City Plan Department
Bike and pedestrian-friendly trails that connect to each other and to public transit. Sea walls, flood plains and roads that are prepared for climate change-sparked super storms. More space for people to grow food; less space for big-box stores and parking.
In 2015, New Haven sees a brighter future partly in those terms.
Those ideas are among the recommendations in New Haven Vision 2025, a draft comprehensive plan for land use. They reflect how New Haven has changed over the past decade and where it wants to be 10 years from now, with more talk about biking and “bioswales,” less talk about cars (except to find alternatives to them), more emphasis on new urbanist (as opposed to suburban strip mall) style development and on urban agriculture.
The report reflects how, unlike in 2003, when the last plan was prepared, climate change has become an immediate planning concern for cities. It also reflects how New Haven is now growing. From 360 State Street to Crown Street to Route 34 West, builders have been rushing in to serve a rental-housing market that is becoming increasingly expensive. Meanwhile, activists and at times City Hall have cast a wary eye on suburban-style retail development.
The city must, by state statute and the local charter, update its comprehensive plan every 10 years. Wednesday night officials unveiled a first draft of the plan at a City Plan Commission meeting. The draft was two years in the making.
The plan sets out a broad vision of the city that officials are supposed to take into consideration in making residential, commercial, industrial, conservation, recreation and transportation development decisions.
Read a draft of the updated plan here.
The information in the plan was culled from more than 900 surveys completed by members of the community, neighborhood meetings and three listening sessions held in Wooster Square, Route 34 and Westville/West Hills.
With the right planning, the report’s introduction states, New Haven is “poised to become one of the best small cities in America in the near future. Reversing the trends of the past two decades, New Haven experienced a 5% population increase and a 4% housing increase over the past decade … and is projected to grow in population by nearly 15% over the next decade … It is now one of the fastest growing cities in Connecticut!
“The shared community vision for the next decade is to further grow it into a sustainable, healthy and vibrant city by building on the existing strengths and opportunities.”
A second public hearing on the plan will be held at the commission’s July 15 regular meeting.
Greener & Drier
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Urban Resource Initiative’s Chris Ozyck at the launching of eight bioswales on West Park Avenue.
“We’re starting with a grand vision,” City Plan staffer Susmitha Attota told commissioners and the public at Wednesday night’s meeting. “We know that we won’t be able to implement all of this in the next decade because some things will need further analysis.”
That grand vision includes some specific proposed zoning amendments to establish a licensing program for all convenience stores; promote commercial and not-for-profit urban agriculture; allow single-room occupancy housing in and near downtown; and allow farming and recreation on vacant and underutilized industrial sites.
The report calls for “expressly permitting community gardens” in residential zones. The gardens “can build a sense of neighborhood identity and by promoting access to healthy food stores through enhanced bicycle/pedestrian and transit network,” in which current bike-friendly trails and routes are better connected.
Paul Bass Photo
The new bioswale on yale Avenue outside Edgewood School.
The plan also calls for more bioswales — attractive stormwater runoff wells that have been touted as a green answer to traditional concrete storm sewer systems. Both city government and environmental activists have embraced bioswales with gusto over the past year; read about that here.
On the disaster-avoidance end of green planning, the draft plan addresses the need to mitigate sea level rise and to protect flood plains, which Attota said has grown out of the city’s experience with super-storms Irene and Sandy. “That wasn’t in the previous plan,” Attota noted.
In addition to endorsing transit-oriented development (TOD), which puts people closer to trains and buses, the plan specifically calls on the city to “adapt to sea-level rise and other coastal events by flood proofing structures in areas prone to repetitive floods… and by reviewing, assessing and revising the floodplain ordinances of the city periodically.”
City of New Haven
City Hall’s alternative vision of how CVS should build at the corner of Dayton and Whalley.
The plan calls for decentralizing government-assisted housing in the region (meaning more Section 8 housing, for instance, in the suburbs), and for preserving the historic character of the city’s downtown and neighborhoods. It envisions denser neighborhood commercial districts with mixes of stores and offices. (An example of that vision emerged in the current debate over how to develop the corner of Whalley Avenue and Dayton street in Upper Westville.)
In addition to broad neighborhood-planning goals, the report breaks out goals for specific neighborhoods, such as:
• Improving waterfront access in City Point at Howard Avenue and South Water Street while buttressing coastal resiliency; and “diligently protecting the neighborhood from industrial and transportation intensive land uses along Sea Street.” Also, the report takes up a recent cry form City Pointers to keep streets walkable and uncongested in the face of the state’s reconfiguring of I‑95, which is increasing cut-through traffic.
• Creating larger developable lots in Dixwell and Newhallville by combing sliver lots with vacant and underutilized lots; integrating Science Park better into the neighborhoods; turning vacant former convenience stores into housing; obtaining a “Main Street” commercial designation for Dixwell Avenue; reviewing regulations to keep the growth of community gardens growing.
• Restoring former connections in East Rock and on Upper State and in Cedar Hill that enable people to move easily from Ralph Walker skating rink to Blake Field, through East Rock Park, and to the Mill River area.
• Better connecting the East Shore, where much of the past decade’s population growth has occurred, to downtown jobs, and educational and health care institutions; through better mass transit and bike-pedestrian paths.
• Creating a special services district for merchants along the busy Grand Avenue corridor in Fair Haven.
• Creating a West River greenway corridor running through West Rock, West Hills, Beaver Hills, Westville and West River.
Both in Westville Village, as well as elsewhere in town, the report weighs in on the side of advocates of reducing parking requirements, to allow for denser development — more stores and apartments and offices per parking space. It also calls for changing bus routes so, for instance, the increasing numbers of empty-nesters and seniors in West Hills and Westville can travel easily to Hamden or West Haven without first traveling downtown and waiting for connecting buses. The plan calls for a Cross Town West bus route to accomplish that.