City Eyes ​“Responsible Growth” Rezoning For Long Wharf

Glass-fronted first-floor retail spaces to create walkable neighborhoods and protect upper-level housing from floods. Density bonuses that encourage residential builds similar to apartment developments downtown. Street designs that calm traffic and create enough space on sidewalks for pedestrians and, say, outdoor seating for restaurants.

Those are just a few of the goals and anticipated land-use standards to be included in the city’s proposed new zoning regulations for the Long Wharf district, which top city officials unveiled in the latest effort to encourage ​“responsible growth” in New Haven’s mostly industrial waterfront.

City Plan Department officials rolled out that overall vision for Long Wharf’s development — and the changes in the city’s zoning regulations that it hopes will make that vision possible — at a public meeting that about 40 people attended at the Canal Dock Boathouse Thursday evening.

City Plan Director Laura Brown began by noting that Long Wharf, like much of New Haven’s harbor, has historically been zoned for industrial uses. ​“This is the way our city grew,” she said. But, following general guidance laid out by a plan articulated years ago for where New Haven might be in 2025, ​“we’re envisioning a different future.” 

The Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan, articulated in 2019, envisions Long Wharf transformed into a vibrant waterfront neighborhood connected to the Hill and Wooster Square. To begin, that plan calls to further develop Long Wharf Park, adding trees, a floodwall near I‑95, and other features. Then, using a few existing businesses as ​“anchors,” it suggests turning the acreage between the highway and the rest of the city into more livable space. It would build a woonerf — a thoroughfare designed as a shared space for bicycles, pedestrians, and slow-moving vehicles — through the harbor district, near the interchange of I‑95 and I‑91. The area north of Sargent Drive would see significant development, with lots of new construction of mixed-use residential and commercial spaces. And all of this would be done with an awareness of Long Wharf as an area vulnerable to flooding that nonetheless can also help address a housing shortage that persists in New Haven even as new apartments are being built all over downtown. 

“We don’t want to build if it’s not safe for people to live here,” Brown said.

Implementing the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan, Brown said, required taking another look at the city’s current zoning regulations. Last September the Board of Alders signed off on a City Plan Department-proposed moratorium on new building at Long Wharf to give the city a chance to ​“revisit” zoning regulations and possible building projects that ​“were not aligned with the Responsible Growth Plan.” Truck stops and trailer parks, salt pile and hazardous material storage facilities, ​“wouldn’t be the kinds of things we want to build.” Instead, the city seeks to create ​“a new district of standards” that would change land use, create more sustainable structures, and ​“protect coastal resources.”

New Haven’s current zoning ordinance, Brown said, ​“is what is called a ​‘use-based’ ordinance, so there’s not much in our zoning ordinance about what kind of buildings we want to see, or or what the form looks like.” They hearken from an era when residents were more concerned about ​“keeping slaughterhouses out of neighborhoods,” she said. ​“We have really different needs now.” A new category of zoning regulations could ​“really move New Haven into the future for a new type of development” — not only for Long Wharf, she added, but for other parts of the city as well.

Brown then handed the meeting over to Bret Keast, chief executive officer of Kendig Keast Collaborative, a planning consultancy that City Plan has worked with to develop new zoning regulations. ​“A plan is a plan,” Keast began, and ​“plans change,” but ​“flexible and deliberate” regulations can make sure ​“the vision actually happens.” 

Long Wharf’s current zoning falls into five different zoning frameworks for light and heavy industry, general business, wholesale and distribution, and a planned development district. 

City Plan now proposes creating a new mixed-use zoning category, a ​“mixture of residential, commercial, office, retail, and service-related uses in horizontal and vertical formats.” Under this new category, ​“development is urban in nature; buildings form an edge along streets and include walkways, public art, active streetscapes and amenities,” with parking ​“on street, in parking structures” rather than parking lots, ​“or in centralized facilities.” In addition, ​“design is essential to establish quality aesthetics, create highly usable, accessible, and equitable public spaces, and to integrate stormwater management, flood control, and resilience to coastal hazards.”

Some existing businesses and projects underway, such as the Village Suites, IKEA, and the Fusco coastal development, would be grandfathered in; ​“we’re not pulling the rug out from under them,” Keast said. 

The new regulations would require future developers to put glass-fronted retail space on the first floors of buildings, both to create walkable neighborhoods and mitigate damage to housing in case of flooding by building housing ​“above base flooding elevation,” Keast said. The rules also give developers ​“bonuses” for creating housing of greater density — up to 265 units per acre, which, Keast said, matches the densest existing housing developments in downtown New Haven — and more sustainable buildings that, say, generate their own power (such as through solar panels), design to manage rainwater, or include public plazas or tree cover.

The proposed mixed-use zoning category would require street designs that calm traffic and create enough space on sidewalks for pedestrians and outdoor seating for restaurants. Developers building on the coast would need to leave easements for public coastal access, to ​“make sure that when development happens, people still have access to the waterfront,” Keast said. The new zoning regulations would also require designs from builders that allow people to escape their buildings and reach dry land and emergency vehicles in case of flooding.

Attendees to the meeting received the proposal with cautious optimism, offering suggestions for further traffic calming, noise reduction, and maintenance. Most of the concerns focused on housing.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city,” said one attendee. ​“We need to go bigger” — in his estimation, even bigger than developments in New Haven currently have gone. He noted that rents in City Point, where he lived, had tripled. Another attendee raised a concern about how much of the new housing would fall under the category of affordable (5 percent, according to Brown), and whether the city’s measurement of ​“affordable” was fair. Brown sympathized; as the market rate continues to rise, ​“it is absolutely challenging” to calculate what constitutes a fair rent in New Haven.

Another attendee wanted assurance that the marshland in Long Wharf Park would be protected. That was a chance for Brown to reiterate how much environmental concerns are baked into the proposed design, both to keep the harbor healthy and mitigate the damages from extreme weather events. ​“We are fully acknowledging that this is a special flood hazard area. That cannot be ignored,” she said. Future residents must ​“be able to exit safely” during emergencies; at the same time, the regulations had to ensure that ​“we are protecting our coastal ecosystems.”

City Plan hopes to have the new zoning regulations in place before the moratorium on new building in Long Wharf ends in September. That requires submission to the Board of Alders, which will lead to more public hearings about the regulations in the coming months. Brown encouraged all who were interested in Long Wharf development and the proposed new zoning category to attend.