Marriott Pauses To Get Dwight On Board

It is a shame that the Marriott could not constructively engage this community like LiveWorkLearnPlay has done on the hill. In addition to making our urban environment more dense, dynamic and interesting, LiveWorkLearnPlay included the community and built trust from the get go. In contrast, the Marriott brings much less to the table and has shown absolute disregard for the community at every turn of this zoning process.

ResidenceNewHaven,

The coliseum site was city-owned land, so it's not really comparable to this development, which proposes purchasing private land to develop a project that is of similar scale to others on Howe Street.

The example set by LiveWorkLearnPlay should have been followed for the Route 34 West development with CenterPlan and their project for the headquarters of Continuum of Care because, like the coliseum site, the land was city-owned.

What New Haven needs are clear master plans for development throughout the city that have real teeth in guiding appropriate development. Part of that will involve loosening zoning requirements in certain areas and instituting additional protections in other areas.

Apples to Oranges.

The City owns the land for the LWLP development, so their reach out was part of the RFP process. (Plus they wants $20-$30 Million of State aid for streets cape improvements.)

Marriott is just trying to expand their hotel on land they already own.

PS -- can someone please provide me with a substantive reason why this project shouldn't go forward? (Besides mythical traffic and parking issues!) If we don't want our taxes to go even higher, we need these types of developments to happen.

As the project continues through the public process, it's clear it has hit the necessary roadblocks that stop wasteful, inefficient, and needless development. Think about it:

City plan voted it down. These are the folks in charge of making sure development fits the needs of the whole city.

The Community Management folks were stood up at last week's meeting by the developer; these are the folks who will be directly impacted by any development.

Does this type of behavior on the part of the developer sound like sound, thoughtful, responsible development? The BZA should follow the wishes of the City Planners that have voted it down, and the developer should start the process anew, and begin day one with meeting the community.

It's more like apples to rotten onions. LWLP is going to change New Haven's downtown in a direction that makes New Haven a more dynamic and interesting city. The Residence Inn just moves New Haven's downtown development in the direction of the I-95 corridor. LWLP went above and beyond what they had to do, but even Eblens sought to involve their neighbors early on.

Instead of showing up to a couple of meetings and addressing their neighbor's concerns, the Marriott developers have demonstrated multiple times that they don't care at all about the neighborhood. I, for one, don't blame the neighbors for their distrust and concern, and believe it is time for the BZA to make the developer start over.