It’s A Wrap: Fusco Waterfront Plan OK’d

Hope these get built. 500 new units = 500 families living in New Haven now who won't get pushed out by people who can afford higher rents.

Would this project be moving forward if it was forced to include subsidized/affordable units?

If we keep denying the realities of the threat of global warming, sea level rise, stronger and more frequent deadly super storms, we will suffer the loss of life and property. This project is incredibly foolish and short sighted. We haven't had a direct hit from a major hurricane in awhile. The 1938 hurricane pushed debris from shoreline homes swept away by the storm found TWO MILES inland! It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, we will get hit by a major hurricane coupled with sea level rise that this development will be washed out to sea. We should be developing the shoreline in the city between the Sound and I-95 and along our river banks, not with housing, where the risks to lives and loss of homes will be high, but instead with public water access parks, bike and walking/jogging trails, green energy infrastructure farms like wind turbines and solar arrays, flood water mitigation measures that benefit wildlife and the environment, and water oriented businesses like watercraft rentals, launch ramps, docks, boat tours, etc, and entertainment, educational programming, activities and recreation facilities and playing fields, and food, beverage and events facilities, etc, that compliment each other and are easily evacuated ahead of a storm and don't pose a flood risk to people's lives and homes.
If we were to develop our waterfronts much like Chicago has developed along their Lakeshore and the Chicago river, then the residential properties not within the flood plain, but within a short walk or bike ride and with views of the waterfront, then those properties would become incredibly valuable, and the city would become a draw for the entire region who will want to live, work, play and visit our little city. I agree we need more dense housing, but I would like it to be more thoughtfully located in sites that make sense environmentally and that compliment and enhance their neighborhoods streetscape and livability and walkability.

Anonymous, it is not as simple as your equation suggests. Some of the tenants would have moved to lower income neighborhoods if this project weren't built, putting upward pressure on rents there (your argument). Others would have chosen alternative new developments in town. And others, particularly those interested in water views, would have chosen other towns.

AT, maybe. Let's say developers subject to the inclusionary zoning ordinance are able to get half of the rent for the reserved units that they would get on the market. (I suspect they would get more, as there is no requirement that the reserved units be affordable.) This site has a 5% requirement, so the developer would lose 2.5% of rental income. For many developments, this would be a deal-breaker. But there are very few apartments with water views in town - the pro forma still might work.

Heather, no one involved with this project is denying the reality of sea level rise. That would be stupid. I've known Giovanni Zinn, Aicha Woods, Matt Ranelli, and several of the alders for many years. None of them are stupid. Sea level is currently increasing by about three millimeters (1/8 inch) per year. It is accelerating and the state's best estimate is that sea level will rise about 20 inches by 2050 (obviously, it won't stop then). As the article notes, the lowest apartments will be more than 20 above high tide. Alder Winter's recommendations about Long Wharf Drive are entirely reasonable. That is true whether or not this project goes forward.

You are right that the buildings will likely be hit by one or more coastal storms during their lifetime. That's why its developers will hire structural engineers. Buildings with similar design in NY and NJ, such as Battery Park City, were hit by the full force of Sandy. While the storm was incredibly destructive, the buildings are still standing and occupied.

Kevin McCarthy- I hope I'm wrong, but the climate experts are saying that the rates of sea level rise and the number and severity of storms are accelerating at a much higher rate than they predicted. NYC may have survived hurricane Sandy, but will they survive the next higher category hurricanes that we can expect as global warming increases? Can NYC survive if with every major storm the subways and the basement level apartments are flooded and people can't get around the city and people are drowned in their cars and in their homes? Building residential homes on the water's edge is foolish. Huge swaths of the property between I-95 and south of Route 1 will become uninsurable and people will abandon them when they can't afford to rebuild them after a storm. We may be raising them on stilts now, and building multi units developments with residences above the flood water levels predicted for the next decade or so, but a category 5 hurricane with the wind direction pushing the waters into the Sound, coupled with a full moon high tide and rising sea levels would render most of our shoreline properties within 100+ year flood plain levels to be in serious danger, and beyond what this building could most likely bear, and it would become an island with no roads above water to get people rescued, and with high winds and waves deterring a watercraft rescue. People would have to be advised the way New Orleans does now with each hurricane to evacuate ahead of the storm, and if you stay behind, you better make your will and designate someone outside of the storms path to handle your estate, because nobody is coming to rescue you. State environmental experts advised against this, because they know the risks, and yet the city believes they know better. It is a denial of the experts advice, a failure of imagination, and a continued obstinance of the city to ignore all the downsides of these new developments because they only see the money and number of housing units they bring.

A once every few years flooded Long Wharf Drive shouldn't be a concern for officials and does not merit spending millions to alter the road. Residents of the Fusco project can do what Stoney Creekers and other shoreline residents do during wild storms. Wait it out in the safety of your home.

Heather C.: The casino hotels of Biloxi, built on sand and surrounded by water, also Type I construction with flow through garage lower levels, weathered Katrina just fine. (The barge casinos themselves were another matter.) (The stick buildings of Gulfport were wiped clean from the coast to I-10.) Thanks to Long Island, we are nowhere near as exposed as the Gulf Coast. Nearly every storm is Category I by the time it hits us. The waters may come up, but they go down, too, always within 24 hours. NoLa is unique in actually being below sea level. This site will be above sea level for the next century.

Heather, to expand on 1644's response, we do need to take climate change, including sea level rise, seriously. Among other things, this means changing how buildings are designed. If you want to see a closer example of flow through design, you can go to the new boathouse at Long Wharf. It is much closer to the harbor and has a much lower elevation than the Fusco project.

You're right that projections can underestimate change. CIRCA's estimate is based on the best currently available science. It may be wrong. But even if sea level rise was ten times as high, the sea won't reach the buildings' first floor in their engineering life.

You're also right that large portions of coastal stick-built (as distinct from steel frame) construction will become uninsurable. This has real implications for the shoreline towns, where such properties are a good chunk of the grand list.

The relationship between climate change and sea level rise is fairly direct. The relationship with hurricanes is more complicated. Warmer oceans will generally generally make make hurricanes more powerful. But higher land temperatures, particularly over West Africa, will tend to increase wind shear, which tends to knock down hurricanes.

"Some of the tenants would have moved to lower income neighborhoods if this project weren't built, putting upward pressure on rents there (your argument). Others would have chosen alternative new developments in town. And others, particularly those interested in water views, would have chosen other towns."

That argument may work in Topeka, but not here.

1) New Haven isn't building enough housing, so there aren't enough "alternative new developments." Without these new units by Fusco and others, people moving to New Haven will be displacing existing residents. Even with the many new developments underway, that's already happening. The new buildings fill up before they are even completed. We need to be building 10 projects like this Fusco project every year - the state should provide more subsidies to encourage that to happen.

2) Other towns are building hardly any housing. So, if Fusco doesn't build this project and the 500 families moving to high-end units in New Haven decide to rent in, say, West Haven, instead, that means that they are renting a high-end unit that someone in West Haven might otherwise have rented. So, maybe that person in West Haven earns $70,000 per year, and they can easily choose to move to New Haven, bidding up the price of an existing apartment and forcing someone who lives in New Haven to move out to Waterbury or beyond.

In every case, it's likely that even more families in New Haven will get pushed out every time that the city and its immediately surrounding towns make decisions that slow the production of housing. Unfortunately, the proposed "Inclusionary Zoning" plan may further reduce housing construction in New Haven because it is essentially a tax on developers.

If you want to see a place that hasn't built enough housing, go to San Francisco. There are hundreds of thousands of homeless people on the streets and rents have risen to $12,000 per month.

Anonymous, according to your truly excellent report, New Haven had a housing vacancy rate of 9% in 2020. https://www.ctdatahaven.org/reports/2020-census-data-demographic-change-connecticut-town-and-city-neighborhoods/new-haven-neighborhood-changes-2010-2020 According to the Census Bureau, the national rate in 2020 was 9.7% https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/united-states-housing-vacancy-rate-declined-in-past-decade.html. In its most recent report, the Department of Housing and Urban Development characterized the New Haven market as having "balanced" supply and demand for both rental and ownership housing. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/USHMC/reg//NewHavenCT-HMP-March20.pdf

New Haven does have a physical shortage of some types of housing, such as handicapped accessible units. And I support building both more market rate and subsidized housing. But New Haven tenants primarily face a shortage of cash, not physical units. The median rent in the city is nearly identical to the regional median; in contrast, incomes are far lower.