Zoning Q: More Housing, More Parking?

A bid to provide lots more places for people to live on Hamilton Street has prompted pushback from some neighbors over where current and future residents and visitors will be able to put their cars.

That’s the latest with a proposal by Wooster Lofts LLC — a holding company controlled by local landlord Yoon Lee — to build up to 64 new apartments atop a current surface parking lot at 63 Hamilton St. 

The debate reflects a potential clash between city government’s policy goals of incentivizing the construction of new places to live without necessarily relying on cars, and enabling civic institutions to thrive and add life to the city. 

Last month, the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) held a public hearing on Lee’s company’s application for a use variance to permit residential use in a ​“Light Industrial” zone. Lee has also applied for a special exception to allow for 0 loading spaces where 1 is required. 

On April 17, the City Plan Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the zoning-relief request — sending it back to the BZA for expected final deliberations and a vote at its next meeting on May 14.

If approved, the variance and special exception would allow for the development of up to 64 new apartments atop the 63 Hamilton St. parking lot. Thanks to density bonuses baked in to the city’s Inclusionary Zoning ordinance, that new prospective residential development would not need to have any new off-street parking spaces.

To be clear: the zoning-relief application before the BZA does not set in stone that Lee’s company would build 64 apartments and 0 parking spaces. 

In fact, Lee told the Independent, he almost certainly would build fewer apartments and some on-site parking if his company wins BZA approval. (See more below.) Instead, he’s seeking permission to build any apartments at all on that industrial-zoned site. And, under the zoning code, if he gets permission to build residential there, then the maximum number of apartments he could build would be 64, and the minimum number of parking spaces 0.

There’s the rub, so to speak, for Robert Greenberg, Pastor James Roundtree, Jay Lawrence, and attorney Marjorie Shansky.

Greenberg runs Lost in New Haven, a local history museum looking to open soon right across the street at 80 Hamilton St. Roundtree is an associate pastor at Church on the Rock, less than a block away at 95 Hamilton. Shansky is a Fair Haven Heights-based lawyer representing Lost in New Haven Inc. and RMM Consulting LLC, which owns 60 Hamilton St. And Lawrence works at the HVAC supply company Sid Harvey’s at 75 Hamilton.

Since the BZA first held a public hearing on the 63 Hamilton industrial-lot-into-housing application in April, all four have raised concerns that too many new apartments added to the block with no required new parking will create a fight to the death — rhetorically speaking — for existing on-street parking spaces.

Or, as Shansky warned in an April 17 letter to the City Plan Commission, ​“the errant introduction of the proscribed residential use in the IL Zoning District will create chaos and detrimental effects by diminishing or eliminating parking availability for all existing commercial, industrial, and other uses in the neighborhood.”

Greenberg told the Independent that allowing for such a project to move forward would doom his museum, which he hopes to open in June. ​“It would create absolute chaos,” he said, because he’s banking on being able to allow school buses and visitors to be able to pull their cars right up to the front of the museum without having to contend with a mess of other vehicles already parked on the street.

“Street parking is absolutely essential to how this street works,” he argued. ​“There is a flow here that works” — and adding so many new apartments, with no new required parking spots, would hurt the block’s existing business occupants.

Roundtree agreed. ​“We’re not upset with more housing. There’s nothing wrong with that at all,” he said. ​“Our issue is really just the parking.” He said a majority of Church on the Rock’s congregation parks on the street. He said the block’s on-street parking gets quite full whenever the church holds funerals or special events, and during Sunday and Wednesday evening services.

Lawrence cautioned that the housing plan for 63 Hamilton would also hurt his business. ​“We would have no parking whatsoever for any of our customers,” he said. ​“A lot of our customers park on the street.” 

Developer: Fewer Apartments, Some Parking More Likely

Whoa, hold on a second, Lee told the Independent (well, not in so many words, but that was the gist of it). He stressed that this zoning-relief application currently before the BZA would allow for up to 64 new apartments and as little as 0 new on-site parking spaces. It would not guarantee those numbers in whatever residential project ultimately gets built.

In fact, he said, it would be ​“financially suicidal” to build 64 new apartments and 0 parking spaces on this quarter-acre lot in today’s environment.

Why? First, he said, building such a tall residential structure would require ​“steel and concrete,” a more expensive construction route than the more typical 5‑over‑1 ​“wood-over-concrete” option. ​“If you ask any developers, they’ll tell you that building 64 units here will take your construction cost too high versus projected rent income.” He speculated that the more realistic number of apartments he might actually build ​“in the next few years” could be closer to 40, if his company wins the requested zoning approval.

As importantly, ​“public transportation and mobility solutions sadly aren’t there yet for us to plan for zero parking in this neighborhood.” Translation: Some renters at any prospective new apartment building on this Hamilton Street lot would likely want to have cars, despite the property’s proximity to downtown’s train stations and bus stops.

“Ground floor parking is a useful amenity. We plan on utilizing the ground floor for parking, lobby ajd community, as well as structural support for the upper floors, where most of the apartments would go,” Lee said.

He added that he gets inquiries from people without cars who want to live in this Wooster Square-adjacent area — his company also owns the 23-unit apartment building right next door at 441 Chapel — specifically because they don’t have cars, and like the area’s walkability. When Greenberg’s museum opens, he said, the area will become only more appealing for pedestrians.

“Hamilton St. has significantly lower density than other mixed-use streets in the area. I hope Rob and the Pastor are in favor of housing supply as well as cleaning up blight in the area overall,” he said. ​“Our city deserves better than the status quo.” He said he’s reached out to both Greenberg and Roundtree to talk about their concerns and his building plans.

Cordalie Benoit, who has lived on Court Street on the opposite end of Wooster Square from Hamilton Street for the past two decades, stressed her support for the zoning application — and resulting housing proposal — in an interview with the Independent.

“We have the capacity to bring in more people” to New Haven, she said. She praised a zoning code that does not require the addition of new parking spaces for every new housing project for helping the city” get away from everybody owning their own car.” While the bus system in New Haven is ​“not perfectly convenient,” she conceded, the Yale Shuttle system in particular has become a much more reliable and comprehensive service since she first arrived in New Haven.

A two-sentence traffic impact report published by the city’s transit department and provided to the BZA states that ​“no major traffic impacts anticipated” due to the requested variance and special exception. However, ​“on-street parking impacts cannot be determined at this time due to lack of parking data.”

City: No Parking Minimum = "Incentive" To Build

Meanwhile, at the April 17 City Plan Commission online meeting, city Assistant Director of Comprehensive Planning Esther Rose-Wilen explained that the allowance for 63 Hamilton’s prospective developer to build as little as 0 new off-street parking spaces along with up to 64 new apartments — if the requested use variance is approved — was exactly the point of the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance’s scrapping of parking minimums.

This lack-of-required parking is meant to be an ​“incentive” for the construction of new places to live, Rose-Wilen said. The IZ ordinance would require large new developments like that proposed for 63 Hamilton to set aside 5 percent of apartments at below-market rents. ​“No parking is required,” she said. But, ​“it’s up to the applicant to design their site as they see fit.”

City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe asked if the 63 Hamilton developer is ​“mandated” to comply with the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance at this site, or if he is ​“voluntarily opting in.” Rose-Wilen said the property is located in the ​“Strong Market” area of the Inclusionary Zoning map, and therefore the developer is required to abide by its rules. Again, the waiving of a parking minimum is intended as a park to encourage development — including some below-market rental units — even for those who have to abide by IZ based on where they’re looking to build.

Right before the City Plan Commission heard and voted in support of the 63 Hamilton housing proposal, commissioners also heard and backed a proposal by the city to provide Greenberg’s Lost in New Haven Inc. with a $516,000 grant to remove contaminated soil and conduct other environmental remediation at the future museum site at 80 Hamilton St. Greenberg told the Independent that he hopes to have Lost in New Haven open by the end of June.