NORWALK REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY REDEVELOPMENT AREA PLAN UPDATE WORKING GROUP MEETING #6 DECEMBER 7, 2017

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1 NORWALK REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY REDEVELOPMENT AREA PLAN UPDATE WORKING GROUP MEETING #6 DECEMBER 7, 2017 GROUP MEMBERS: Tami Strauss, Director of Planning and Community Development; Sabrina Church, Redevelopment Agency; Melissa Kaplan-Macey, RPA; Sarah Serpas, RPA; Steve Kleppin, P&Z; Kathryn Hebert, Parking Authority and Public Works; Doug Stern, Common Council, Jackie Lightfield, Norwalk 2.0; Nora King, Planning Commission; Christine Bradley, Director Norwalk Library, Carol Sulheim, Cornerstone Community Church; Morris Gross, Norwalk Hospital; Robert Fahey, Plumbing Works; Carolyn Fahey, Plumbing Works; Steve Ferguson, Planning Commission 1. Welcome and Introductions. Melissa Kaplan-Macey called the 6th th Working Group Meeting to order at 10:37 AM. The members present introduced themselves as noted above. 2. Review plan production/adoption timeline. Ms. Kaplan-Macey passed out the agenda and a plan vision and the policies to achieve the vision. She also passed out a timeline for plan production and adoption as follows: Jan. 10 Draft Plan to Redevelopment Agency for review and comment; Jan. 17 Draft Plan to Working Group meeting #7; Jan. 26 Working Group comment due; Feb. 2 Draft Plan to Redevelopment Agency for review and comment; Feb. 20 Draft Plan to Planning Commission; March 13 Agency approval of public hearing; March 28 Draft Plan posted online (35 days prior to public hearing); May 8 Public Hearing. She said since they last met, at the direction of the Redevelopment Agency, they expanded the boundary of the redevelopment plan area to include the Norwalk Hospital as well as the Lillian August site, which are now reflected on the map. Ms. Strauss said they see the hospital as being one of the biggest drivers to bring development and jobs and amenities to the area, so extending the boundary to include the hospital would be a bonus and incentive and a driver for the success of the redevelopment area. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said throughout the conversations over the past several months one of the things that has come through is that this neighborhood should not just be a place for people to live in, but a balance with jobs as well, which is a strong reason for trying to leverage the opportunity that they have with the hospital. She went through a PowerPoint presentation that included recommendations for implementation, which she said are going to require further in depth study in terms of the Pulse Point and transit, and the capital investments and opportunity sites that they want to really think about and provide more concrete recommendations in terms of what those redevelopment sites should be in the future. Ms. Kaplan-Macey explained that RPA just started the Fourth Plan for the region, so she and Sara have been extremely busy and did not have time to sit down with the Redevelopment Agency and plan ahead for this meeting, for which she apologizes. They have some very specific recommendations from the Fourth Plan that they think can be brought to Norwalk and expanded upon and made more particular to the needs of this particular neighborhood. She briefly went over the existing zoning and said that based on what they have heard, it makes sense to combine Central Business Districts A and B and leave the CDB-C and the I-1 districts 1

2 as they are on the waterfront. There are a couple of areas where they might want to think of some new zoning, and perhaps add an overlay zone or a waterfront design district. In addition, they might want to provide design guidelines on the main corridors on West Avenue and Wall Street. The connection on Maple Street is going to become very important, connecting the hospital back into the neighborhood, so they might want to come up with some specific guidelines there as well. Ms. Lightfield said one of the differences between CDBA and CDBB is that most of the buildings in CDBA do not require onsite parking, so combining the zones or having a single zone in the central business district makes a lot of sense. The chief thing that you want to preserve is the look and feel of the historic downtown that runs along Wall Street. Mr. Stern said parking is what sometimes limits individuals and businesses from coming to these areas, and preserving some of these buildings is important, but at the same time you want to make sure they are active and used, and parking becomes a key driver. Ms. Hebert said they are on schedule for where they are supposed to be with the parking study. The goal is to have some kind of draft during the first quarter to present to the Steering Committee and the Parking Authority. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said the far north side of the city is also zoned industrial, but it s strictly commercial, and it seemed to make sense to also rezone that, perhaps to a neighborhood business or also to CDBD. Mr. Fahey asked if there had been any thought of moving the industrial zone somewhere else in Norwalk as you can t have trucks parked outside in a typical commercial site, it has to be industrial, which is a major problem in Norwalk. Mr. Kleppin said he thinks they need to do a more comprehensive study on all the industrial zones as a whole, but that won t happen for a while, at least six to nine months. Ms. Lightfield said the amount of industrial in Norwalk has shrunk and the feedback they have gotten is that there is not enough industrial, so they need to take another look at it because it s been over ten years since they last looked at the industrial areas. You have to anticipate ahead that you may in fact need more industrial, particularly since a lot of manufacturing is not allowed in many of their zones and yet those are the things that would activate ground floor retail and be a good thing. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said it may be that they want a code that is more form based that really gets at the operations and the type of activity and kind of atmosphere you want to create and gives much more flexibility in terms of use but has more provisions in terms of how things orient to the street where the parking is, the loading zones and things like that. Ms. Strauss pointed out that any zoning amendments or changes that are recommended as part of the plan will come after the plan is adopted, because it is a longer process. In response to a question by Mr. Gross, Ms. Strauss said it is technically going to be a redevelopment plan because statutorily it needs to be called a redevelopment plan, but the word redevelopment scares people and so she would like for it to be called a neighborhood plan. The 2

3 theme of preservation is very important to the urban core of Norwalk and to this neighborhood, and they don t want the theme of preservation to get lost. Ms. Lightfield said what makes redevelopment plans so scary to people is the threat of eminent domain, and when your property is in a redevelopment plan and in a redevelopment boundary, there is the threat that you could lose your property through eminent domain, so they should be very clear that the plan boundaries don t necessarily reflect the boundaries of where the eminent domain catches in. Ms. Strauss said Commerce Street should be added to the design guidelines. Ms. Lightfield said she would also add Knight, High and Cross Streets to the design guidelines, and also include Harbor Avenue, because it s an opportunity to rethink how that area looks Ms. Kaplan-Macey said they may want to designate or recommend where they think trucks ought to be routed through the neighborhoods, and then it s up to the City whether to designate those routes. They have this transit hub there now and all the buses are coming into this neighborhood, but just because they have this transit hub operating a certain way today doesn t mean that is necessarily how it has to be in the future. They want to have good transit connectivity from this neighborhood to the train station and to points north. The idea of a Wall Street Station is there, but should there be a strong connection between this neighborhood and the New Haven line, or is it really important that it also goes up towards Danbury. Mr. Kleppin said the tricky part is that a lot of these questions are part of a bigger transportation issue for the City as a whole. They don t know how all this interplays with the other stations or how the transportation network works as a whole, so he thinks it would be better to discuss what are some feasible options for this area and keep the conversation to that. Ms. Lightfield said she has been a very strong advocate for having a Wall Street train station both from an economic development standpoint and also from a historic standpoint, but she would have to revisit that based on the development that Norwalk has undertaken over the last ten years in the Merritt 7 area, the mall coming in just south of I95, and the new residential development that s taken place along the West Avenue corridor, so the dynamics have changed in terms of who they are trying to service with transportation options, and they really need to look at it from an overall transportation plan, but she would say that the existing transportation services of the Pulse Point do not serve the neighborhood or Norwalk very well. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said that is her perspective as well. She thinks they will be informed by the decisions that are made citywide and regionally on transportation, but they want to plan so as not to preclude something they might want to see happen in the future. Ms. Lightfield said she thinks it is very important for this plan to have a strong recommendation that they must have a transportation corridor that is tied to the rail line, and at some point they will figure out what that needs to be. Ms. Strauss said they need transportation improvements and a transportation corridor and they need to make that a goal and a recommendation in the plan. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said from what she has heard, they want to have a dedicated corridor and they want to have a location where there is a station for that dedicated corridor, whether that s a rail station. They have a shuttle now that s operating in the neighborhood, they have on demand 3

4 transportation, which is actually inducing more traffic as you have more cars and people getting dropped off and picked up where there is not room for people to pull over, so they want to be really thoughtful about where things ought to happen in this neighborhood. Ms. Hebert said on demand transportation is becoming a big issue now, and not only impacts parking and parking access and where people are going, but it is going to impact the travelways big time. They already have congestion all over the place, and this will just add to that, so that needs to be a conversation for the POCD and they are already going to look at it in the parking study. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said they just released a report on autonomous vehicles and policy, and new technology happens, but you don t necessarily as a city have to allow people to drop off and pick up wherever they feel like it. A lot of these buildings that people are trying to get picked up at don t have the capacity, they don t have a driveway, they re blocking traffic and it s creating congestion, so they should address how to deal with that from a planning standpoint. Ms. Kaplan-Macey said the idea of a health and wellness district and of anchor strategy is a movement that has really taken hold and you can really start to work with it when you have a hospital collaborating with City government and collaborating with other neighborhood anchors. There is a need for more local procurement of goods and services and having the business environment of the neighborhood line up with the needs of the hospital. There has been a lot of ask about better healthy access to food in this neighborhood and there is an opportunity to culture health in the community. For instance, there could be an urban farm in Matthews Park or at Stepping Stones. Ms. Lightfield said there is no school in this particular district, yet they have added all this residential stuff. NCC is over in West Norwalk in the middle of nowhere and the residents don t really want NCC there and yet they are not encouraging the investment to having a higher educational institution in their core downtown area, and from an economic development standpoint they need to have a plan for what kinds of institutions would actually activate our downtown area and put them in the transportation choices that would work. Mr. Gross said the hospital has about 120 apartments and they own a lot of other properties. They have a lot of folks from the University of Vermont, interns and residents and others who need to shop. A lot of them don t have vehicles, and so having something close by makes a lot of sense. Moving their industrial areas, capturing back the waterfront and still giving an efficient industrial location makes sense, so he is seeing the ingredients of a plan that is beginning to be framed out that he really likes. He is only worried about the timing of it as far as the evolution of it, and also what s happening with retail and the whole issue of internet shopping and what that does as far as drawing people downtown. It s a good town and there s cultural and there s educational and there s a good hospital and the taxes are reasonable, so he thinks they have the ingredients, but he has his concerns. Ms. Serpes said they want to ensure that there is opportunity for arts and culture to thrive in the neighborhood, and make sure that space is affordable, that there are not things inhibiting artists from being in the neighborhood, making sure there are arts in schools, thinking about the vacant spaces and how they can preserve them for arts activities, and make sure that people are able to live and work in the same space. 4

5 Ms. Lightfield said one of the issues they have seen as a result of the development in SoNo is that those public spaces where people congregate and that activate people are very few and far between. There s not a lot of green space or open space, and she thinks that the charm of the Wall Street area is that they do have public space that s underutilized, whether it s the plaza on River Street, Freese Park, Union Park, or the plaza in front of the library, and they need to rethink how they want to activate those spaces and connect those spaces. Ms. Strauss said just as an update, she is going to talk to the Planning Committee about Freese Park and gauge their appetite for funding it in the next capital budget cycle. They are also working on the First Taxing District quit deed claiming Klondike Park back to the City and she has a plan coming to build a platform so they can extend the sidewalk over the river a bit and maybe do some lighting on the brick wall of the building. The meeting was adjourned at 12:07PM. Respectfully submitted, Karen Pacchiana 5