nothin Long Wharf Vision Clears City Plan | New Haven Independent

Long Wharf Vision Clears City Plan

PERKINS EASTMAN

Stormwater ribbon park anchoring new design.

Thomas Breen photo

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn with City Plan Commissioners Kevin DiAdamo and Ernest Pagan.

A plan to convert Long Wharf into five walkable neighborhoods connected by a stormwater greenway earned a key city sign-off — and praise for prioritizing coastal resiliency as a guide for economic development.

That happened at the regular monthly meeting of the City Plan Commission on the second floor of City Hall, where commissioners voted unanimously in support of recommending that the Board of Alders adopt the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan as a formal amendment to the New Haven Vision 2025 citywide comprehensive plan.

City staff and commissioners at the Wednesday night meeting singled out for praise not just the plan’s emphasis on encouraging the development of offices, housing, retail, and hotel rooms in the 352-acre, underutilized waterfront area, but also on requiring a variety of public infrastructure improvements designed to protect the low-lying area from the threat of rising sea levels and climate change.

Wednesday’s City Plan Commission meeting.

I have really been persuaded of how good and visionary a plan this is,” said City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, who served on the technical advisory committee for the development of the plan. We really have two choices: Do we kind of abandon the area over the next 100 years in fits and starts, or do we double down and really make it a part of New Haven and really incorporate it into the long term vision of the city. i think this plan does a wonderful job of doing that.”

The plan, which the city has worked on for the past three years with consultant Perkins Eastman and which was funded by half of a nearly $1 million grant from state Office of Policy and Management (OPM), envisions tapping into public and private investment to turn the waterfront area into five new walkable, mixed-use districts all connected by a Long Wharf” greenway linear park.

The plan is just that — a plan, a set of guiding principles for what the city would like the neighborhood to look like over the course of the next 20 years, as opposed to a final list of specific development projects. Officials estimate it would cost $100-$140 million in public spending for the new parks, stormwater management, and other coastal resiliency efforts designed to prime the area for private development of housing, retail, and offices.

What it actually winds up looking like depends on who’s got money and who wants to spend and build the thing,” Marchand reminded the group amidst his own praise for the plan.

Thomas Breen photos

Assistant Director of Comprehensive Planning Aïcha S. Woods and city Economic Development Officer Carlos Eyzaguirre at Wednesday’s meeting.

Nevertheless, the commissioners and city staff commended Assistant Director of Comprehensive Planning Aïcha S. Woods, city Economic Development Officer Carlos Eyzaguirre, and the other leads on the project for leveraging a plan ostensibly centered on economic development to fund a spate of coastal resiliency projects that will protect new projects as well as the existing I‑95 highway and the rail yard behind Union Station from climate change-induced devastation.

Some of those projects include building living shorelines” of intertidal marshes, dunes, native plants, and other manmade structures to protect Long Wharf’s park from erosion; raising the existing bulkhead that runs along the shoreline between the new Canal Dock Boathouse and the Magellan Terminal; and building out a central Long Wharf Greenway” that not only connects the new neighborhoods but helps with stormwater drainage.

The highway and the rail yard are not going to disappear within the planning horizon that we have,” Zinn said. Those are national assets that will stay. And i think that a vision of strong development in this area is basically the only way we’re ever going to afford to protect this infrastructure. It’s the development that enables the long term resiliency. At the end of the day, it’s the fiscal key to New Haven’s coastal resilience in this area.”

FEMA

FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map Flood Hazard Zones and Base Flood Elevations for Long Wharf.

City Plan Commissioner Kevin DiAdamo asked Woods if there are any state or federal environmental protection laws that would prevent planned development along the shoreline.

Woods admitted that the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) does impose certain thresholds on new developments in flood-vulnerable areas. That is something that we’re fully aware of,” she said, and something that, as this goes into implementation, we would be thinking more specifically about.”

City Plan Senior Project Manager Anne Hartjen fleshed out that concern.

The city has a top Class Seven rating with the Community Rating System (CRS) program operated by FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), she said, which allows for flood insurance discounts for city residents.

Those regulations do not allow significant new projects to be built with federal funding in high hazard flood areas,” she said. There’s a lot to be looked at there.”

Where are the high hazard flood areas?” City Plan Commissioner Elias Estabrook asked.

This is all high hazard flood area,” Hartjen responded about Long Wharf.

Yes, Woods said, but there are mitigation pathways” around that.

In particular, Zinn said, the projects envisioned in the Long Wharf plan would literally pick the whole district up in space,” raising any development and infrastructure on the shoreline higher to accommodate rising sea levels, which he said are projected to increase in Connecticut by 20 inches by 2050.

As we progress towards the levels well see in 2050 and 2100,” he said, there will be a lot of movement at the state and federal level in terms of regulations to assist with communites that are dealing with sea rise.”

Tags:

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

Avatar for susie the pit bull

Avatar for 1644

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for 1644

Avatar for BhuShu

Avatar for 1644

Avatar for BhuShu

Avatar for Esbey

Avatar for susie the pit bull

Avatar for Urn Pendragon