Hold The Phone! The Future Is Calling

If you live in Hamden and get a phone call from ​“GreatBlue” in the next few days, don’t hang up. It’s not spam; it’s a town-funded survey that will help determine the future of development in the town.

A similar survey was conducted in September. The town will use the results to help draft its new Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD), which will guide the town’s development and planning for the next 10 years.

A firm consulting for the town has just begun writing a draft of the new document, and in order to do so, it needs input from residents. So, don’t hold back when you get a call wanting your opinion on future development in certain areas, natural resources, transportation, housing, infrastructure, and what improvements you would like to see in Hamden.

To prepare for the call, we’ve prepared a primer on what this once-a-decade town endeavor is all about.

The Basics

The POCD is a state-mandated ​“statement of policies, goals, and standards for the physical and economic development of the municipality,” as the town’s webpage devoted to the 2019 POCD explains.

In Connecticut, every town or city has its own POCD. The state also has its own, as do regional governments (Hamden and New Haven are within the South Central Regional Council of Governments). Municipal POCDs must be updated every 10 years. Hamden last made an amendment in 2009; hence, 2019 requires a full rewrite.

Once a new POCD is approved, the Planning and Zoning Commission customarily updates the town’s land use regulations to reflect the new POCD. The POCD itself, however, does not introduce regulations. Rather, it ​“provides general goals and objectives, and includes ways of implementing the plans to achieve those goals and objectives,” said Hamden Town Planner Dan Kops. When new regulations are approved, the Planning and Zoning Commission must determine whether they are in accordance with the POCD.

As public hearings in December and January have shown, a lot of commissions and individuals have opinions they would like to see reflected in the POCD. Balancing all of those opinions, said Kops, is one of the key challenges of the drafting process.

There are two general goals of the POCD: ​“We need to increase development, and then there’s another goal; we need to protect the environment,” said Kops. Usually people can agree on those two overarching goals without too much trouble. When it comes to deciding which goals to prioritize, and how specific to get, the process can get a bit trickier.

In general, the POCD does not get too specific or directive. There’s a joke in the Planning and Zoning Department, said Kops, that when the department and commission introduce a new regulation, there’s almost always a statement in the POCD that supports it and one that could be counted against it.

So far, the Planning and Zoning Commission has heard recommendations and requests from members of other commissions, activists, and residents. The town hired two consulting firms to help in the process. Camoin Associates, which does economic analysis, compiled a report on Hamden’s economy and growth. At the Jan. 22 meeting, the commission gave its blessing to the other firm, Planimetrics, to begin drafting the new POCD. Glenn Chadler of Planimetrics said he hoped to have a draft ready by the Feb. 26 meeting.

Sustainability

POCDs can take a number of formats. Typically, said Kops, they are ​“silo-ed.” That is, each topic, such as the environment or education, is organized into its own section so that the sections ​“don’t really fit together, so you’re left with questioning what’s the most important thing.”

The 2004 POCD, for instance, was organized into 14 chapters and had no guiding theme. Chapters included Environmental Considerations, Housing, Economic Development, and Transportation and Circulation, to name a few.

The commission decided that for the 2019 POCD, it will use a thematic framework to allow for greater connection among the various aspects of the plan. Planimetrics presented a few options of frameworks for the commission’s consideration, and at the Jan. 22 meeting, it decided to use a sustainability framework. The framework has only five sections. An introduction and an implementation section bookend sections on three types of sustainability: economic, physical, and community.

Kops said that what he’s most concerned about when it comes to planning Hamden’s future is the environment. A lot is changing right now, he said, with global warming. It affects agriculture, trees, and increases the danger of floods and other weather related incidents.

“It’s an existential threat,” he said of climate change. POCDs in the past did not have to deal with it, but now it will be a central part of Hamden’s POCD. In particular, he said, he’s ​“looking for ways to minimize increases in storm water discharge [and] minimize flooding.”

Members of environment-related commissions and organizations have shown up to planning meetings in substantial numbers to make sure the concerns of their commissions or organizations are taken into account in the process. Many of those who have spoken came to the meetings to advocate for the importance of good tree stewardship.

Legislative Council member Justin Farmer suggested in a recent interview on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program that the town should also look at alternative sources of money to pay for millions of dollars of improvements to Powder Farm in Southern Hamden. He said that’d be a way to preserve needed open space and enhance new housing being built nearby. He envisioned new hiking trails and a canoe launch in the park. ​“We don’t have the money” to finance the improvements through the town, but he argued that Hamden can make the case to state or other funders to support ​“a regional gem.”

Powder Farm is 102 acres (!) of forest, lakes, and wetlands off Putnam Avenue a quarter-mile east of Dixwell Avenue. (See map above.) The Olin Corporation once tested munitions there as part of its rifle operations operations during WWII, so in plain terms it’s kind of a toxic waste dump complete with bunkers that once stored gunpowder, but one that has been unused for long enough that it’s apparently safe enough to hike around back there. It’s closed to the public, but the Hamden Land Conservation Trust has every once in a while been given permission to lead hikes there.

Growing Pains

The POCD must also respond to the way that Hamden’s population and economy have changed over the last few years, and to how they are projected to change in the future.

Hamden’s population has remained steady recently, according to a report compiled by Camoin Associates. In 2010, it had a population of 60,960, and by 2018, its population had dwindled by just 40 people, to 60,920. Since 2010, Hamden has become more racially diverse, and the report projects that that trend will continue. Hamden’s white residents were the only race category that saw a population decrease since 2010. The populations of all other racial and ethnic groups grew, with the Latinx population exhibiting the greatest growth.

Meanwhile, incomes increased over that period. From 2010 to 2018, the median household income increased from $66,695 to $75,047, a 12.5 percent increase that allowed the town to eclipse the state very slightly, which in 2018 had a median household income of $75,016.

The increasing income levels may be a result of the town’s job growth. Between 2013 and 2018, the town added 3,139 jobs, bringing the town’s total to 30,921. The 11 percent change from 2013 that brought the town to that level was greater than the nation’s job growth in that same period (9 percent) and much greater than the state’s (3%). 30.3 percent of the town works in educational services, likely due to Quinnipiac University. The report anticipates that job growth will continue, projecting 1,689 new jobs by 2023.

Quinnipiac’s growth has been a major factor in the way the town has changed in recent years, and the university will likely continue to expand and drive growth in the town. Quinnipiac used to be a relatively small commuter school. Now, it has a total student population of over 10,000, and those students increasingly live at school, rather than commuting.

Around 2000, Kops explained, Quinnipiac’s on-campus housing options reached capacity, and older students had to move off campus. Students living off campus, said Kops, have posed a challenge to his department because of complaints from neighbors. Yet his department is not well equipped to deal with the problem because ​“those are behavioral issues, and zoning is not a very good tool for affecting behavior.”

At first, he explained, students rented apartments in complexes. Later, they started moving into houses in neighborhoods, at which point residents began to clash with them. Students, he explained, just have a different lifestyle than many of their neighbors in north Hamden neighborhoods. They stay up later than other residents and host parties. If they live next to a young couple with a child, or an older couple that goes to bed early, the opposing lifestyles sometimes clash.

Hamden, unlike some college towns, has no buffer neighborhood, no ​“college town” area. That’s why Kops supports Camoin’s recommendation of encouraging the development of a mixed-use area near the university with bars, stores, and apartments that would be attractive to students.

As the report explains, in other towns with similar off-campus migration trends, neighborhoods are taken over by high-priced, low quality student housing. Next, developers see an opportunity and develop more attractive, high density housing options for students that pull them out of neighborhoods, ​“leaving a stock of homes owned by absentee landlords, that have been converted from single-family to multi-unit rentals that cannot achieve market-trends (and are too expensive to convert back).” The report suggests that Hamden follow the model of the Storrs Center at UConn, which is a mixed-use town center built with joint investments by the town of Mansfield and the university.

Hamden, therefore, should try hard to collaborate with Quinnipiac to create such an area that could be of mutual benefit to the town and the university, says the report. In the planning documents, this area is referred to as the Mount Carmel Village.

The university, however, ​“has yet to embrace this,” said Kops. Quinnipiac Associate Vice President for Public Relations John Morgan told the Independent that ​“the university doesn’t have any plans to develop a mixed-use area… near the university with businesses that would be attractive for students to live in. We are aware that a development concept… is identified in Hamden’s POCD.”

Affordable housing is already concentrated in the southern, more heavily African-American, and lower-income part of town, noted Council member Farmer. On the other hand, it’s important to build it nearest to transit lines.

The northern end of town also needs more housing for Quinnipiac University students, noted Council member Lauren Garrett. Off-campus students have sometimes caused problems for neighbors with loud parties; Garrett said in her case, the Quinnipiac students living two doors from her ​“have been very nice. They’re good kids.” In any case, it makes sense to have more student apartments located nearer to the campus, for the convenience of the students, she suggested, envisioning the development of a ​“Quinnipiac zone” on which the town and university would partner.

Farmer noted that some QU students live as far away as Putnam Avenue, where 10 students living in housing meant for five occupants can cause parking and traffic problems.

Garrett also argued for working with the state Department of Transportation (DOT) to put in more traffic lights and generally slow traffic down on state-owned Whitney Avenue. Both she and Farmer agreed with a listener to the ​“Dateline Hamden” show, Helen Ward, who posted a Facebook question about the possibilities of working with the incoming administration of Gov. Ned Lamont on improving the state road.

“We’ve got to get the DOT on board,” Garrett said.

Updating The Maps

For Kops, a major part of updating the POCD will be reconsidering the town’s zoning regulations.

When the Planning and Zoning Commission created the 2004 POCD, it noted that it wanted to look into adopting form-based zoning practices. The commission followed up on that goal in 2009 when it amended the POCD to allow their adoption. The commission passed the new regulations shortly thereafter, in January 2010.

(Click here to view the town zoning map.)

Form-based zoning, unlike traditional Euclidian zoning, regulates the form of developments — building size and placement, street layout, building features — rather than the use of buildings in a certain area.

Hamden adopted zoning regulations from the SmartCode, a model planning and zoning document first produced in 2003 by the architecture and planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company. The SmartCode uses transect-based zoning, and is one of the results of the New Urbanist movement, which emerged as a response to sprawling suburbs in the latter half of the 20th century. The term ​“transect” is borrowed from ecology, where it refers to a cut through an environment that shows its various elements. In zoning, the transect refers to a gradient from rural to urban, with six different types of ​“T” zones that refer to different levels of urban development.

“T” zones are intended to be mixed use and pedestrian friendly, with sidewalks and buildings placed close to the street. One of the earliest examples of a town planned based on the principles used in the SmartCode was Seaside, Florida, which tried to create a New England village type feel, Kops said. Seaside is famous not only as one of the first towns planned based on New Urbanist principles; it was also the set of The Truman Show.

Building a community based on the SmartCode is one thing when development does not already exist in a location, or when the buildings are abandoned. It’s more challenging, said Kops, when developments already exist in an area and are in use. In Hamden, large areas are already devoted residential areas, and are designated ​“R” zones. Applying transect zoning to those areas made no sense, said Kops, so the commission decided to apply ​“T” zones only in corridors along Dixwell and Whitney Avenues.

Applying ​“T” zones to those areas came with a few problems, Kops said. Since the SmartCode wants buildings closer to the road, it works best in larger plots of land through which developers can build smaller alleys. Hamden’s ​“T” zones, by contrast, are narrow and cover only small areas on either side of Dixwell and Whitney where it’s difficult to make alleys that connect smaller-scale developments.

In addition, many of the buildings along the corridors, especially in the Miracle Mile (where Dixwell and Skiff Street meet), are big box stores with leases that prevent any development between them and the street so that they can remain visible to consumers as they drive past. In places like those, the SmartCode’s intentions of building closer to the street are moot.

Kops said that he and the commission are interested in introducing incentive-based zoning to Hamden. Incentive-based zoning takes an incentive rather than regulatory approach to zoning. It sets minimum requirements, and then provides a series of additional actions developers can take. If the developers opt to go a step further and comply with those additional guidelines, they get certain allowances, like the go-ahead to build more units, for example. Kops called this approach ​“less adversarial.” It also allows the town to encourage developments that take steps toward sustainability that normal regulations would not be able to achieve. If the town required developers to include graywater systems, said Kops, that would simply discourage development. But if the town instead provides incentives for developers to install graywater systems, that’s more likely to encourage environmentally sustainable development.

The Planning and Zoning Commission will meet at 7 p.m. on Feb. 19 at Hamden Middle School, and the following week as well in the Legislative Council Chambers. Until then, don’t be surprised if the phone rings.