Zoning ​“Gobbledygook” Zapped

Starting an automotive repair shop in Hamden just got a lot easier.

So did developing any industrial or commercial use enterprise in town, thanks to a series of new zoning regulation amendments aimed at reducing red tape faced by current and potential property owners and renters.

The change occurred last week when Hamden’s Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to make the first of many expected revisions to the town’s zoning code in order to support economic development.

The big change: ​“T‑based” zoning standards no longer apply to M zones. 

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Here’s what that means: M zones, short for manufacturing zones, are areas in town deemed suitable for a broad range of both industrial and commercial use. They are kept separate from residential areas to protect them from possible industrial traffic and environmental hazards.

According to Assistant Town Planner Matthew Davis, in 2013 the town also adopted ​“T‑based” zoning rules, short for transect or form-based zoning, which sought to guide the development of ​“complete” neighborhoods as part of the new urbanism movement. New urbanism downplays the emphasis on the car and prizes walkability while also regulating how buildings are designed and located in space for aesthetic uniformity.

In other words, ​“form-based” zoning enforces additional design rules in the name of physical and spatial continuity of urban form, as its name suggests. Those rules range from limiting parking to the backs of buildings to standardizing the distance that buildings should be set back from the road to even requiring specifics like ​“the first story of all facades shall be glazed with clear glass no less than 30% and shall be glazed at least 50% if a shopfront.” 

However, as Davis pointed out: ​“You’re not so much concerned about the design of the facade of a warehouse” as you might be about a row of storefronts. ​“Your M zones are not gonna be like main street Nantucket,” he said — but still, Hamden’s zoning code seems to suggest that they should.

One of the reasons Hamden’s M zones do not currently look anything like main street Nantucket is that for the past decade, developers have often skirted the regulations by applying for variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals. 

Davis said that one of the most common appeal applications aim to allow parking in the front of buildings; although new urbanism aims to deemphasize cars as the sole means of transportation by relegating parking to the backs of buildings, individuals working in warehouses in the middle of nowhere often rely on trucks accessing the front of the property. And if not, property owners are probably at least wary of spending money to reshape parking figurations for no evident reward.

Another example Davis pointed to is form-based coding’s emphasis on architecture. While those regulations require a certain proportion of a facade to be glass, ​“In a manufacturing context, that’s not really appropriate or even relevant,” Davis said.

The consequence of Hamden’s complicated zoning code — the result of changing leadership, ideals, and community interests leading to regulations layered upon more conflicting regulations — is that individuals looking to buy land or start a business in Hamden are often deterred from the process, and forced to spend time on decision making regarding whether to pay for construction to abide by the rules or to pay for legal fees to apply for variances.

“I understand the frustration people have when they pick up a zoning code and literally it’s gobbledygook,” Davis said.

“We’re restoring the ability to create economic development in the M zone,” he said, in a town that’s already short on available land that allows for industrial work.

“The changes to Hamden’s zoning regulations approved by the Planning and Zoning represent the first step in a process to make doing business in town easier, less complicated and to allow more as of right commercial development,” Acting Director of Planning and Economic Development Erik Johnson told the Independent. ​“I would to thank Matt Davis, Assistant Town Planner for Hamden for all of his hard work on these changes this would not of happened without all of his efforts.”

“Specifically, the changes to the regulations remove provisions that imposed design, use and other restrictions on properties in commercial or M zones that we felt were overly burdensome. The town is looking to make similar changes throughout its set of zoning ordinances, which we hope will not only make development easier within Town but also make Hamden a preferred destination within the region,” Johnson concluded.

Hamden ≠ Middle Of Montana

Davis has worked as assistant town planner for five years. He inherited a slew of mismatching regulations, and started ​“working in earnest” to restructure the zoning code about a year ago in alignment with the new Plan of Conservation and Development the town established in 2019.

That document details Hamden’s ​“common vision” for ​“physical, economic, and social development of the Town,” as stated on the town’s website.

Davis began by striking application of form-based zoning to manufacturing districts because, he said, ​“It’s a common-sense measure.”

Some of the clarifications that need to be made to the zoning code, he said, ​“are no-brainers that are obvious to a thinking human being … This was easy for us because it’s not really controversial in any respect.”

Other zoning issues, like the building of sewers on northern Whitney Avenue, an infrastructure change Mayor Lauren Garrett has promised to pursue, ​“will require more robust conversation than some esoteric changes to M zones and T zones,” Davis said.

The only public comments received at the planning commission’s meeting this past Tuesday night were letters of support from the Regional Planning Commission Chairman Jeffrey Kohan and local attorneys Joseph Porto and Bernard Pellegrino. 

“It doesn’t make any sense to me. It never really did,” Pellegrino, a New Haven attorney known for representing clients interested in developing property in Hamden, later elaborated on Hamden’s decision ten years ago to adopt form-based zoning measures and unilaterally apply them to differently purposed districts. 

“It makes sense in a vacuum,” he said of form-based zoning. It could work, he said, ​“if you were laying these regulations down over a new town that we’re starting in the middle of Montana.” Or, for example, Seaside, Florida, a master-planned community built entirely around new urbanist principles.

Instead, when Hamden brought in form-based zoning, a ​“good percentage of the town of Hamden was already developed … 40 percent of those properties were deemed non-conforming in one way or another,” Pellegrino noted. That includes the entirety of the Hamden Plaza. The parking lot in the front of the historic plaza, for instance, is out of compliance with current code.

That means that ​“every time you wanna go do something in there, you need a variance,” Pellegrino remarked with a sigh. 

All over town, Pellegrino said, the general experience for developers goes as such: ​“My client, the developer, is saying, ​‘I gotta go get there, get my variance then go to P and Z to get my permit then to ZBA to get certification … I’m going to North Haven!’”

Why should a client stay in Hamden when, as Pellegrino suggested, developing around incongruent regulations will ​“cost me 25 percent or 35 percent more just on soft costs” than it might in a neighboring town?

Pellegrino pointed to one client who has been trying to lease space at 839 Sherman Ave. — part of a manufacturing zone — to another individual looking to open a car garage. Every time a building, even one that’s already developed, changes use, the owner of the property must go through the same process of racking up variances.

“It’s a tortured task, a recipe for disaster,” Pellegrino said.

Pellegrino was scheduled to seek permission from Planning and Zoning last Tuesday night to move his client forward with the Sherman Avenue property. He postponed the request because he knew the new text amendments would help ease the process, given that the 839 Sherman, like most properties, is also nonconforming.

“It will make the zoning process a hell of a lot cleaner if we don’t have to talk about all these nonconforming T overlay issues,” Pellegrino concluded.

Hamden has limited space to support new manufacturing. Even areas that are zoned as manufacturing districts on town maps are often not able to support development due to presence of wetlands and other environmental constraints.

The answer, Davis said, is not to take ​“draconian” measures like completely rezoning the town, but to make text amendments like the ones voted on Tuesday to support ​“viable establishments” that are already settled in those spaces.

For example, at 839 Sherman Ave., right next to where a new auto garage may move in sometime soon, Nizen Machine Shop, the sole space in town that focuses on remanufacturing old engines, has found a home. On Thursday afternoon, owner Pete Nizen III was busy repairing several engines, including one belonging to an antique British Motor Corporation sports car.

Nizen arrived in Hamden just three months ago, following the closure of his 80-year-old family owned engine repair business that long sat in New Haven’s ​“automotive row.” In 2013, Nizen sold his family’s dwindling business, which once employed 24 men in the 1970s, to St. Luke’s Development Corporation, who turned the space into a parking lot. 

After trying to set up a downsized shop in towns around Connecticut, Nizen was pushed out as other buyers acquired the buildings out of which he was renting space and converted them to different uses. 

Though the new zoning amendments may not directly affect Nizen, they may indirectly protect his business; if leasing out 839 Sherman becomes simpler for the owner and he continues to keep the space under his name, Nizen’s rare remanufacturing skills may have a secure and stable space to practice the trade — though his success, of course, is also contingent on countless factors, such as the need and return of his loyal customer base.

But Tuesday’s consensus represents a fundamental shift to eliminate impediments that unnecessarily complicate economic development in town, and, as Davis said, allow ​“those markets in those locations to evolve in the direction they’d want to,” rather than forcing them into compliance… with the philosophical design tastes of Seaside, Florida.