With 2 Provisos, Star Supply Plan Advances

Ward 9 is not just the people who live there now.

How does reducing the scope of this building help the poor or people in affordable housing?

There should be more housing units, not fewer. There should be fewer parking spaces required.

That would make the project far more economically feasible which in turn would allow the developer to include more affordable units for families.

This is the type of developer incentive that many cities are creating.

If affordable housing is the top priority (which it is, except among wealthy East Rockers and our Mayor and Board-appointed City Planners who, notably, all seem to live in East Rock or near Westville) we really need to act on this immediately - not keep catering to NIMBYs, out of touch politicians, and elites.

I'm glad that public hearings exist, and I'm glad neighbors are getting to have their say. And now for why this is a good thing and why less parking is good:

When developers build buildings, parking is extremely expensive. Each car takes up a few hundred square feet, the build cost is enormous to construct a garage, and even surface parking is surprisingly expensive, but you cannot charge a true market rate to recoup your costs for the parking spot, or people would just park somewhere else. Instead the developers have to roll the true cost of parking spots into the rent. And then the neighbors complain about how this is only a development for the wealthy. As if having a new building supporting the tax base and thereby reducing taxes for everybody else was a bad thing.

Less parking equals the developer can build apartments rather than parking, equals lower rents. Parking needs to become a lot more scarce across the entire city if New Haven is going to keep down tax rates and construct buildings with affordable rents. We have to start somewhere. Let's start with brand new development that is in a good place for people who willingly choose not to own a personal car.

Well said, David Backeberg.

I think it is notable that so many parents and elderly people in our city are calling for less parking and less car-centrist thinking.

I chatted with a half dozen neighbors last weekend: 2 elderly women, a family of 4, and a young couple. All of them principally get around on foot or by bike or bus. Only 1 car was owned among the 6 people.

360 State isn't an anomaly. A lot of people in East Rock already don't own a car, and the trend will continue in that direction if we continue to build toward it instead of against it.

Despite all the problems we face, we still have people young and old who thrive without cars in this neighborhood. I think we can do better than an arbitrarily limited residential building.

The neighbors (some of them) oppose adding to the tax base of the city because they want to preserve their "right" to park for free on city streets (public property) for free. They see zoning as the process by which they enforce their collective right to free stuff, at the expense of taxpayers in the rest of the city.

Aside from parking, in our country when something becomes scarce its price rises. That includes food, housing, health care, etc. But for some reason we have parking socialism. I would prefer to have socialized health care and more food aid for the genuine poor, on one hand, but market-based parking on the other. If parking is scare on city streets, issue parking permits and raise the price until demand equals supply. We do it for houses and food, why not on-street parking?

Holmes is being very short sighted. Is she saying that an empty lot is better than 268 units? Let's stop blocking development in our city.

Zoning doesn't regulate the economic model of housing; just use and form. Alderperson Holmes has a tool for addressing this and its called making law with her Board of Aldermen. They can make law that requires affordable housing across the board in new projects (which they won't do becuase it will kill off development in town) or they can incentivize it across the board (as is normally done.) Chasing this through the variance process is an inappropriate political shakedown.

The real failure on the part of local leadership is in working toward a negative (limiting this much needed development) instead of working toward a positive (increased transit).

As many GESO members and supporters pointed out in the last article, it does indeed take time to build rail.

It takes almost no time however to expand bus and shuttle lines.

There is no reason why this building, if it will serve so many people, within a 2 mile distance of the main destinations for the intended residents, could not benefit from expanded and increased shuttle and bus access.

Our city leaders should be working to increase the transit opportunities here both short-term and long-term. This is merely the latest in a long series of notifications that density is coming to New Haven.

Esbey is right. If we had market-based parking, we would have the public goods necessary to alleviate poverty, improve the educational system, and provide quality health care to people in ways that would dramatically improve life expectancy and happiness for millions of people.

Instead, we have socialized parking, and free market life expectancy.

Since we began building the Interstate Highway system and allowing parking garages to dominate our major cities (in ways that continue now - witness the disastrous new Winstanley/Route 34 projects), our life expectancy has slipped from 1st in the world to 50th.

I believe that Ben has been working in good faith to address the neighbors' concerns. One further thing he could do is work to extend the Connecticut Transit and Yale shuttle lines to serve the development.

"If the BZA approves the proposal, then he will have a better sense of the "envelope" he can work within, the parameters of what's permissible, Gross said".

What does he mean by that? If he gets approval for project "A" he can't then just switch and do project "B", that would take another application. The Board can't approve an "envelope" development. They can approve or deny what was proposed.

"Gross said it's "totally understandable" that neighbors might be concerned they'll lose their leverage if the BZA approves the plan. But I hope we've made it clear we are listening to them."

I always thought it curious that neighborhood groups are given such a large play in zoning application decisions. The statutes are pretty clear as to the standards of review. The time for neighborhood input is in crafting regulations and the plan of development. Once that is done, the right and fair thing to do is evaluate a proposal against the regulations.

"He said the plans "are not set in stone" and may change after BZA approval".

The plans should be "set in stone" once filed. The can't be a moving target as the process unfolds. That is simply unfair to everyone as well as causing legal problems. Developers can't switch plans as they go along. If they thought they needed community buy-in that should have been done before they applied.

I'm all for this development, although I think the density is too much for this part of town. Traffic is a real concern because public transportation isn't yet where it needs to be.

In any event the developers should have come to the table with a well thought-out proposal that already had neighborhood support. All this talk of "envelopes" and "stone-setting" is a little mind-boggling to me.

this comment thread is literally one of my favorites i've ever read on the NHI. well said, everybody.

KEVIN,

Star Supply residents can walk three short blocks up to Foster to catch the Yale Orange line and civilians can walk right outside their door to the Q bus (running from 5:30 am to 2:00 am; every 15 minutes during rush hour)

This building will be well served by mass transit.

I disagree with Stephen. Within the context of the regional economy and our dire need to provide affordable, more centrally-located housing and infrastructure, the proposed density here is actually far, far too low. There should be 500 units on this site, not 300. If we want to address issues such as poverty, educational integration, and gentrification, need to think beyond the confines of our little municipality.

Zoning should be updated to allow the developer to place 500 units here if he agrees to make 80 of them affordable.

I'm all for affordable housing and density but this isn't downtown. Everything has a place. This is a T-4 neighborhood, not a T-5 or T-6. And as much as I think public transport should be more widespread (and in time it will), right now it isn't. We're stuck in a transition period right now. Cars are still a necessity for many. Though a generation from now things will be very different.

The last proposal for this site was about 170 units or so and the only reason that tanked was financing, not lack of density. If I had a vote, I'd say yes to this and cross my fingers hoping upper State Street gridlock doesn't get worse.

I will say I'm sad there's no affordable housing units in the project.(Realistically though it was never going to happen, those units appear when the city through HUD is willing to offer subsidized grants to a developer, which wasn't happening in this case). I will say I'm glad they didn't require more parking spaces and are actually in the 21st century on this. However, regardless of any qualms or over enthusiasm anyone has on this, can we at least come together and be happy that at least something is finally being done to this place.

KEVIN

ROBN
In response to robyn's statement of the Yale Orange and the Q bus line. The Yale line is for Yale students and employees only and even for them catching that line after 6:00pm when the bus stops at every address, makes it impossible to predict how long it will take each night to get home. How can employees and grad students plan their schedules with babysitters or errands the same as they would with a car?

As has been mentioned by streever and at the Board of Zoning Appeals meeting (March 2013) concerning this development, the fastest solution would be to expand the route and hours of either the Q line or the Shuttle line service to connect the Union and Shoreline East train stations to Upper State Street.

Work with Connecticut Transit to expand mass transit from your development to the two train stations on State Street.

• It benefits you by diversifying your pool of potential renters with a commuter clientele rather than pinning all your hopes and tenuous margin of success solely on the availability of grad students without cars.
  
• It benefits the disadvantaged in neighboring Cedar Hill who cannot afford automobiles, by providing the residents reliable transportation to reach jobs outside of New Haven.
  
• It benefits local businesses and the city by introducing more capital, business and taxable income to the area.
  You now have a solution that would help you to achieve more tenants without displacing local parking. You would be helping lower income residents located mere blocks across from your development gain financial independence and you would help local businesses and the city towards fiscal security. You wanted a solution that would be a benefit to everyone. Well, here it is.

A few thoughts:

Mechanic, what part of "the community" responded? The families in New Haven who are paying 75% of their income toward housing costs and have no cars, or just the civic elites, & NIMBYs living in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state?

Anonymous, I don't know the demographics of everyone who responded, but I do know a couple of the folks. Those people are middle class homeowners. I wouldn't say they're civic elites. NIMBY is just a slur to label someone without really arguing against them.

Personally I spend about half my income on rent in that neighborhood. I have to have a car because I travel to the valley and the shoreline for work 3-4 days per week. But I love New Haven, and want to live in the city, and want my child to be educated here. If I owned a home (and paid taxes in our fair city), I wouldn't want a 7 story town to block out all the sun in my backyard either.

I appreciate that our city has a system in place to attempt to promote development while looking out for the resident taxpayers at the same time. It should all be about compromise.

anonymous, exactly how is Goatville "one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the state?" When I think of wealthy neighborhoods in Connecticut (one of the richest, if not the richest, states), I think of just about anywhere in New Canaan, most of Darian, Old Greenwich, Riverside, Back Country, and some other areas of Greenwich, various areas in West Hartford, Glastonbury, Cheshire, and Madison. Even the nice parts of New Britian have more wealth. Sure, some transient residents come from serious money, but as a neighborhood it is hardly wealthy.



I opine that there is a school of thought in New Haven, typified by Locals 34 and 35, as well as many of my neighbors, that one must fight to get something. Soon, the fighting becomes more important than the result. Eventually, the fight is the point. Might I suggest another school? By cooperation, one might do much better. After all, you have the blighted property, and they have the money. Guess which one is more portable.


I also opine that if we build for cars, we will get more cars. The problem with that, is that cars are going to get more problematic during the life cycle of this project. If we build for limited car use combined with mass transit and a commitment to bikes and foot movement (I put it to you, the original template for New Haven), then surely, the future will thank us.

I disagree with the inappropriate insertion of the affordable housing issue but Goatville neighbors are certainly entitled to have a say in the use and form issues of the variance. It's not right to accuse them of nimbyism when such dramatic change is proposed to neighborhood density and parking requirement.

I don't really get all this traffic gridlock parking socialism frenzy. I rather doubt that the neighbors would be happy if the development plan for the property was to tear everything down and replace it with a large Adult Pleasures superstore with plenty of off-street parking.
Even though parking is a definite consideration, I get the impression that the way the proposed development fits in with the neighborhood is more important. Aside from keeping the older brick building, the plan seems to go in quite another direction:
1) In a neighborhood where the 2 tallest buildings are 4 stories and all the others are 2 or 3, they want to erect a 7-story building abutting several peoples' back yards and closing in on a park and a public skating rink.
2) They have priced the residential units so that only people of above-average incomes can live there ($1500/month for a studio). In doing so, they will have created a socio-economic enclave that most of the people living nearby could not afford to move into. The problem with the project not fitting in is not about nimby-ism. It has more to do with the long-term viability of the project. Will it attract enough high-renters to fill the place? Will they soon want to move out to sexier buildings nearer their work? Will they venture out from the "suburban landscaping" (the architect's words) of their residential circle to explore and enjoy State Street's varied retail offerings and interact with their neighbors on long-neglected Mechanic St.? If the developers turn out to be wrong in guessing that there are a large number of high-end renters eager to move into suburban landscaping across the street from a pretty funky auto repair shop and a stone's throw away from I-91, there's the danger that this shiny new project could wind up like a lot of other on-spec endeavors--a shiny new project with boarded up windows. Not at all what we are hoping for here in Goatville.

Nashstreeter - where in New Haven are there "shiny new projects with boarded up windows?" The New Haven area has the lowest residential vacancy rate in the country. Perhaps some of those people paying $1,500 per month in East Rock (of which there are many) will move into this new complex, freeing up the other units for people of more average means.

If the development were not a good project, I doubt that the developer would be proposing it. That said, reducing the number of units or requiring more parking, even by a small margin, can easily make a project economically unfeasible and cause the developer to choose another place to invest.

NIMBYs, outdated parking requirements, and density opponents are easily the biggest obstacles to lower-income families being able to find affordable housing.

The real fear that NIMBYs, and the misguided local politicos who cater to them have of developments of more than 5 or 10 units is that the neighborhood might gain some diversity. Advocates for affordable housing need to step in and put them in their place.