Image courtesy of the city of New Haven
One of Connecticut’s few economic success stories wants to put development in a key waterfront neighborhood off-limits for a year.
The top city planner, City Plan Director Laura Brown, proposed a one-year moratorium on accepting all new applications for site plans, variances, special exceptions, special permits and rezoning amendments in the city’s largely-industrial Long Wharf area.
The New Haven Independent first reported the proposal.
The neighborhood runs along the city’s harbor, from Hallock Avenue in the City Point neighborhood to the intersection of the Mill and Quinnipiac rivers underneath the Interstate 93 Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge. Highway ramps and the Metro-North train yard and tracks form the area’s landward boundary.
City officials pitched a plan for the neighborhood, currently home to industrial uses like an IKEA store, fuel tanks and an Assa Abloy door hardware factory, that would turn it into the city’s next major development frontier in 2019. However, no rezoning took place since then to make the idea a reality.
In the interim, developers have begun circling the neighborhood. The landmark former Pirelli-Armstrong Tire Co. headquarters was redeveloped into a boutique hotel. New York City-based multifamily builder Criterion Development dropped $6.75 million on the Sports Haven sports betting facility in late 2020. The Knights of Columbus paid $12.81 million at auction for the neighborhood’s – and what was then the city’s – only large class A office building at 545 Long Wharf Drive. And next door, Fusco Corp. asked the city for a rezoning last fall that would allow it to build 500 apartments in one 13-story and one 15-story waterfront tower but ran into opposition from state officials concerned about flood risks.
In a letter to Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers, Brown said the moratorium is needed so the city can update zoning for the neighborhood, last done in the 1960s when large-format industrial uses were the priority.
“Given the proximity of Interstate 95 and Interstate 91, there are a number of industrial lands uses seeking to occupy the City’s waterfront space including but not limited to gas stations and truck repair facilities that are not aligned with the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan,” Brown’s letter said.
If approved, Brown’s department would spend the next 12 months reviewing existing planning studies, examining current market trends and crafting new zoning for the area that will be aimed at creating “a more mixed, denser urban commercial and coastal district” that would be “a new major area for new development,” she said.
Coastal resilience and flood protection would be priorities, she said, along with brownfields remediation and job creation, plus ensuring developments are transit-oriented and create a new ‘front door’ to the city that reconnects residents with the water.
At Monday night’s meeting, the Board of Alders referred the proposal to the City Plan Commission and one of its own committees, which will weigh in before the matter returns to the board for a final vote later this year.
