79 New Apartments — With 3 New Parking Spaces — Pitched For 9th Square

Affordable home for humans. Let's go!

There should be no parking minimums within the walkable / transit accessible parts of town. End socialism for cars. Cars do not need an affordable car-home policy that burdens the rest of society.

I think they should approve that the parking spots be reserved for handicapped parking and maybe up it from 3 to 5 spaces and they should have a off street loading zone where residents can offload groceries, connect with ride services, and move their belongings in or out while moving. The location is ideal for affordable housing with the tremendous amount of mass transit with a few blocks. As long as there is bike parking, parking for cars shouldn't be an issue. This area is also ideal for taller buildings, because it would match the streetscape in that location.

Building apartments on a bus line and near the train station does not mean that people will stop needing cars. If the city is going to ignore its own zoning regulations, why bother having zoning at all?

@Heather C,

I feel that this development should have been around 15 or 20 stories tall. The area is very transit oriented, but you would think with the site basically being adjacent to the 36O State Tower it would be ideal to have there be another residential tower right across the street from it...

#1 Excuse my confusion. I have been a renter, landlord and builder of rental apartments over the decades. WHAT is a 2 Bedroom Studio apartment??????
A studio apartment does NOT have a separate bedroom, how can it have two? [Reporter's Note: Thank you for catching that typo on my part! I've corrected the article. I meant to write two-bedroom units, not two-bedroom studio units. Thanks!]

#2 Bicycle parking is useless to those who have physical handicaps and qualify to use handicapped parking spaces (which must be at least 15 feet wide by law). Handicapped parking is intended for those who cannot comfortably walk more than 400 feet from a building's entrance. It doesn't matter how much parking is available nearby, allowing less than 1 parking space per 15 apartments is a disservice to the handicapped (both residents and visitors).

#3 Downtown may be a transit rich area, UNTIL it is after 9PM, a weekend or holiday. In the modern economy people work a 24/7 assortment of shifts. Private vehicle transportation is needed.

#4 The recent Pandemic showed the importance of delivery for food, medicine, general purchases. All of this requires parking. Imagine 6PM food deliveries with all drivers required to find legal on street parking...it wont work.

A minimum of 6 handicapped spaces and 4 loading spaces (with 20 minute time limit) should be required for a building this size. I would add 2 additional spaces as EV charging slots, as well.

Ex-HVN, people with mobility issues need lots of things and parking requirements are not the answer. The city can provide more on-street handicapped spots, etc., which would address your issue directly rather than indirectly. Further, many people with mobility issues can't drive either, and parking minimums drive up housing prices in dense areas that would otherwise be excellent for (for example) wheelchair bound people who don't own cars. Why do you want to tax the wheelchair users to provide free parking for others? Why do you want to tax people who can't afford cars to subsidize those who can?

More fundamentally, there is not a parking shortage downtown. You can rent a parking spot right now. There is a perceived shortage of free on-street parking.The free-parkers oppose new development without parking because they want to preserve their free stuff. If we provided a limited supply of free food to people who live downtown, we would get a movement to establish a zoning requirement that new developers must provide "food minimums" to their new residents. And that would be crazy. Just like parking minimums.

NHI wrote, "Beacon already owns the nearby 335-unit mixed-use Residences at Ninth Square complex, and has spent much of the past two years investing in reviving the downtown-adjacent neighborhood."

The reality is that the BOA stabbed taxpayers in the back by duplicating a 30 year tax break that the former owner took and ran. Beacon hasn't been investing in the ninth square; taxpayers elsewhere have.

@terrapin has a point about ignoring zoning laws. We should stop providing waivers for fewer parking spaces and just simply abolish parking minimums from the zoning code, as many other cities around the country (and locally, Hartford) are doing. Parking minimums are only loosely based in science and often result in overbuilding of parking facilities at the detriment of the actual use of the land. When was the last time you've ever seen the parking lot of a big-box store completely full? Sure, residential may be different, but it just shows how these minimums result in completely oversized parking lots. By removing parking minimums, developers can design how many spaces they actually anticipate based on the use of a building. Fun fact - parking minimums did not exist when cities were first built and somehow people survived!

RM,

Question : When was the last time you saw a big box store in New Haven?
Answer : Only when there was sufficient parking as in the case of Q Ave.

Barring either teleportation or the Armageddon that has a 50/50 chance of coming if we don't solve our energy crisis, personal transportation (whether it be ICV or EV) is here to stay.

The future of transportation will rely less on private vehicles and more on mass transit. Global warming mitigation needs, baby boomers aging out of driving, millennials and Gen Z not wanting the expense of owning cars and preferring ride services or bikes, etc will have less people owning cars and more people using ride services, mass transit or bikes. In NYC most people utilize buses, trains or taxis/ride services to get around or walk. In Europe there are lots of cities that work that way also. The walk score of a city and it's transit options has a lot to do with its desirability for employers and potential residents to locate there. CT needs to step up its mass transit options and schedule times and routes to facilitate it becoming the primary mode of transportation. As our population ages we need more disability options for transportation. We also need to realize that the locating of big box stores and malls in the suburbs created sprawl that increases global warming, and they are dying brick and mortar industries with the online commerce replacing them, and pharmacies and grocery stores and major employers need to move back into the cities where the majority of people will be living. All these new residential builds added to the city, and other than a very small handful of neighborhood stores, most people will end up driving out to the 'burbs to buy groceries or shop retail. When I was growing up in the city in the 1970's and early '80's in most cases you could take a short bus ride or walk to the neighborhood grocery store or pharmacy or a five and dime store like McCrory's or Kresge's. In the manufacturing, industrial and agricultural ages prior to the 1970's most factories, businesses and shops were located in cities and towns centers and people either walked to work or took a trolley or train to get to work or shop, and rural people either went into town or ordered from catalogues like Sears or JCPenneys for all their needs.

Terrapin, about 30% of New Haven households don't have cars. Car ownership is particularly low for low-income households, who will account for the bulk of the development's tenants.

quinchionn, State Street Station is close but has very limited service. Hopefully, the construction of this development and the developments in Wooster Square will induce MetroNorth to run more trains there. In the meantime, CT Rail and Shoreline East should publicize the fact that they are effectively running a free rail shuttle between State Street and Union stations. (Fares aren't collected between the two stations.)

Given the development's location and the market it will serve, I think the parking is adequate and the special exception should be approved. And the zoning ordinance still requires too much parking, particularly in areas that are transit-accessible. But the parking demand generated by this development would be substantially greater if most of the units were market rate. I think the city can and should make the special exception conditional on the development continuing to primarily serve low-income tenants. Beacon would still be able to sell the development. But the new owner would have to re-apply for a special exception if it did not continue to serve this market.

Finally, while I hope I'm mistaken, I suspect it will take a long time to rent out this development's commercial space. The commercial vacancy rate is quite high, and more space will be added by the developments going up a couple of blocks away. "Eyes on the street" (Jane Jacob's phrase) are a very good thing. Empty storefronts, not so much.

What about The State House!

Lior, there is a passageway in the new building that will permit access to the State House. It is not obvious in the rendering at the top of the story, but is more visible in the rendering later in the story.

Parking will something of an issue for patrons. But I suspect that the nearby lot between Chapel and Crown is usually not full at night.