Allan Appel Photo
Zoners Cathy Weber, Victor Fasano, Regina Winters.
Commissioner Walter Esdaile wanted to know how a prospective restaurateur was going to handle parking so that his planned Whalley Avenue sports bar might succeed. Commissioner Regina Winters was concerned that certain windows facing Howe Street on the new Rudy’s floor plan would indeed be covered as promised.
Not only were they debating issues in public — their chairwoman wanted to make sure everyone in the crowd could hear.
“Everyone’s application is important,” Cathy Weber called to the 75 citizens in the basement of 200 Orange St. “Everyone’s application is important. The air conditioning is on. If you cannot hear, raise your hand and we’ll see if we can accommodate you.”
When it turned out some people indeed couldn’t hear, counsel Phil Pastore jumped up and turned down the roaring AC.
Welcome to the new participatory and exceedingly polite meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals.
It was on display at the board’s monthly meeting Tuesday night.
Right, that Board of Zoning Appeals. The board accused of, among other offenses, conducting its real business in private and showing contempt for the public’s desire to watch what it does.
One person making some of those accusations—zoning board member David Streever — boycotted Tuesday night’s meeting.
His appeared to have changed the tenor of the proceedings. The meeting went on all night, as participation was open and solicited.
In the course of the meeting, the zoning board OK’d, among other requests, a new 13-bedroom, $2 million fraternity house for Kappa Delta Epsilon on Lake Street behind the Yale gymnasium; plans to move Rudy’s to a new space at Chapel at Howe in November; a new building (pictured) to provide daycare for 69 kids on the bucolic site of the Friends Meeting House on East Grand Avenue; that sports bar across the Courtyard Marriott Hotel at the beginning of Whalley Avenue; and Bibere, Jason Sobocinski’s wine tavern eagerly awaited by East Rockers who love his Caseus. Sobocinski was given the green light to proceed, but with conditions. The conditions: That Sobocinski obtain a tavern license from the state, not stay open past midnight, avoid live entertainment and outdoor speakers, and file a separate application if he wants outdoor seating.
Zoning Chairwoman Weber, whom Streever accused of dictatorial and high-handed ways ways, ran the Tuesday night meeting a little like an intense but polite seminar.
Repeatedly calling on them seriatim and by name, she solicited and appeared to expect her fellow commissioners to add their two cents to each of the often complex real estate and architectural deliberations.
They did. Discussions of many of the 24 items on the agenda and sometimes thorough questioning of applicants resulted in a meeting that ran four and one half hours until almost 11 p.m. Democracy had moved in, its deliberate pace in tow.
The first two agenda items alone – whether Laydon Construction has been illegally processing construction debris near the West River and if the New Haven Food Terminal graded a back lot without permit, causing erosion – took nearly an hour to hash out. The zoners ended up referring the Laydon matter to City Plan and sustaining a citation issued against the food terminal, which had appealed it.
In addition to Weber, Commissioners Walter Esdaile, Gaylord Bourne, Victor Fasano, and Regina Winters were backed up by alternate Pat King, the former chair of the City Plan Commission. It takes at least four votes to approve or deny an application.
Cathy Weber said that while the meeting indeed ran late, it hadn’t set a record. She demurred when it was suggested that its length had anything to do with an atmosphere of more freewheeling discussion by commissioners and patience with applicants.
Pastore offered the reason: “There’s a lot of activity in New Haven,” he said. Also, the board had not held an August meeting.