Citywide Zoning Review On Tap

Mayor Toni Harp has instructed her planning chief to launch a comprehensive look at the city’s zoning map to bring it up to date with New Haven’s quest for denser development.

Harp revealed the order in response to a question she fielded on her weekly appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” The question, tweeted into the show from DFA New Haven: ​“does mayor support a comprehensive re-write of city’s zoning to support greater density, mixed use and/or form-based code?”

“I do think we need to rewrite our zoning code,” Harp responded.

In fact, she has already asked City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg to begin ​“setting up a plan and a process” to do that, Harp said. ​“It’s really time for us to rewrite the code.”

New Haven has experienced a boom in market-rate apartment projects. Most have been proposed — if not already built — downtown and along the periphery, at the edge of Dwight and Wooster Square, although another is underway along Upper State Street. In all those cases, builders sought to go ​“denser,” squeezing in more apartments and storefronts than allowed under zoning law. So, in each case, they had to receive variances from the zoning board, a process critics have called spot zoning, piecemeal rebuilding of a city without a broader plan.

Some of the requested variances speak to how outdated the zoning map has become, Harp said. She cited as an example ​“Metro 301,” the proposed construction of 78 apartments in five new buildings plus a ​“mews” on a rapidly changing block of Crown and George streets that until recently housed squatters (one of whose severed torso was found there). Part of the reason the developer needs special permission is that the block is zoned for … automobile businesses.

“We don’t really have automobile companies that much in our town,” Harp noted. ​“We’ve got to look at the map and make it modern.”

Finally, some of the projects have called for less parking than allowed under the law, part of a ​“new urbanist” trend in town calling for denser, mixed-use development that relies less on the car than in the past.

New Haven is growing and needs a 21st-century zoning map to help guide that growth, said Harp (pictured at last week’s ribbon-cutting for the $40 million Novella luxury apartment complex at Chapel and Howe streets, an example of a project that required zoning relief).

“There was a time when New Haven had 154,000 people” in the mid-20th century, she said. ​“Obviously the town can exist with the kind of density. I think more of it would be downtown and the areas downtown.” The city’s population dipped to around 120,000 at the close of the 20th century, climbing back to 130,000 since. Harp said New Haven can house at least another 10,000 people.

Gilvarg said the city’s ​“in a very good place” to undertake the project because it has just completed a new 10-year comprehensive plan that includes development priorities.

She also noted that the city has passed a half-dozen or so zoning amendments in recent years to begin bringing rules up to date, although not in as comprehensive a fashion as the mayor has now directed her to pursue. One amendment involved redefining the industrial zone around the Mill River to allow for more mixed-use development. Another changed from 1 to 0.7 the number of parking spaces required per apartment in some residential areas. A current proposal seeks permission for taller buildings, higher density, and more of a mix of uses on three blocks of the Hill where developer Randy Salvatore hopes to build new apartments, stores, labs, and offices.

Anstress Farwell (pictured), whose Urban Design League has led the call for years for zoning overhaul, welcomed Harp’s announcement while cautioning against a process that limits public participation and keeps the city ​“dug in on an ​‘Old Path’ in support of a narrow political agenda.”

“The current zoning code has been an obstacle for quality developers, and it has been detrimental to the public interest in making the city a better place to live,” Farwell argued. ​“To rebuild our zoning code, we need to ask first what we want the city to look like — its form, and then create form-based regulations to make it happen. Additionally, to achieve robust and livable density, a new zoning code will require new planning and management tools for transportation development to be created in tandem. We can’t achieve one without the other.” 

The discussion about zoning begins at 9:30 in the interview. Other topics covered included Youth Stat, new luxury housing at Chapel and Howe, and food carts.