Thomas Breen photo
Alder Sabin in front of the Taft: Legalize more of these.
Eli Sabin has his sights set high for a “downtown for all.”
At the center of such a plan: Bigger apartment buildings. Bigger subsidies for affordable housing. And bigger investments in public transit.
Sabin — an East Rock native, Yale undergraduate, and veteran of statewide progressive politics — currently represents downtown’s Ward 7 on the Board of Alders.
He outlined his vision for the city center’s “inclusive growth,” and his hopes to solicit public input and build a coalition of support behind such a plan, during a walk and talk with the Independent along Elm Street, Orange Street, Chapel Street, and across the Green.
Some of those streets fall within the ward that Sabin currently represents on the Board of Alders. Some fall within the ward that he represented during the last local legislative term, Ward 1.
After more than two and a half years of campaigning, legislating, representing, and closely watching downtown during his time on the board, Sabin is now gearing up to push for a “Downtown for All” plan he argues can make the city’s center a better place to live and work, with more storefronts filled, as well as a better contributor to New Haven as a whole.
In the process, he has taken a side in an ongoing local and nationwide debate about how best to promote affordable housing: The argument that allowing more and more housing construction — creating more supply — backed by public-infrastructure investment is the best way to ensure people can still find reasonable rents. Alongside that supply-boost argument, Sabin’s also backed public-policy interventions like inclusionary zoning in a bid to bolster the amount of affordable housing alongside the ongoing market-rate-rental boom.
“I think we need to make sure that the way that downtown is changing is benefiting everyone in the community,” he said. Downtown can and should be “everyone’s neighborhood.”
What does that look like? And how can downtown provide more tax revenue to the city’s budget, more customers for local businesses, more good-paying construction jobs, more eyes on safer streets, more places to live for incoming residents, more rent-pressure relief for people already living in New Haven?
Plan #1: Tall, Dense Housing ... Not Empty Lots
Sabin: Change zoning to incentivize development atop downtown parking lots like this one at Wall & State...
... and this one at Elm & Church...
... and this one at Chapel & Church.
And, for good measure, at this derelict, stalled "development" site at Elm & Orange.
One of the key ways to accomplish these goals, Sabin said, is to promote the development of more, taller, denser housing downtown.
Especially atop valuable parcels of land that have laid stagnant for too long as surface parking lots or rubble-strewn, stalled “development” sites. Even though many parking lots across downtown have burst forth with new places to live in recent years, there are still plenty that have not.
In a word, he said, New Haven should legalize tomorrow’s Taft Apartments.
The Taft is a 13-story, former hotel converted into a 198-unit apartment building that has stood at the corner of Chapel and College Streets for decades.
Under the city’s current zoning code, such a building could not be built as of right on the lot it currently stands on — or on a comparably sized parcel of land just about anywhere downtown.
That’s because downtown is mostly covered by Central Business (BD) and Central Business/Residential (BD‑1) districts. And those zones have a maximum floor area ratio, or FAR, of 6.0.
FAR refers to the ratio of a building’s gross floor area to the square footage of the underlying lot. It serves as a de facto ceiling on how tall downtown builders can build. (At a gross area square footage of over 218,000 and a lot size of 0.46 acres, the Taft has a FAR of nearly 11.)
“Personally, I think having a FAR of 6, that doesn’t make sense” in the core of downtown and west of the train tracks, Sabin said.
At the center of a “Downtown for All” plan would be zoning reform designed to incentivize the development of denser, taller residential buildings.
That could mean increasing the allowable FAR, even beyond what the “density bonuses” included in the city’s recently passed inclusionary zoning (IZ) law.
It could mean reducing the amenity space requirements in downtown buildings, which he said “encourage developers to build huge underused gyms” instead of more places for people to live.
It could mean requiring special permits for surface parking lots.
And it should come alongside working with state and federal government partners to get funding for more subsidized affordable housing downtown, along with the local enforcement of New Haven’s new IZ law, which requires downtown developers to set aside a certain percentage of units in new apartments complexes at below-market rents.
He argued as well that increased density would create jobs by leading to more of downtown’s vacant storefronts getting filled.
Thomas Breen photo
Sabin at Monday night's Board of Alders meeting.
Sabin’s push to promote denser housing in and around downtown was put to an early test Monday night. That’s when the Board of Alders took a vote on whether or not to rezone a surface parking lot on Olive Street to allow for the construction of a new 13-story, 136-unit apartment tower on the downtown edge of Wooster Square.
Some neighbors criticized the rezoning plan as helping out a bad-actor developer, PMC Property Group. Some lambasted the proposed 13-story building to be constructed next to the State Street train station as out of character with the nearby Wooster Square residential neighborhood. Some laid into the proposed building’s uninspired design.
Led by Sabin’s support for the rezoning effort, local legislators voted 24 – 1 to adopt the denser zoning. The developer has also committed to setting aside 14 of the 136 proposed apartments at below-market rents.
“These issues — rising rents and property taxes, a lack of good jobs, gun violence and traffic safety, and environmental justice and sustainability — are the issues I hear about all the time when I knock on doors and talk to folks around the city,” Sabin said from the floor of the Aldermanic Chamber Monday night, and in an email sent out to constituents before the vote. “They are the issues at the center of the Board of Alders Legislative Agenda, and they are the issues that motivated me to run for alder and serve in city government.
“While proposed changes to our zoning code may seem disconnected from these big priorities, they are not. Our zoning policies shape who gets to live in our city and where, whether rent and property taxes rise and how high, whether small businesses have the customers they need to survive, whether our neighborhoods are safe, and whether we can build a sustainable city with less pollution and lower carbon emissions.”
During his walking interview with the Independent, Sabin said he thinks that “one of the most important stories in New Haven right now is the housing shortage, and the affordable housing shortage.”
With New Haven rents rising by nearly 20 percent and the city having roughly 8,300 too-few housing units for its lowest-income renters and 3,200 too-few units for its highest-income renters, downtown, Sabin said, needs to allow for denser residential development.
“We need to make sure that people are building downtown.”
Plan #2: Invest In Transit
Sabin (right) talks with Jonathan Torres, Kweshan Herring, and Angel at Chapel & State about the need for more on-time buses.
Sabin said his “Downtown for All” plan isn’t about just housing.
It’s also about tapping into the glut of federal and state dollars available for infrastructure improvements to fund a better functioning public transit system and safer, more development-friendly street grid.
That could mean working with the mayor’s office, fellow alders, and state and federal legislators to try to get funds to help realize the recommendations included in the state-funded, decade-long Move New Haven public bus study. Some of those recommendations include consolidating bus stops, building out a local Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system with new express routes, building new mini-hub stations, adding dedicated “bus only” lanes, and traffic signal upgrades.
It could also mean advocating for certain downtown streets like Elm Street to be converted from one-way to two-way traffic.
And it could mean securing state money to narrow and redesign State Street to make some of the surface parking lots close to the commuter rail station a bit wider and more attractive to builders. (A few days after the Independent interviewed Sabin for this article, that vision for a reconfigured and more redevelopable State Street got a significant fiscal boost in the form of a $5.3 million state grant to the city to “realign State Street from Audubon Street to George Street to unlock the redevelopment potential of several parking lots for transit-oriented development/mixed-use development for a potential build out of 652,000 sq. ft of developed space, including 447 new residential units and 80,000 sq. ft. of retail space,” to quote the governor’s press release.)
“Communities that have a plan and a vision are in the best position to get grants” from the state and federal governments, Sabin said. Thus a “Downtown for All” plan’s imperative of promoting the plans like Move New Haven and State Street redesign that already exist.
New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar agreed. Lemar, who helms the state legislature’s Transportation Committee, stressed the importance of having a “robust public planning process” at the local level when seeking state and federal funding for major infrastructure investments. He praised Sabin for committing to lead just that.
He also said he’s been working with Sabin for months to try to secure state money for downtown projects like the State Street redesign and Move New Haven, as well as for public bathrooms and playgrounds.
In recent years, he said, “the future of downtown has relied on what developers were willing to bring to the table. Now is a time for us to determine our own future.”
At the corner of State and Chapel Streets, three Riverside Academy students — Jonathan Torres, Kweshan Herring, and Angel (who declined to share his last name) — vouched for the need for more affordable places to live in New Haven. And for more on-time buses.
Asked about what would make downtown a better place for them to live, work, shop, or ride the bus, Herring said that he’s currently living with his grandparents. The prospect of finding a one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment of his own that he can afford is daunting.
“It’s very high,” he said about New Haven’s rents.
Torres added that they ride the bus frequently and, while the public transit system generally works well for him, he does find himself waiting and waiting for delayed buses to get to their stops.
Sabin with Rev. Ogre and Bill Dorfer on Chapel.
Outside of a tattoo parlor on Chapel Street, Bill Dorfer and a tattoo artist who gave his name as Rev. Ogre added their voices in support for a well-functioning bus system — particularly at a time of sky-high gas prices.
Ogre added that he would like to see the city do something about addressing the needs of downtown’s homeless population. At the top of that list should be a clean, well-maintained public toilet, he said, so that he doesn’t have to see any more people going to the bathroom or showing their private parts in public.
Sabin agreed with the need for a public toilet downtown. And stressed the importance of building more, denser housing as a way to ensure that all people in the city have a safe and affordable place to live.
Plan #3: Build A Coalition
Sabin talking downtown priorities with Alders Alex Guzhnay, Frank Douglass, and Carmen Rodriguez at City Hall.
How does Sabin plan on making this “Downtown for All” plan a reality?
He said he has already started working with neighboring alders to get these gears moving. And he intends to bring together downtown residents, business owners, local alders, and other community leaders into a working group or committee of some sort to solicit public input and hash through what specific proposals a coalition of advocates would be up for backing.
“My goal is to have a plan for investments that we want to see, take advantage of the funding that’s available, figure out what zoning reforms could make sense, and then propose legislation that could go through City Plan and the Board of Alders.”
After Monday night’s Board of Alders meeting, the Independent asked a handful of fellow downtown and downtown-adjacent alders about their thoughts on one of the key parts of Sabin’s “Downtown for All” vision: that is, promoting the development of taller, denser housing downtown.
“What we want to see is more affordability,” Hill/Ninth Square Alder Carmen Rodriguez said.
As for whether or not she would like to see taller, denser residential buildings downtown, she said, “if it means being able to get more affordability where folks have a nice, clean space to live, then yes.”
Dwight Alder Frank Douglass agreed. With the discretion of the people who live in the community already, Douglass said, “I don’t have any opposition to tall buildings. I would love to see that. That’s progress. But as my colleague just stated, there’s got to be affordability in that piece. If not, let’s leave it alone.”
“I think there’s a lot of room to grow downtown,” said Downtown/Yale Ward 1 Alder Alex Guzhnay, who now represents Sabin’s former district. He referenced a downtown builder’s plans to construct several more stories of housing atop an existing office building on Temple Street.
He said he’s interested in talking more about how “the city can explore finding ways to update our zoning code, to explore that” type of promotion of denser development. “I think it’s an ongoing conversation we need to have.”
I like Eli. A thriving downtown is so important to the economy of New Haven, the region, and frankly all of Connecticut.
One question: When we will do something about the Green, which is such a civic embarrassment? The Green should be a safe and welcoming place for everyone, and not a filthy hangout for drug users.