No-Motion Housing Plan Grows In Scope

The city hasnt wrapped its head around just how bad the housing crisis is. Zoning should be updated to allow 5 story to 20 story buildings like this one as of right all along Whalley Avenue. The unnecessary environmental reviews just serve to increase the cost of housing development, and should be scrapped.

Also, there should no parking requirements anywhere in the city. Parking requirements just mean we get more asphalt lots that sit empty 90% of the time. The mayor and alders should let the private market provide housing for cars, and focus on removing hurdles for developers so that they can build more housing for people.

This is in open space on a hilly slope filled with trees and brush alongside the West River. Its in a flood zone where the current vegetation absorbs flooding from the West River, and old growth trees that absorb pollution, mitigate heat, and create oxygen, and provides wildlife a place to live.
It would be environmentally disastrous to the area in terms of the negative environmental impacts to this community.
Add in the massive amounts of old growth trees being removed from the nearby Yale golf course, and the Westville, West Hills/West Rock, through to all the neighboring communities alongside the West River are going to be hotter, more polluted, with more flooding and higher heat related and pollution related hospital admissions and deaths.
We have to protest this travesty! Especially after the city rubber stamped the Yale golf course plans, which also have a major environmental impact on the area.
Build in the old factories, commercial buildings, hotels, empty lots, etc around town and leave green spaces like this alone.
We need affordable housing, but building it on green lots like these which are some of the few remaining green parcels in the city, will negatively impact the poor also.
We have several hotels and a banquet facility
That could be torn down and replaced with housing next to the Amity area and Route 15, we have a school on Valley St sitting empty, an old furniture store sitting empty, there are lots of other options that dont eliminate green living things and are not in major flood zones.

Plus the design is incredibly ugly and is probably going to be built with the same cheap construction that is going to degrade and fall apart in less than 50 years.

Anonymous, under the State Building Code, a 20-story building would require a steel frame throughout the building, rather than just the ground floor. I suspect that this would entail a substantially deeper foundation, which might well be infeasible at this site.

The primary issue with the current proposal is its proximity to the West River. Building a taller building on the same footprint would not exacerbate this problem. But it would not make it better.

I am all for reducing parking requirements for new developments. But there are third parties who have legitimate interests that need to be considered. Developers routinely charge for parking, which is fine. But tenants often find it makes more sense to park on the street. In areas where driveways and garages are uncommon (much of the city), this imposes a cost on existing neighborhood residents.

I think in New Haven there should be more developments and new housing projects that would basically encourage more people to use public transit.

At the same time, it's clear that the city is definitely in a housing crisis just like most other cities within both the state and the entire country.

It would make sense to build more upwards in the center of town where the demand for more housing is likely higher than in other areas including in other towns.

Having a new streetcar system would be a great transportation option to have here in my opinion, but the problem is that it could be a lot more costly to have a streetcar system built than to have more buses..

I think it is not a good idea to mix seniors with low income non-seniors/ Look at Bella Vista and see what happened there.

The dam upstream has since been removed. There is a full river and wetland tributaries in this ravine. The original plan has to be revisited because of the increased water on site. Building on top of this water is much different today versus when the water upstream was being held back.

Heather, I am all for re-purposing older buildings. The city has approved converting the old CAA office building on Whalley to housing, But such buildings always have lead paint and often asbestos. For this and other reasons, it is usually more expensive to create housing there than to build on vacant lots. And the city is running out of underutilized parking lots (a good thing).

quinnchionn, you may know that city has explored creating a light rail system. The operating costs are actually comparable to bus service. The city conceivably could get funding for the capital costs, although the federal funding for new systems is highly competitive. Additionally, New Haven has many narrow streets. This means (1) running streetcars in travel lanes, which results in slow speeds for the streetcars and other traffic or (2) eliminating large amounts of on-street parking.

CY2, Ive been delivering food to seniors at Bella Vista for years for FISH. They complain about the elevators, with good cause. I have never heard them complain about the younger residents.

Neighbor, buildings can be erected in all sorts of environments, including on steep slopes near waterbodies. Whether they should be is a different issue. I was gently telling my friend Anonymous that there are bona fide environmental issues in developing this site.

Heather, conventional economics largely ignores the environmental factors you mention. That does not make them any less real. But for purposes of development decisions, they do not count.

Heather, I have no idea whether the developers care about the environment. But I'm sure they care about costs. If the site were in D
FEMA flood zone, they would have to get flood insurance, which is increasingly costly.