STAMFORD – Residents turned out in force last week to pan the plan.
The city’s road map for development for the next decade, the 2035 master plan, is “insulting” and “unfair,” and a “violation of the public trust,” residents said. It was “made without our input” and “does not reflect the reason we value Stamford,” they said. “It’s a disaster,” one resident said.
The city has a $460,000 contract with Sasaki Associates to draw up the 10-year master plan, a state mandate for municipalities. Sasaki in July released a draft that recommends policies residents skewered during last week’s meeting of the Board of Representatives’ Land Use Committee.
More than 160 residents attended virtually or in person, registering their comments in a three-and-a-half hour meeting. No one who spoke supported the plan.
Approval of the plan rests with the five mayoral appointees on the Planning Board, which is slated to vote on it in September.
Residents who spoke during the meeting objected most to the call for increasing density in residential neighborhoods. The plan recommends relaxing zoning regulations to allow add-on apartments, multiplexes, townhouses, cluster homes, and small businesses in single-family neighborhoods, and eliminating parking requirements.
“There is already overcrowding and congestion; traffic and parking are terrible,” said Maggie Murray of the Cove. “Who are the people coming up with these plans? They obviously don’t know Stamford.”
Residents of the Cove had a lot to say, including Danette Melchionne, whose family has lived in the neighborhood for three generations.
“I’m not on board with this plan. Adding high-density rentals in single-family home areas will decrease property values” in places that are already congested, Melchionne said. “The overcrowded apartments that have been built behind my home have renters who play music at nightclub volumes. I’ve asked them to turn it down; I called the landlord; I called the police. It doesn’t change. I have to go inside my home … I can’t enjoy my backyard that I pay taxes for. I’m not sure what kind of community involvement was sought for this (plan,) but it looks like the majority of people have been missed.”
‘Build, build, build, build’
Property taxes pay for 92 percent of the city budget, and single-family homeowners contribute a significant portion of that. The typical homeowner pays $10,000 to $11,000 a year in taxes.
Their frustration was evident during the Land Use Committee meeting.
“Commercial vehicles park all along my street. School buses use it for a parking lot. It’s impossible for residents to find a parking spot,” downtown resident Susan Buchsbaum said. “I’ve seen lots of green space taken away. They put a big self-storage [warehouse] on Hope Street at Toms Road. It’s such an eyesore; it really bothers me. This city has no soul … it’s just about build, build, build, build.”
There were other references to the “soul” of Stamford, where more than 15,000 housing units, mostly high-priced rental apartments, have been built in the last decade and a half. Stamford now is the state’s second-biggest city and gaining fast on Bridgeport, the biggest.
Dan Lombardi lives in Hubbard Heights in the center of Stamford, just up the hill from downtown. Hubbard Heights is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its many examples of American architecture, with homes dating back more than a century.
“If Stamford does have a soul, it’s in the neighborhoods,” Lombardi said. “This plan says to respect the historical neighborhoods, and yet they want to redistrict ours from single-family to this category they call R2, which allows multiplexes, cluster housing, mixed-use businesses like cafes and auto shops … We are trying to preserve the neighborhood that we thought we bought into. We don’t want to see Hubbard Avenue turned into Summer Street or Bedford Street. Our neighborhood should be in the R1 zone, the same classification as North Stamford and Shippan, the mayor’s neighborhood, where there will be no change in density.”
Mayor Caroline Simmons, who encourages development and supports the master plan, lives on Shippan Point, an upscale waterfront neighborhood. Simmons is campaigning for election to a second term on Nov. 4.
Dave Adams of North Stamford said all neighborhoods should be protected.
“People invest in a home and expect the neighborhood to stay what it is. But we have a Planning Board that has allowed a lot of map changes and text changes, until the situation has become almost untenable,” Adams said. “It’s a violation of the public trust when you allow changes to affect a neighborhood so much that (people) don’t want to live there anymore.”
Not looking for New York
The draft master plan encourages “urban sprawl” that eliminates the housing choices people are seeking, said Kim Schenck, another Hubbard Heights resident.
“I lived in New York City for 11 years. I loved it, but when I moved out to Stamford in 2004 I didn’t want it to be New York City,” Schenck said. “I moved to the condos at Bridge Street and Hubbard Avenue, and later when I got married we moved to Hubbard Heights because of the character of it, the historic background, and because it’s walkable and family friendly. Our voices have not been heard on this.”
The draft master plan “is insulting,” said Rob Saluto, who has lived in the Cove for 25 years.
“The population density has grown to the extent that someone who comes to visit can’t park on the street. When someone comes over, you have to plan for a place for them to park,” Saluto said.
“You can’t ride down the road because it turns into a single lane. The other day me and a bus were coming down the street and we had to negotiate who goes first. As ridiculous as it is now, you want more density? I don’t think anybody making these decisions has any vested interest in the neighborhoods.”
The master plan is supposed to “improve the city, but by whose standards? I have never been polled for my feelings on this,” said Lorri Tamburro, who lives in Long Ridge. “I speak for many homeowners when I say we have worked very hard to get where we are – to own a home is a privilege that we pay significant taxes for. Who gave anyone the right to take this from us?”
Concerns came from all corners of Stamford.
“I’m running for the Board of Representatives in District 13 because residents don’t want these changes in their neighborhoods,” said James Sarnelle, a retired surgeon who lives in Westover.
Gina Cappelli said she and her husband recently built a new home on Kenilworth Drive. The city made them install a $200,000 drainage system because “the existing system couldn’t handle any more volume,” Cappelli said.
“We followed every rule the city asked, even though it cost far more than we planned. Now we’re hearing that multifamily homes may be allowed in the neighborhood? If my home was going to cause so many drainage problems, what will multifamily homes do?” Cappelli said. “If this passes, it will destroy the value of this area and hurt the homeowners who played by your rules. It’s unfair.”
DIY affordable housing
Mike Battinelli said his Glenbrook neighborhood is one of the few remaining in Stamford where people with moderate incomes can afford to buy a home. Such neighborhoods are overburdened, and the recommendations in the draft master plan will add to it, Battinelli said. The plan “is a disaster,” he said.
“Did the people who wrote this plan walk up and down our streets? Did they see what we see?” Battinelli said. “I can’t park anywhere near my house. My street is loaded with illegal two- and three-families, and it’s a single-family zone.”
Sal Zarrella said his Waterside neighborhood “is riddled with illegal apartments” and the city does not address the congestion they cause.
“People are making their own affordable housing,” Zarrella said. “What I see here at this meeting is a representation of the predominant voices in Stamford. There are very few people here from North Stamford and Shippan, the places that won’t be affected by this plan. We have a bloated demand for housing … this master plan is imposing itself on areas where people want to remain single-family. … The question is, what kind of city do we want?”
Hubbard Heights resident Anthony Martino said he sat in on two meetings about the master plan hosted by Sasaki Associates.
“This plan seems nothing like the meetings I attended. Most of the folks who attended the meetings wanted to maintain their neighborhoods,” Martino said. “They didn’t want these zoning changes.”
As it is, the thousands of high-priced apartments built by big developers are changing rental prices everywhere in Stamford, said Martino, who worked in real estate and was a landlord.
“Market rates (in the new buildings) are very high,” he said. “Landlords in other parts of the city look at those rental properties for guidance. So if those rents are high, the landlords in the rest of the city raise their rents.”
Georgia Colacurcio of Springdale said she recently visited someone who lives in The Smyth, one of the new luxury high-rises downtown.
“The person pays $6,000 a month. That’s insane,” Colacurcio said. “But that’s what Stamford is going toward.”
City defends the plan
Lauren Meyer, the spokesperson for Simmons’ office, said Friday in an email that the draft of the master plan, also called the comprehensive plan, “provides recommendations for accommodating the naturally occurring and anticipated population growth in areas best served by transit systems and infrastructure.”
Those areas “are first and foremost” downtown and other neighborhoods around the Stamford train station, Meyer wrote.
“Lower-density ‘satellite’ neighborhoods, such as Glenbrook, Springdale, and the West Side, are generally referred to as ‘Residential Neighborhood’ and are equipped to be further invested in to support moderate growth in a context-specific and sensitive way that preserves the existing mix of housing that ranges from single-family to multi-family,” she wrote.
Glenbrook, Springdale, Belltown, the West Side, East Side, Bull’s head, lower Ridges and similar neighborhoods can be made more dense and be protected at the same time, Meyer said.
The plan does call for more density in North Stamford, Westover and Shippan – it recommends relaxing regulations to allow cluster housing, and to allow more apartments, called “accessory dwelling units,” or ADUs, on single-family homes, Meyer wrote.
Sasaki Associates developed the 2035 plan “through a robust engagement process that resulted in outreach amassed over 25,000 impressions from Stamford residents,” Meyer wrote. An “impression” includes attending an open house, filling out a survey, and “liking” a social media post about the plan, she wrote. Sasaki also hosted neighborhood workshops and pop-up events, and distributed fliers in stores, Meyer wrote.
Sasaki’s plan “outlines strategies and recommendations for prioritizing community concerns such as parking, traffic, and congestion,” including “improving the transit system,” Meyer wrote.
On the problem of illegal apartments, “their mere existence means the current policies and regulations around housing typologies are not working,” Meyer wrote, and the master plan “seeks to ensure that the city is set up for success in creating policies that will provide appropriate housing type and safety regulations to alleviate this issue.”
Resident: Greed got us here
People in power have to be more truthful about what’s going on in Stamford, said Cynthia Bowser, a lifelong West Side resident. The “pushing out” of moderate-income people has been going on for decades, Bowser said during the Land Use Committee meeting.
“We’ve seen this before. We’re at this place because of greed,” Bowser said. “What happened to the working people? We are going to have to get together to figure out how to make this a city for everybody. We have to have accountability for these officials.”
Paul Brindak of the Cove agreed, saying, “behind all this is greed.”
Developers are out “to buy a single-family home, knock it down and build a cluster. They’re looking to make money,” Brindak said. “To fight this, we need to be together. There is strength in numbers. This is how we get things done. … I pay a lot of money to be here, I like it here, and I want to live here. Why should the middle class be squeezed out?”
Gina Calabrese of the Cove said residents of neighborhoods from Bull’s Head and south should “be ready for more density.”
“To stop this, we have to take action ourselves. That’s the only response to this,” Calabrese said. “A member of the Land Use Bureau said at a meeting that North Stamford is very opposed to duplexes. So I guess duplexes aren’t going to happen there. But they will happen in our neighborhoods.”
The neighborhoods are the key, said Lombardi of Hubbard Heights.
“If we want to preserve the soul of Stamford, we really need to stand up and let the mayor know we need to preserve the neighborhoods,” Lombardi said.
The Board of Representatives’ Land Use Committee has scheduled a formal public hearing on the master plan for Wednesday evening, Aug 20. No time has been set yet.
The Planning Board, the only body with authority to approve the master plan, has scheduled public hearings for Sept. 2 and Sept. 16. Check here for times.