Stamford neighborhood group seeks zoning victory
By Barry Lytton
STAMFORD — A bitter fight over higher-density housing started two years ago at 45 Church St., and has morphed into a movement known as the Stamford Neighborhood Coalition.
Monday evening, the group may notch its first win.
The Zoning Board will hold a public hearing on a wide-ranging text change to the same three village commercial districts in Springdale, Glenbrook and the West Side that prompted the formation of the multi-neighborhood coalition.
The districts, created in part to create hubs around train stations, allow for higher-density housing compared to the surrounding areas.
When a developer sought to expand the village commercial district by rezoning a Glenbrook parcel to wholly convert it to 30 apartments, neighbors decried the project as something that could change the look and feel of an otherwise quaint neighborhood dotted with single-family homes. Nearby groups took notice and joined them.
The project was eventually approved, but the city Land Use Bureau took notice and has since worked to re-write the code that allowed for the change. The change is dramatic — the public notice took up two pages in the Stamford Advocate last week.
“This is really one of the first projects from when I started,” Bureau Chief Ralph Blessing said. “We’re reducing the density and bumping up the parking requirement.”
The city seeks to do so by increasing the minimum unit size allowed and requiring more parking spots. For example, under the new requirement, a developer with an 0.2-acre lot could only build 19 units. Under current regulations, they could build 30.
A similar rough estimate is hard to make for parking because the city requires a different number of spots depending on the amount of bedrooms in each unit.
Still, the new text would increase the ratio for each category and would mandate two parking spots for each two-bedroom unit, the highest requirement in the city.
The new text also reflects a push from affordable housing advocates to expand the Zoning Board’s mandate that 10 percent of new units created be set aside as affordable.
Projects in the new village commercial zones would need to make 15 percent of their units affordable, and the city would require a portion of those units to be made available to people making more than half of the area’s median income.
Nearly all affordable units created by the city’s zoning mandate have been at the 50 percent increment — around $67,500 for a family of four. Some of the units required in the new text would be for those making up to 80 percent of the area’s median, nearly $93,000 for that four-member family.
Mike Battinelli, president of the coalition, said he is glad to see the proposal.
“A lot of our issues are getting addressed,” he said. “Blessing listened to a lot of what we had to say.”
The Zoning Board will hear the proposal at its 7 p.m. meeting in City Hall.
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