Paul Bass Photo
Lee: 1 space per apartment no longer makes sense.
If you want us to build in New Haven, don’t ask us to make room for everyone to drive.
Three out-of-town developers offered that advice at a panel discussion — as debates sprang up around town about whether the city should plan for fewer car owners in OK’ing new development projects.
The three developers at the panel discussion Tuesday evening weren’t asked to build in New Haven. They were asked for advice about how cities can attract developers.
New Haven’s Economic Development Corporation invited them to the panel to offer big-picture guidance as the city explores how to build on lots in the Hill and downtown within a half-mile of Union Station. The city got a $1 million federal grant (administered through the state) to engage in such planning for “transit-oriented development,” aka “T.O.D.,” a hot concept in cities nowadays. The idea is to take advantage of trains and bus lines and walkable streets to build a lot of stores and offices and apartments close together (aka “urban density”).
At the panel discussion, which drew about 20 people Tuesday evening to the lower level of the main public library branch, moderator Reese Fayde asked the three developers to list their biggest “turn-offs” when they consider whether to build in a city. (Click on the play arrow at the top of the story for a sample of the discussion.)
Demands for lots of parking ranked high on the turn-off list.
“You asked what is an automatic turn-off. … Market research shows [the amount of parking] needed is X. We flip open the zoning code and we find out the requirement in the zoning code is two times that,” replied Patrick Lee, co-founder of a Boston firm called Trinity Financial. “It is a lightning rod … Oftentimes we often just say, ‘That one is too, too hard.’ … When the zoning catches up with the market or gets close to it, we’ll come on back and have the conversation [about building]. Even if you’re doing surface parking, it eats up so much land it ends up being a cost-driver in your pro forma.”
Livable City Initiative chief Erik Johnson (left) introduces the discussion.
Other panelists spoke of how investment dollars have begun flowing in the past few years for apartment complexes in the region aimed at “echo boomers,” young adult children of the Baby Boom generation. These echo boomers look for smaller apartments in busy urban places with public transportation, said panelist Kim Morque of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners. They often don’t own cars.
The panelists agreed cities should re-examine zoning codes that require a parking space for every apartment. That eats up valuable space in development projects, running up the cost.
“It’s the way of the future,” Lee said in a conversation after the panel discussion. “The youngsters that are the future of cities … rely less on their cars than we older folks.”
Lee (whose firm rebuilt the Quinnipiac Terrace projects and the Rowe apartment tower in New Haven) cited a “T.O.D.” luxury apartment complex his company recently completed in Boston called Avenir. It has 243 apartments. They filled up fast, he said. The city allowed the developers to include just 120 parking spaces in the project — and those spaces, not the apartments, are “going begging.”
The panelists also spoke of the need for cities to “streamline” the approval process for major projects by revising zoning codes to include less parking, rather than requiring developers to seek variances for each project in lengthy regulatory processes.
Hot Topic Citywide
City development chief Murphy with developer Morque before the panel.
Much of what the developers said at the panel echoed arguments city development officials have been making recently, including at a Development Commission meeting that very morning. Officials have sought to change the zoning rules for “mixed-use” projects (including combinations of stores, offices, and/or apartments) to allow less parking and greater density both downtown and in neighborhoods on the fringes of downtown.
Some “new urbanists” have applauded that idea. Others have argued that the changes risk damaging the historic residential character of neighborhoods like Dwight. The city itself has decided against an “echo boomer” proposal to fill in some Wooster Square lots near downtown in favor of a traditional, less-dense proposal.
Meanwhile, the argument has extended well past downtown to the edges of the Goatville section of East Rock. The same night as the developer panel in the library, Goatvillers offered passionate testimony at a zoning hearing at 200 Orange St. in opposition to a developer’s request for parking relief in order to turn the abandoned Star Supply factory building into 268 apartments. (Read about that here.) The opponents argued that in their neighborhood people still need cars to get around, and allowing less than one space per apartment in the new complex will cause new tenants to grab cherished street spots. Part of the debate hinges on how much New Haven can resemble denser big cities like Boston and New York — whether it can be quite as bikeable and walkable and reliant on buses.
The developers’ pitch Tuesday night was music to the ears of city economic development chief Kelly Murphy. Murphy said the panel discussion was part of the early stages of the $1 million T.O.D. planning process for Hill and downtown development near the train station. She’d like to see the kind of dense development in the area that the developers were describing, she said afterward, including at the former Coliseum site at State, Chapel and Orange streets.
She said her office has also been looking at zoning changes to lessen the one-parking-space-per-apartment required at large, long-empty office buildings that could be transformed into apartment complexes to serve downtown’s growing housing market.
She offered as a prime example the former bank building on the northwest corner of Chapel and Orange streets. Like similar buildings, it’s connected to other buildings beside it, so it doesn’t have room for a parking space for every apartment that could go in there in a potential renovation, she noted. “People,” she said, “are not coming to New Haven with cars.”