New City Plan Chief Aims To Connect With Neighborhoods

City Hall has a new director of City Plan.

Aïcha Woods, an experienced architect, designer, and community volunteer, took over the reins of the department on Monday.

Woods, 50, has worked for the city for just over a year, previously serving as City Plan’s Assistant Director of Comprehensive Zoning.

She replaces acting city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli, who had served as the interim head of the City Plan department since late 2017 when Karyn Gilvarg retired.

At the end of Tuesday morning’s regular monthly meeting of the Development Commission on the second floor of City Hall, Woods stuck around for a brief chat on her background as an architect with the local firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, her volunteer organizing around the Mill River Trail and the Under 91 Project, and her vision for a City Plan department that prioritizes sustainability, collaboration, and neighborhood connectivity.

A native of Rockland County, N.Y., Woods studied architecture as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley before coming to New Haven in 1994 to get a master’s degree at the Yale School of Architecture.

From 1997 through 2018, Woods worked at the local architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, where she served as senior designer on a number of international high rises and corporate headquarters, including the 35-story Vietcombank Tower in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Before joining the City Plan department in March 2018, Woods was one of the lead organizers for both the Mill River Trail, a still-in-the-works multi use path that will connect East Rock and Fair Haven, and the Under 91 Project, a community-designed graffiti mural on the highway underpass at Humphrey Street near Jocelyn Park. Woods also currently serves as an adviser for the Could Be Fund, which will be providing matching grants to residents who have their own ideas for how best to connect disparate parts of the city.

Woods said that these volunteer-led projects designed to connect neighborhoods required, and still require, collaborations between environmental nonprofits, artists, activists, and neighbors. They have instilled in her a commitment to bring the same community-focused mentality to her job at City Hall.

“These projects can’t be done by any one entity,” she said.

As for her work in the City Plan department so far, Woods said she has worked closely with Economic Development Officer Carlos Eyzaguirre in drafting the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan, which envisions using private and public dollars to develop Long Wharf into five new, environmentally resilient neighborhoods connected by a stormwater park.

She has also taken the lead in the city’s reimagining of the commercial corridors of Whalley Avenue, Dixwell Avenue, and Grand Avenue as potential sites for dense, mixed-use development as opposed to mini-throughways.

As the head of the department, she said, she will work with her staff to prioritize ​“looking at ways on the regulatory side to make things more transparent, comprehensible, and accessible.” In particular, she would like to spur the city’s reevaluation of its 1963-era zoning laws to make sure that they cater more towards people rather than vehicles.

She said she has also heard many concerns from residents, including those who attended Monday night’s commercial corridor meeting, about new development driving up apartment rents and pushing poor and working class New Haveners out of their homes.

Affordability, she said, is as central to her vision for the city’s development as sustainability, connectivity, and transparency.

“We have to make sure our city is inclusive of all residents,” she said.