Thomas Breen photos
Skeptics testify: Ming-Yee Lin, Jayuan Carter, LTania Wiles (top row); Alexander Kolokotronis, Lillie Chambers, Patricia Kane (middle row); Mona Berman, Melissa Singleton, Johnny Shively.
Nearly two dozen critics of gentrification, market-rate housing, Yale expansion, and city-led planning initiatives stalled a rezoning project designed to rekindle commercial development along portions of Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue, and Grand Avenue.
That took place Wednesday night at the regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission on the second floor of City Hall.
Commissioners heard over two hours of public testimony from Dixwell neighbors, anti-gentrification activists, and a handful of neighborhood builders and business boosters regarding the city’s proposed new Commercial Gateway Districts (CGD), or “Commercial Corridors.”
That proposed new zoning district classification seeks to use parking maximums, building height increases, and affordability and sustainability incentives to encourage denser commercial and residential development along the avenues connecting downtown with the city’s neighborhoods.
Wednesday’s City Plan Commission meeting.
The vast majority of the public testimony offered Wednesday night criticized the rezoning initiative for potentially encouraging developments that might displace existing residents, distort neighborhood character, and continue a century-long trend of City Hall-led planning projects imposed without adequate community engagement and inadvertently transforming city neighborhoods for the worse.
“Dixwell does not need market-rate buildings,” legal aid community organizer Kerry Ellington said in a distillation of many of the commenters’ core concerns with what might come if the rezoning project passes. “Who in the Dixwell corridor has asked for these changes?”
The commissioners voted unanimously to table the proposed rezoning initiative, leaving the item open for more public comment between now and next month’s meeting, after which the Board of Alders will hold another public hearing on the matter before putting the proposal up for a final vote.
“It Is A Draft”
City Deputy Zoning Director Jenna Montesano and City Plan Director Aïcha Woods.
City Deputy Zoning Director Jenna Montesano and City Plan Director Aïcha Woods explained to the commissioners that the rezoning proposal represents the culmination of five years of research, community conversations, and hard city staff work regarding how to turn the avenues that connect downtown and the city’s neighborhoods into vibrant, dense, walkable, and diverse mixed-use commercial streetscapes.
Updating the city’s 1960s-era zoning code, Montesano and Woods said, represents one major step the city can take to encourage exactly the type of commercial and residential development that is outlined in the city’s comprehensive plan and that might revitalize these corridors at a time when developers and investors are lining up to put their money into building in New Haven.
Some of the key provisions in the proposed CGD use table, Montesano said, include requiring a minimum total residential density of 35 units per acre for sites within a quarter-mile of a bus stop; allowing developers to build at a maximum Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of 4.5 for projects that follow various sustainability incentives that increase stormwater retention and renewable energy use; mandating that all new apartments buildings with over nine residential units each set aside at least 10 percent of those units at affordable rates as keyed to 60 percent of a New Haven-specific area median income (AMI); replacing parking minimums with parking maximums; and allowing restaurants, in-door entertainment, and a variety of other commercial uses to be allowed as of right.
Click here to read the full proposed CGD zoning regulations, here to read the draft use table, and here, here, here, and here for past stories about the rezoning project.
The City Plan Commission.
“This is a step at trying to redirect our zoning ordinance to benefit people living and working in the city,” Woods said, rather than the 1960s-era focus of prioritizing car use and suburban accessibility.
“This is not a perfect document,” she continued. “It is a draft.” And it can be changed as it proceeds through the regulatory process, and even after it goes into effect, if the Board of Alders ultimately votes to approve it.
If adopted, the proposed rezoning would go into effect on Grand Avenue from Olive Street to Hamilton Street, on Whalley Avenue from Howe Street to Pendleton Street, and on Dixwell Avenue from Tower Parkway to Munson Street.
“It’s About Time”
Commercial corridor rezoning supporters. Clockwise from top left: Nina Sliva, Sheila Masterson, Andre Livingston, Samuel Andoh.
Those who spoke up in favor of the proposed zoning project largely cited years of stymied economic growth thanks to a zoning code hostile to mixed-use development.
“Our community for too long has borne the brunt of antiquated ordinances,” said Samuel Andoh, the president of the St. Luke’s Development Corporation who has struggled for years to maintain funding and secure the necessary Board of Zoning Appeals approvals to build over 30 new apartments on Whalley.
“I grew up in a Dixwell neighborhood that was thriving,” said Dixwell Community Management Team Chair Nina Silva. “We don’t see that now.” She said she longs to see the manifold empty lots in her neighborhood turned into new homes, filled with families, reviving that liveliness she felt in her community those decades ago.
“It’s about time that this zoning changed in this way,” said Sheila Masterson, the president of the Greater Dwight Development District.
Allen McCollum.
Allen McCollum, the general manager of the Whalley Avenue Special Services District (WASDD), said that he hasn’t been able to expand his own real estate holdings and many of the businesses his organizations represent can barely afford to pay their taxes because of how difficult it is to build higher and even open something as simple as a restaurant on Whalley.
“Whalley Avenue has been in a poor condition for many, many, many years,” he said.
“What’s The Rush?”
Kerry Ellington.
Many more of those who spoke up Wednesday night expressed wariness about the proposed changes, and frustration about the public process that has led to their formulation.
Reiterating the concerns that many of the same Dixwell residents and affordable housing advocates shared at a related protest held in Scantlebury Park last week, person after person who testified Wednesday implored city staff and the City Plan Commission to slow down the approval process and pay closer attention to the needs and concerns of the residents of these neighborhoods.
“We are not against all development and rezoning efforts,” New Haven Legal Assistance Association Attorney Ming-Yee Lin said. But the affordability protections included in the draft zoning ordinance do not go far enough to protect lower-income residents from being displaced.
The 10 percent affordability requirement should be bumped up to 25 percent, she said. And the city should conduct a resident needs assessment before going any further to understand what exactly Dixwell residents want to see along their main thoroughfare.
Many Dixwell neighbors feel that the city has not approached them and solicited their feedback in good faith before drafting this proposed legislation, Dixwell native and local landscaping business owner Jayuan Carter said.
“You have opposition because they don’t feel that it’s very inclusive.”
Patricia Solomon.
“I’m opposed to this because I don’t have enough information,” longtime Dixwell resident Patricia Solomon said. And that’s exactly the problem, she added. For someone who has lived in the community for so long and is so active in her community, how could she have gone as long as she did without knowing anything about this project?
“We don’t have a process that starts with listening to the residents,” local attorney Patricia Kane said. Regardless of the merits of this particular zoning ordinance amendment, she said, the process by which city staff got to it has clearly left many neighbors feeling uninformed and unempowered.
Fereshteh Bekhrad.
Local developer Fereshteh Bekhrad said she thinks the proposed zoning changes are, in general, a great idea. But they shouldn’t be the same for each one of these neighborhoods, she said. Even if this is just a pilot.
“These three different areas have totally different characters,” she said. “They should be looked at individually.”
Newhallville/Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter said he hears concerns all the time from his constituents about Yale expanding into Dixwell and Newhallville. Perhaps the proposed CGD zone should explicitly prohibit university use, he said, or at least put in restrictions that would limit how much the university could expand.
And Ellington, who works for the New Haven Legal Assistance Association and is one of the lead organizers of the Room for All coalition, said that any effort to attract more market-rate apartment developers and investors to build in neighborhoods historically occupied by working class people of color will only exacerbate gentrification and displacement.
“I’ve been pushed out of New York City,” she said about her family moving from Brooklyn to the Bronx when she was a kid because rents were already climbing too high even back in the 1990s. Gentrification, she said, “is an evolving process. It doesn’t happen just like that.”
“The proposed rezoning was not initiated by Dixwell residents,” she said. “What’s the rush?”
Montesano.
In a closing statement to the public and to the commissioners before wrapping up the night’s public testimony, Montesano thanked everyone who had come out for sharing their thoughts and their criticism, even if only on the process.
“We want your feedback on the process,” she said. “It’s super important because we have a duty to you,” the public.
City Plan staff walked up and down the Whalley, Dixwell, and Grand, handing out flyers about the proposed rezoning, she said. They also held a number of presentations at community management teams over the past year. And they set up a website with a comprehensive overview of the project.
She promised to continue working on the draft proposal over the next month, she said, and to take to heart the concerns about displacement, physical characteristics like building height and parking, and process.
“It isn’t perfect,” she said. But neither is the current zoning code, which was last updated in the ‘60s. “We’re trying to bring 21st century zoning.”
Exhibit A on why New Haven, despite all of its potential, continues to be stuck in neutral. Look at dozens of other places in the US that are seeing huge growth and substantial improvement with and for the struggling neighborhoods. New Haven, in contrast, holds endless hearings during which every tiny constituency attempts to stop progress unless the program is 100% aligned with their desires. How about a little compromise int eh name of providing opportunity to our struggling neighborhoods?