Thomas Breen pre-pandemic photo
City Plan Director Woods (right) with Acting LCI Executive Director Arlevia Samuel: Rezoning is top priority.
No more tinkering around the edges. It’s time to start overhauling the city’s entire, half-century-old zoning code.
City Plan Director Aïcha Woods issued that call to land-use-reform arms when describing one of the top priorities for her department in the year — and years — to come.
That discussion took place during a six-hour public budget hearing and departmental workshop hosted by the aldermanic Finance Committee on Zoom and YouTube Live.
The public meeting marked the second opportunity in as many days for the Finance Committee alders to take a department-by-department look at Mayor Justin Elicker’s two proposed Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY22) general fund budgets—a $589.1 million “crisis” version and a $606.2 million “forward together” budget.
“This year has really shown us that we really have an imperative to look at some of our rulebooks and really make sure that they’re aligned with equity, affordable housing, climate, and environmental justice,” Woods said.
“Our comprehensive plan has always held those values, but we haven’t really updated our zoning ordinances since the ‘60s. It’s time to kind of rethink the whole thing. That is really going to be our major focus over the next couple years.”
Zoom
Wednesday’s Finance Committee meeting.
The city’s zoning code — like zoning codes across the state and country — determines where certain types of buildings can be built (e.g. single-family homes in a residential district, factories in an industrial district) as well as “bulk regulations” like how tall a building can be, how much of a front or backyard it must have, how much on-site parking there must be, etc…
The City Plan Department, the Livable City Initiative, the City Plan Commission, the alders, the mayor, and other local public officials have spoken in recent years about the need to update the city’s land use laws to promote dense, walkable, affordable, environmentally sustainable, mixed-use developments.
The city succeeded in pushing through that kind of rezoning pilot on Whalley Avenue right before the pandemic hit. Dixwell and Wooster Square residents critical of the city’s proposals and outreach process stopped such a contemporaneous “commercial corridor” rezoning effort from taking place in their neighborhoods at that time, too.
During the ongoing pandemic and in the wake of last summer’s nationwide racial justice uprisings, zoning reformers have found new energy to push for comprehensive land-use rewrites in suburbs like Woodbridge and in proposed statewide legislation. Those rezoning efforts have sought to open up exclusive parts of the state to more racially and economically diverse populations by everything from making it easier to build multi-family housing in single-family-dominated areas, to scrapping parking minimums, to legalizing accessory dwelling units.
City Plan Department slide
At the budget workshop, held this past Wednesday night, City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli directed the alders to the City Plan Department’s proposed capital budget as evidence of the city’s seriousness about prioritizing land use reform as a tool for broader social and economic change.
“One of our capital asks specifically relates to the zoning code, and really starting over with our zoning code, to produce a clearer, fairer, and more opportunities for people to build and create some opportunities here.”
The department’s proposed capital budget — that is, money the city borrows every two years to help achieve long-term, usually infrastructure-related projects — includes $500,000 for “on-call planning.”
“On-call services are needed to augment City Plan Department staff as the workload exceeds staff capacity and technical capabilities to perform the work in tight timeframes,” that part of the budget book reads.
It goes on to describe the top on-call planning priority as “City Wide Comprehensive Zoning Code Amendments.”
“Funds to be used for outside planning and legal services to update the New Haven Zoning Code,” the budget reads. “Research and code amendments to include affordable housing as well as furthering updates to BA for commercial corridors, village districts and coastal management zone. This zoning update will include and consolidate various green ordinances in accordance with climate framework. All zoning amendments shall focus on equity and address health and racial inequity as well as climate justice.”
Similarly, rezoning initiatives appear throughout the City Plan Department’s list of stated goals for the coming fiscal year in the budget book. Those include:
• Draft and adopt comprehensive city wide Zoning reform in accordance with implementation of Comprehensive Plan;
• Adopt City Wide Inclusionary Zoning and affordable housing strategy;
• City Wide Green Ordinance with study of Eco District or Net Zero District Pilot at Long Wharf or LEED for Cities;
• Continue Commercial Corridor Zoning and Affordable Housing zoning updates
Will those capital funds for zoning reform really be enough to “comprehensively update city zoning?” Westville Alder and Finance Committee Chair Adam Marchand asked.
“It would be good for a strong start,” Woods said. It should allow the city to start the citywide zoning reform planning process, leverage local dollars to get larger state and federal grants, and begin an intensive community outreach campaign.
“There’s tremendous community engagement that needs to be done for an effort like that,” she said. “That’s where a lot of the resources have to go up front, just in the community engagement.”
Then, once that community engagement occurs, we’ll have a good idea of what kind of funding is needed for an actual citywide zoning code rewrite? Marchand asked.
That’s right, Woods replied.