City of New Haven image
A rendering of Long Wharf's hoped-for post-rezoning future.
A plan to bring more retail, restaurants, walkability, and form-based thinking to a flood-prone, highway-adjacent industrial district hit a roadblock — as reviewers raised concerns that a Long Wharf rezoning proposal designed to promote mixed-use development might actually hinder growth.
That was one of the takeaways from a public hearing held by the Board of Alders Legislation Committee Tuesday night in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.
The hearing saw current business owners and incoming developers, along with local legislators themselves, wondering whether a zoning overhaul drafted to support the city’s “Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan” would hail the kind of development needed to revive an underutilized waterfront area amidst the threat of rising sea levels and climate change … or stymy the potential of a prime piece of land altogether.
Nora Grace-Flood file photo
City Plan Department Executive Director Laura Brown.
Carolyn Kone, right, representing Criterion Group Tuesday night.
Are special permit requirements too onerous? one alder asked.
Could a century-old company and top city employer be squeezed out of the area due to proposed use restrictions? representatives of long-time manufacturing company Assa Abloy inquired.
And will the recent purchaser of a large Long Wharf property be able to build in ways that best meet the site’s innate limits? the intended developers of the Sports Haven off-track betting property wanted to know.
“This presents a huge opportunity for us,” Downtown Alder Eli Sabin said of the Long Wharf area Tuesday night. “It’s a huge piece of land that hasn’t been developed with this intensity before. What we’re envisioning here is a public transit‑, bike- and pedestrian-focused development. It’s a cause that I’m broadly supportive of, but I worry about how much it’s gonna work.”
Read in detail about the proposed rezoning here, and about the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan here.
On Tuesday, city staff sought aldermanic support for a zoning text and map amendment that would see Long Wharf split into five neighborhoods collectively known as a “mixed-use district.”
The committee alders ultimately decided to continue the public hearing with hopes to vote on the rezoning plan in September.
That rezoning would create new rules such as parking maximums, density minimums and required public outdoor spaces in order to limit car usage on scene and boost sustainable, pedestrian-conscious construction. In addition, it would introduce elements of “form-based” zoning, a broader tactic not currently embedded in the city’s zoning ordinance that aims to get developers adhering not only with permitted uses in an area — such as industrial or residential — but with design features meant to contribute to so-called “complete neighborhoods.” That could mean situating a building a certain distance back from the sidewalk, or demanding buildings have entryways facing the sidewalk, or placing restrictions on the heights of buildings — which are all changes that the Long Wharf mixed-use district proposes.
City Plan Director Laura Brown said that the turn towards form-based zoning along Long Wharf “foreshadows” how her team is hoping to rewrite the city’s zoning code when the time comes for a regular revision of that text this year. Read here about how Hamden, on the other hand, has struggled with issues of mass non-conformity across the town’s buildings due to the layering of form-based, also known as transect zoning, on top of old zoning regulations.
Beyond form, the rezoning also touches on permitted and barred land uses for Long Wharf.
Uses considered too autocentric or that might detract from the city’s vision of a bustling and vibrant slate of walkable neighborhoods — such as gas stations, warehouses, drive-thru restaurants, or new manufacturing — are unilaterally prohibited. Developments such as hotels and mid-rise or high-rise buildings, which may be too intensive or problematic due to Long Wharf’s status as a flood zone, are permitted by special permit, while uses like book stores, bakeries, grocery stores, and more are all permitted as of right.
“It’s very prescriptive,” Sabin said of the proposed new zoning text. “Only certain development would be able to comply with what we’re asking for… one of the reasons it hasn’t been developed is the zoning, but another reason is it’s pretty much cut off from the city by train tracks and highways,” he observed, questioning how realistic a walkable utopia along Long Wharf really is.
In particular, he pointed to the requirement of special permits as an unnecessary bureaucratic measure that could steer interested developers away from Long Wharf.
City staff said special permits would allow “checks and balances” over a sensitive flood hazard area and enforce close review of developments that could pose risks to the safety of residents and the wellbeing of the land.
Why not, Sabin followed-up, just impose a flood risk management review for such projects rather than opening them up to special permitting, a process he said “is somewhat arbitrary” and dependent on commissioner opinions rather than check-boxed regulations.
“We are expecting large scale developments to happen here. $30 million dollar projects. If someone who’s thinking about developing at Long Wharf looks at our zoning code and sees they have to go through a special permit process, that might discourage them from pursuing it,” he said.
Sports Haven Turned High-Rise, Grocery Store, Self-Storage?
Thomas Breen photo
The Sports Haven site at 600 Long Wharf Dr.
Attorney Carolyn Kone agreed during public testimony that special permits were unnecessary and would disincentivize incoming developers, especially considering the fact that the zoning text already outlines requirements regarding the sustainability and resiliency of potential developments.
Kone brought that up alongside members of Criterion Group, the limited liability company which bought up the 9.75-acre Sports Haven Complex at 600 Long Wharf Dr. two years ago for $6 million. Rather than speaking broadly about the implications of the rezoning, she arrived with a specific proposal for development put forward by Criterion Group that she said would be stifled by the new zoning regs.
Her clients, she said, would like to build a high-rise apartment complex complete with a grocery store, retail center, public plaza, and self-storage unit that would seek to create a buffer between the roaring highway and the new housing.
One issue with that plan is that self-storage is not a permitted use, despite the fact that it is one of the only appropriate ways to institute a sound barrier in a particularly noisy area of the city, she said. The crackdown on use-type could keep developers at large from establishing the right projects for the city and for Long Wharf, she warned.
Another issue she pointed to was a maximum restriction on parking, which would limit each project to 75 percent of the sum of parking requirements for all potential uses. Though grocery stores are one use the city is trying to draw to Long Wharf, “in order to attract a grocery store, which is not easy in New Haven, you really need adequate parking,” she said. “This is an isolated section of New Haven, it’s not well served by public transportation.” Limiting parking, she said, “is a deal killer.”
While Kone and company worried about the impact of the regulations on upcoming development, representatives for extant company Assa Abloy, a door security manufacturer, said the new standards could prove existential for at least one of the city’s longest leading employers.
Assa Abloy's Jack Dwyer with Attorney John Knuff.
“It would render our use as a nonconforming one,” Vice President Jack Dwyer said. “It would completely handcuff us against expanding our business.”
Assa Abloy has been based in New Haven for nearly 160 years. “We’d like to continue here for another 160 years, but it would be very difficult under these conditions,” Dwyer stated.
In lieu of clarity regarding how the new regulations would affect existing business such as Assa Abloy and questions about the broader implications of the zoning overhaul, the committee opted to continue the public hearing — with hopes to take a final vote on the matter by September, when the full Board of Alders will meet and before the expiration of a year-long moratorium that has blocked new development on Long Wharf in anticipation of the zoning amendments under review.
“Zoning often lasts for a very long time. Most of our current code is from 1960!” Sabin stated in favor of continuing the conversation.
“Abloy has been here for 160 years over 130 acres,” Hill Alder Evelyn Rodgriguez chimed in. They deserve assurance that they won’t be pushed out, she said.
“What’s before us is really ambitious and breaks the mold in a number of ways,” Westville Alder Adam Marchand, who made the motion to push the committee’s vote down the line, concluded. “The new timeline I proposed is still really ambitious.”