Paul Bass Photo
Aïcha Woods, Arlevia Samuel, Jonathan Hopkins at WNHH FM.
“C’mon already. Let’s fix this.”
New Haven has basically said that about the need for a long-overdue change in zoning rules — so that neighborhood commercial districts can come alive again and regain their former bustle.
Aïcha Woods, New Haven government’s City Plan director, invoked that consensus to explain why the city is currently working with the community to upgrade 1960s-era zoning regulations to create new “Commercial Gateway Districts” (CGDs): for Grand Avenue from Olive Street to Hamilton; for Whalley Avenue from Howe Street to Pendleton; and for Dixwell Avenue from Tower Parkway to Munson.
The idea is to make it easier for local small investors and others looking to build new housing and stores and other businesses on those strips without having to spend thousands of dollars and months or years navigating bureaucratic hoops to get zoning relief. The rules were written when New Haven was designed for cars to get in and out of town fast; and when planners thought it made sense to restrict blocks to just stores or houses or entertainment venues. The proposed new changes would allow for denser (meaning more stuff on them), multi-use projects geared toward pedestrians, with less parking required. (Click here to find the latest drafts of the proposed changes.)
“We have a disconnect between our comprehensive plan and our zoning,” Woods said during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
“There [is] a shared set of goals — to bring back vibrancy to neighborhoods that have left been behind with the growth of downtown … in a way that benefits the neighborhoods,” and without displacing people.
Woods appeared with Livable City Initiative (LCI) Neighborhood & Commercial Development Manager Arlevia Samuel and homegrown architect and new urbanist Jonathan Hopkins to discuss the progress of that rezoning quest.
“These are corridors that could become viable,” Samuel said. “Why should every neighborhood in New Haven get love and improvement except Dixwell?
“We need to make it easier for developers to come in and create what used to be there when it was commercially viable.”
She also argued that new market-rate housing in fact helps promote affordable housing, by increasingly supply and therefore driving down other rents.
“My parents talk about how there was a cheese shop at the corner of Whalley and Winthrop when they first moved to Beaver Hills. There was an Italian grocery and a Jewish grocery. Dixwell used to have lots of doctor’s offices. Grand Avenue was a very, very dense three‑, four-story mixed-use walkable area. A lot of those development patterns developed before zoning was adopted in the city in 1926 and revised in 1963. It’s worth talking about how we can recreate some of that vibrancy today,” Hopkins said.
Allan Appel Photo
Grand Avenue as it points towards downtown.
While the goals are widely shared, not everyone has agreed that the proposed changes will accomplish them.
At a public hearing last week before the City Plan Commission, a representative of the St. Luke’s Corporation testified about how the group would have had a much easier time building senior housing and storefronts if these changes had been in effect. A Whalley small businessman, Allen McCollum, testified that the new rules would make it easier for him to invest in his properties, because he can more easily recoup loans if he can build bigger.
Some of the plan’s specific highlights:
• 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.
Opponents at the hearing accused officials of moving along the plans without hearing enough public input. They also argued that changes would promote gentrification and displacement; they urged that new regulations require a minimum of 25 percent “affordable” units in any market-rate apartment project with at least nine units.
“That was not a proper representation of the community,” Samuel responded. She said she and her office have spent five years meeting with neighbors. They presented the plan before management teams and at special neighborhood meetings. They commissioned extensive neighborhood surveys that showed popular support for these ideas. The process followed up on and mirrored the thrust of a new citywide master plan called Vision 2025, which was the product of 50 public meetings.
Samuel argued that rather than promote gentrification, these changes would make it easier for mom-and-pop investors to afford to fill in empty lots; and nonprofit housing developers to make the financing work to include affordable apartments. (Wealthier developers of market-rate housing can already afford lawyers to win zoning variances.)
“The more units you have available, the lower the rents are going to be,” said Samuel, who has worked on housing development for two decades at agencies including the Stamford and New Haven housing authorities as well as the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority.
The rezoning proposals include incentives for builders to exceed the 10 percent affordable housing minimum and to make projects environmentally sustainable (through “ecoroofs, stormwater mitigation, renewable energy generation, building preservation, LEED, or a payment to the Advancing Green Infrastructure Program”). The incentives come in the form of allowing developers to build more on a property, enabling them to reap more revenue.
“I’ve heard a lot of frustration from certain advocacy groups around the city,” Hopkins said. “I feel for city officials who have put a lot of effort into” getting feedback. “And yet there still seems to be a pushback. … There’s an underlying issue that maybe isn’t being addressed and has not been addressed for decades — the legacy of modern planning in New Haven.”
He also said he would rather city officials put more focus on helping local people develop 10,000 residential properties than on developing the 250 commercial properties covered by this rezoning plan.
“This is a pilot. These corridors need the attention,” Samuel responded. She said that housing will be included in the plan; and that if the pilot succeeds, similar changes can spread to other neighborhoods. She also said that neighbors have been clear about the desire for revived commercial corridors.
The proposals will be the subject of at least one more City Plan Commission hearing. The Board of Alders must consider and approve them too. Woods stressed that they’re still a work in progress; the city has already incorporated ideas from public feedback. She encouraged people to visit this website to learn more about the project and offer their ideas.
Click on the video above in this story for the full conversation with Arlevia Samuel, Aicha Woods, and Jonathan Hopkins, plus questions from listeners, on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
The sustainability and walkability provisions of the proposal, which have prompted little pubic comment, are quite good.
There is a real shortage of housing that is affordable to low-and moderate-income residents. But so long as the affordability requirement (1) applies to a very small part of the city and (2) imposes real costs on developers, they will choose to build elsewhere in the city. The maximum rent a developer can charge for an affordable unit under the proposal is less than $600/month. Market rents for new units are more than $1,000 above this. Spread over the entire development, the revenue loss is $100/unit/month. If the affordability requirement were 25% of the units, the revenue loss would increase proportionately. The loss would be reduced by any subsidies the developer lines up. But neither the federal or state are likely to increase funding for affordable housing programs.
City Plan Commission chair Ed Mattison has questioned the feasibility of the affordable housing requirement. One alternative would be to impose a citywide mandate, but offer density or alternative incentives to offset its cost.