plan staff.

The commissioners’ vote of approval Wednesday night is not the final word on the matter. It moves the recommendation into the hands of the Board of Alders.

The lone dissenting vote came from the commission’s only sitting alder, Marchand (pictured). It also might be an indicator of what kind of reception the recommendations might receive from alders.

Marchand said he was concerned that the commission was considering changes to a zoning map and language prior to the formation of a committee of neighbors and other interested citizens who would be making future recommendations. An amendment that alders added — and commissioners approved Wednesday — to the city’s comprehensive plan, New Haven Vision 2025, calls for such a committee.

“I think it is appropriate for that body to be formed, and start meeting, and to to start discussing proposals about zoning changes before we start making zoning changes, not because I believe a BD‑3 is necessarily a bad fit,” Marchand said. ​“It is an important process issue that I feel we need to respect.”

He voiced a similar concern, and voted accordingly, when commissioners considered the second matter related to Salvatore’s project. That involved OK-ing the right to build on the Hill-to-Downtown property from the land’s current owner — AMA/Connecticut Funding Corp., which never pulled off the project — to a new partnership between that firm’s principal and Salvatore.

Hill Alder Dolores Colon testified at the public hearing Wednesday night, voicing concern that the zoning change would further intensify what already has become a fierce competition for parking between people who actually live in the neighborhood and those who work there.

Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League, said changing the zone seems premature. She suggested waiting for a planned comprehensive review of zoning regulations as well as promised studies of the reconfigurations of roadways and pedestrian pathways seemed premature. 

“It really is rushed,” she said. ​“The community has not been involved in formulating any of these ideas.”

Parishioners from Saint Anthony Church at 70 Washington Ave. also raised concerns about the impact on parking of Salvatore’s proposed development of five pieces of property in the Hill that stretch across four blocks that have been slated for redevelopment for almost three decade.

Though he did not testify during the public meeting, Salvatore said afterward that in his dialogue with the community, and specifically Saint Anthony Church, he has heard similar concerns about parking. He said he believes that the project will yield a solution that might in fact provide the church with more parking than it currently has now. The church is now an island among urban-renewal leveled surface lots. ​“When it is all said and done, I think Saint Anthony’s will be more than happy,” Salvatore predicted.

Changing Rules For Who Decides

The business community was less than happy with a proposal pushed by members of the Board of Alders that would give that body more oversight of the parking plans for big developments in or adjacent to mostly residential neighborhoods.

Alders seek to amend section 65 of the zoning ordinance to say: ​“A current Overall Parking Plan must have been approved pursuant to this Section, notwithstanding any other provision of the Zoning Ordinance to the contrary, and notwithstanding any Overall Parking Plan approved prior to the effective date of this Section, prior to the submission of any new application proposing zoning map amendments, zoning regulation amendments, Variances, Special Exceptions, Special Permits, or Site Plan review for any project within the City of New Haven, which meets either of the following criteria: a) is submitted by an entity which is subject to an Overall Parking Plan, OR; b) includes a parcel or partial parcel used to provide parking which is counted in an Overall Parking Plan.”

Alders Marchand, Colon, and board President Tyisha Walker testified that their proposal seeks to balance the parking needs of residents with those of local employers like Yale and Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose employees often gobble up street spaces rather than park in their designated garages and lots.

Representatives from Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital said while they understand the concern, they were confused by the proposal as it is currently drafted. They argued that it would have a chilling effect on future development. City plan officials agreed with that assessment though they made no recommendation for or against the proposal.

Vincent Petrini, senior vice president for public affairs for Yale-New Haven Hospital, said the ultimate impact of the proposed change to the ordinance is unclear.

“We’ve been assured by many that this is simple, clean-up language designed to dissuade employees from the university and medical center from parking in residential area,” Petrini said. ​“If this is indeed the case then we certainly appreciate that and we support the goals of this effort. You had us at hello. However, as we read the proposed ordinance, it moves well beyond that stated intent and does really nothing to address that specific issue in any way. In fact we believe that it could actually chill investment and discourage development activity in the city of New Haven through the implementation of yet another regulatory hurdle for economic expansion.”

Lauren Zucker, Yale’s associate vice president for New Haven affairs and university properties, echoed Petrini. She said the university been compliant in providing its annually updated parking plan for the central campus, Science Hill and its medical campus. She also noted that every time submits a zoning relief application, the public is allowed to have a say.

“Currently our parking plan is functioning and demonstrates that we meet demand,” she said. ​“Currently we have surplus of parking under both the central campus and medical school parking plan for the university.” Zucker said the university is actively offering its students and employees programs that minimize traffic and parking demand.

“That all being said, we cannot unfortunately prevent people from parking on public streets,” she said. ​“This is difficult. If there is a pubic street there is no means of enforcement for us that would keep employees, or anyone else for that matter, from parking on a public street.”

A City Plan staff report also raised ​“concerns about the language, and about placement of the amendment in the NHZO Section 65, Planned Development, which makes [its] applicability unclear; staff does not understand the intent of the suggested language, and is concerned that prohibiting new applications by both the institutions which submit OPPs and entities or owners of parking facilities used to provide spaces in OPPs, would unfairly and illegally limit their rights as property owners.”

City Plan Commission Chairman Ed Mattison (pictured at right in above photo with Commissioner Audrey Tyson), a former alder and assistant corporation counsel for the city, expressed that the city would open itself up for lawsuits if it were to adopt such language. He applauded alders for taking on the issue of parking as it relates to development, but he urged them to look at the parking problem through the wider lens of the growing scarcity of land in the city for development.