Allan Appel Photo
Elaine Quinn’s daughter’s night started with dinner at Rudy’s and ended with a broken-into car — as well as a zoning lesson.
Quinn (pictured) offered that lesson during a passionate debate at City Hall over a proposed new change in New Haven’s rules for building projects in center-city pocket neighborhoods.
After two and a half hours of that debate, the City Plan Commission decided to wait another month before voting on the proposed change, which would make it easier for people to build “mixed-use” projects — combining stores, apartments, and offices — in places like the Ninth Square and Chapel West. Those areas fall under a relatively new “BD‑1” zoning designation.
City officials want to change the rules for BD‑1 zones so people constructing combined commercial-residential projects don’t have to leave as much space in side yards and in front of buildings as they would if they were constructing purely retail spaces. They also want to allow for 30 percent of the parking in such projects to cover just compact cars rather than larger vehicles. The idea is to allow for denser urban living. Opponents worry the change could destroy the residential character of historic neighborhoods.
At a public hearing before the commission Wednesday night, Quinn told the tale of how her daughter and son-in-law parked their car not far from the corner of Howe near Chapel around 6 p.m. this past Thursday. They went to dinner at Rudy’s. When they returned outside, they discovered their car broken into and computer equipment stolen, along with invaluable work files.
“This happened with vehicular traffic [going by]. It seems to me it would not have happened if there were [more] feet on the ground,” she said.
By feet on the ground, she meant feet might that belong to the new, young, car-less urban residents of buildings yet to be built. Such as the controversial proposed 144-unit, 53,000 square-foot commercial and residential structure proposed- for the corner of Chapel and Howe, just a Frisbee toss from where the crime took place. That project is opponent’s Exhibit A for opposing the BD‑1 zone change.
“I have concerns about the process given that this proposal and fix is happening when there’s a legal challenge,” said Marchand, pictured with commission Chair Mattison.
Quinn supports the Salvatore project for reasons of enhanced public safety. Yet she is also a fierce supporter of the Friends of Dwight Street Historic District (FDSHD), a just-born group of local preservationists who have sprung into action vigorously to oppose both the project and the proposed BD‑1 zone change.
At least two dozen people for and against the proposal to change the zoning language. Click here for a previous article that describes the city’s pitch for how the proposal for reduction in open space, set-back, and other requirements including parking in BD‑1 zones would clarify an original intent and create a clearer path for developers.
Click here for an article about the local firestorm of protest about the proposed Salvatore building at Chapel and Howe, which has morphed from a technical- language debate into a broader debate of city zoning and development.
After the debate, commissioners prepared to vote on the proposal. City Engineer Richard Miller suggested tabling the proposal because of the complexity of the issue. It requires further study, he suggested.
By that time, the commission was gradually losing a quorum, anyway. Commission chair Ed Mattison realized another commissioner had departed in medias res for an appointment, leaving only three voting members . That would mean the vote would have to be unanimous for the text amendments to count. When the commission’s aldermanic representative, Adam Marchand, declared he had sufficient concerns about the process and substance not to vote for the change, the proposal was indeed tabled.
It will return to the commission’s agenda for a vote on Feb. 20.
Dwight Alderman Frank Douglass and Attorney Patricia Kane.
Friends of Dwight cofounder Patricia Kane called the tabling a “victory.” City Plan chief Karyn Gilvarg called it part of the deliberative democratic process.
The debate Wednesday night ranged from the technical — whether the text of a zoning ordinance prevails over a chart within the same section that might contradict it — - to the zoning/apocalyptic: whether easing restrictions on dense residential development in Dwight might be the slippery slope on which New Haven slides into haphazardly invoking eminent domain.
Several opponents invoked dreaded visions of Stamford.
Joel Schiavone: “I don’t understand what these people want!”
Proponents who spoke included developer Joel Schiavone, the pioneer of downtown’s new-urbanist revival; Chapel West Special Services District chief Brian McGrath; and architect Dean Sakamoto, who in 2005, helmed a study for Chapel West-ers to focus on the vision for their neighborhood.
“Mixed use makes the city great,” Schiavone said. Security problems will go away [in the Dwight area], as they did downtown.”
Supporters agreed the text changes could eliminate hurdles and legal confusion that stand in the way of building denser center-city neighborhoods with stores and offices and homes mixed together.
“I’m excited by BD‑1 because it reflects the intent of the study [of Chapel West] as a living/working/arts district,” Sakamoto said.
Opponents called the elimination of restrictions on developers inherent in the change threaten the historic neighborhood character of areas like Dwight.
Susan Bradford, who owns property next to the Salavatore property and is suing to stop that project, characterized the proposed BD‑1 language change as creating an “anything goes zone.”
She has filed a lawsuit challenging the zoning ruling that granted Salvatore variances to proceed with the Chapel/Howe project. The pending suit is one of the reasons Alderman Marchand gave for his concerns about the proposed zoning language changes, which would remove the need for future builders to seek zoning changes for proejcts like Salvatore’s.
“Since it has no limits for height, density, bulk, yard, and set backs. you can build wall to wall up to the property line and neighboring building, covering the entire lot, as tall as the eye can see,” Bradford said in a prepared statement
Fair Haven attorney Marjory Shansky enlarged the context for the opposition, although she characterized her feelings as “reservations.”
“This is not Ninth Square,” where planners had a comprehensive plan for renovating and reusing existing hoistoric buildings, she noted. “The unintended consequences may be negative.”
One example she offered of weakness is that the amendment has no language or provision for creating a transition from a five or six-story apartment building to a stand-alone house nearby.
“Do not act on this this evening. I urge you to table it, to workshop it further so you can accomplish something that is fair,” she urged.
In the end the commissioners took Shansky’s advice.