203 New Tweed Parking Spaces OK’d

Tweed airport won permission to build 203 new ​“temporary” parking spaces in anticipation of heightened holiday travel demand at the current New Haven terminal — and in advance of the planned construction of a new larger terminal on the East Haven side of the property.

That parking-expansion approval came Wednesday night during the latest online meeting of the City Plan Commission.

The airport’s managing contractor, Avports, applied for a site plan approval from the Commission to extend its existing 927-space parking lot to two currently-unpaved sections. 

“We view this as a temporary solution while we work on building the East Terminal,” Avports’ attorney, Joe Williams, told the commissioners Wednesday, referring to Tweed’s planned expansion to a larger terminal across the East Haven border. ​“We are getting ready to move the bulk of the parking and airport activity to East Haven.”

Williams said the airport management company had originally planned to add 507 parking spaces, but negotiated with City Plan staff down to the now-approved 203. 

The airport also plans to submit a future site plan for 34 new spaces of parking in what’s currently an ​“inland wetlands area,” but decided to wait until the required environmental assessments have been completed before submitting that proposal.

Avports representatives said they sought to increase parking to meet demand that the airport has already seen — as well as in anticipation of heightened travel throughout the winter holiday season. Avelo Airlines has made Tweed its ​“East Coast hub” and has built up its commercial airfare service out of New Haven to include nonstop flights to 14 different communities, including Orlando, Tampa Bay, Nashville, Savannah, Charleston, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Raleigh.

“Airline customers are showing up by the hundreds and thousands, regardless of how much parking we have,” said Avports’ Andrew King.

Traffic engineer Don Tone explained on Wednesday that the airport’s customers have been taking more ​“leisure trips” than ​“business trips,” meaning that their average duration away from New Haven is longer on average — and ​“cars stay in the parking lot longer.”

The new parking is intended to relieve parking pressure and reduce traffic congestion in the surrounding Morris Cove neighborhood, Tone said. He argued that additional parking would disincentivize travelers from using ride share companies like Uber and Lyft, which entail twice the number of round trips by car to and from the airport and contribute to more traffic.

"Permeable" Pavement?

Avports requested that the commission waive a requirement in the city’s zoning code that 50 percent of paved areas, such as parking lots, be either ​“shaded” with greenery or comprised of a reflective surface. The purpose of that requirement is to reduce the amount of heat absorbed by the pavement — an effort to mitigate global warming and reduce the ​“urban heat island” effect that leaves highly-paved and populated metropolitan areas like New Haven more vulnerable to high temperatures.

Why should Tweed be exempt from this reflectivity requirement? 

King told the City Plan Commission that Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations prevent the airport from using reflective materials, since the glare can be dangerous for planes navigating takeoffs and landings, and vegetation, which can attract wildlife that interferes with plane operations. 

Rather than incorporating reflective surfaces or plants into the parking lot design, Avports is instead planning to use a ​“porous” pavement material with ​“70 percent surface voidspace.” That material ​“traps precipitation” and ​“has a cooling effect,” argued engineer Ray Paier, although there’s not currently a way to quantify the extent of that cooling effect. 

Environmental, Public Transit Concerns

The online public hearing for the parking expansion proposal drew 19 opponents, many of whom connected the proposed new parking to Tweed’s longer-term expansion plans in East Haven. Many opponents were residents of the surrounding Morris Cove and East Haven neighborhoods who objected to the environmental and quality-of-life impacts of the airport’s planned growth.

Testifiers expressed concern over the human health hazards of increased airport activity — including higher cancer, lung disease, and pregnancy complication rates resulting from air pollution and noise-related impairments. One public commenter said she had developed asthma over the past year, and that her doctor suspected that Tweed’s heightened airport activity had contributed to her condition. Opponents also raised concerns that the expansion would disrupt bird migration and the adjacent wetland ecosystem.

Testifier after testifier urged the commission to table the matter and wait for the results of an Environmental Impact Assessment of the planned East Haven expansion, which the FAA will receive from Tweed in the coming weeks or months. 

“Expanding 203 parking spaces seems rather small and trivial … However, we are talking about a process that will inevitably change the course of our environment and quality of life,” said Morris Cove resident Susan Campion.

Other members of the public suggested that the airport expand its electric shuttle service to Downtown New Haven and partner more closely with CT Transit to encourage the use of public transit, rather than building out parking infrastructure.

“Tweed needs to revisit its original plan to use a shuttle — another broken promise that they made,” said Morris Cove-based Glora Bellaciccco. 

Tweed does operate a shuttle on an on-demand basis, according to Avports’ King. ​“All anyone has to do is … request the shuttle,” said King. ​“That shuttle runs as often as anyone could hope for it to run.”

Still, testifiers argued that the airport could do more to build out its communal transit system, including by marketing it more deliberately.

CT Transit also enables passengers to travel directly to Tweed via bus by boarding the 206 bus line from Downtown — as long as they explicitly request that the driver stop at the airport. Passengers hoping to ride the bus from Tweed to Downtown can call (203) 624‑0151 during certain hours on the day of their flight to request that a bus pick them up from the airport.

Finally, some public testimony touched on the major question before the commission of whether to waive the reflectivity requirements for a paved surface and allow the airport to use porous pavement for the parking lot.

Lorena Venegas, a vocal East Haven-based opponent of the airport, questioned how the airport would manage snow on the parking lot, arguing that it ​“can’t use sand” on the porous material.

Morris Cove neighbor Lisa Bassani expressed concern that the porous pavement would be a ​“sink for water.”

“You have huge flooding issues in this community,” Bassani said. ​“We have a grossly inadequate tidal gate system that’s not gonna hold up” as climate change worsens.

Paier, the engineer representing Avports, later responded to Bassani’s concerns by arguing that the porous material would in fact help manage flooding in the area by storing water. ​“The permeable structure provides a 40 percent storage capacity, which is by far much greater than native soil provides,” he said.

Commissioners Return To A Narrower Scope

Environmental and health concerns about the airport’s expansion recurred in public testimony over the course of several hours — but the commission had limited ability to consider those concerns.

Joe Williams, the attorney representing Avports, later informed commissioners that they are not legally able to wait for the results of a federal investigation into plans that were not directly under their purview, or to consider impacts on issues like bird migration.

For City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe, the major issue initially at play was whether allowing more parking aligned with the commission’s broader vision for the city to grow less reliant on cars.

“There’s not a clear cut reason to me at this time to say, ​‘Yes, let’s have more parking,’ at a time when we’re trying to say throughout the rest of the city, ​‘No we don’t want to have more parking,’ ” Radcliffe said. 

In response, the commission’s advising attorney, Roderick Williams, cautioned that since the commission was reviewing a standard site plan — and not a special exception request — it could only consider the plan’s ​“compliance with the zoning ordinance,” and not big-picture values related to parking capacity.

As for the requested reflectivity waiver, Commissioner Adam Marchand said, ​“I’m not fond of giving a waiver” for this type of environmental concern. He said he wanted to encourage the applicant to replace some of its existing parking lot pavement with the porous material in order to maximize the environmental benefit, but ​“I don’t think the evidence is clear enough to require a certain acreage of pavement to be torn up.”

Marchand also asked about the airport’s bike rack capacity. ​“Would you consider increasing capacity for bike storage?”

King responded, ​“We see decent use — one or two bikes at a time — but we have not seen the kind of usage yet that would necessarily lead us to think that we need to add several more. But we have room to add several more” if the commission requires it.

Ultimately, the commissioners unanimously voted to approve the site plan — provided that the airport offer regular updates on its maintenance and cleaning practices when it comes to the porous pavement material.