WHO DECIDES WHAT A NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS?
Residents and developer clash over West Side’s future
STAMFORD — On a Monday night in April, dozens of little boxes clustered together on a Zoom screen with one thing in mind: Zoning.
There was no public hearing on the schedule for that evening. But city Land Use Bureau Head Ralph Blessing was still on duty to explain the ins and outs of city zoning rules. His virtual audience teemed with anticipation.
“This is a first for the Stamford Land Use Bureau,” Blessing said.
Residents raised concerns about zoning and new construction often, but this time, the wave of opposition felt different. Blessing and the Land Use Bureau had organized the “Zoning 101” session at the request of residents — a coalition of West Side neighbors united under their fears about a potential zoning change and construction project.
“The problems in the city are based on this city’s failure to fairly deal with all of its citizens on the equal plane,” Cynthia Bowser, one lifelong West Side resident, said at the meeting. “And that’s all we’re asking — to be respected.”
Bowser started sounding
the alarm on the proposed construction in her neighborhood last fall. She knows the West Side like the back of her hand. She’s lived in the community for so long that she attended the now-closed Stevens School, long before it became the Yerwood Center. And in the last several months, she’s jumped in feet first to the world of land use.
Her opposition to the project started where many neighborhood concerns do: parking.
And she’s not the only one.
“There’s no parking spaces,” Neqwaunia Perry, who lives in across the street from the proposed construction, told The Stamford Advocate. “It’s just really congested. It takes 30 to 40 minutes just to get up and down the road.”
More apartments mean more people mean more cars, in their minds. And that’s something Bowser and her neighbors think the West Side can’t handle. Bowser worries about overcrowding, about gentrification, about what new apartments could mean for poorer residents in the West Side. Her concerns about the zoning change reflect the realities of her community.
The developer, however, thinks his proposed construction could solve some of their problems.
“Every building has a useful life,” property owner and developer Frank Steinegger told The Advocate, “and some of the buildings have reached the end of their useful lifespan, either physically or economically.”
“We’re really the first guys to start tackling West Main Street on this end,” he continued. His family’s estate owns all the commercial properties that line West Main from Rose Park Avenue to Ann Street. There’s also 54 Rose Park Ave. — a stout apartment building behind the main storefronts. Steinegger would raze all the buildings for the proposed new structure.
With all the other changes happening in Stamford, Steinegger thinks that the time to act is now.
On one end of West Main Street, near the Greenwich border, new construction has popped up. The mouth of West Main, on the other end, feeds into a bustling downtown abounding with new construction. The Stamford Transportation Center is only a few blocks away, a hotspot for commuters both coming to and leaving the city.
Steinegger and his lawyers at Stamford law firm Carmody Torrance Sandak & Hennessey want to rebuild the block in a more modern image. Namely, the process involves rezoning the entire parcel, which is dedicated mainly to commercial business uses. Under the current design standards, the Steinegger estate could build retail space along the street, with up to 40 units of apartments stacked on top.
Instead, the developer and his team are angling for a denser building on West Main by rezoning the land, making it a “village commercial” district, a designation that has long frustrated some residents. While the village commercial title gives the zoning board acute control over a proposal’s final design, it also means more apartments, like it would on the West Side.
At a maximum, the Steinegger estate could build about 80 units on the West Main parcel if board members approve the rezoning. Both the developer and one of his lawyers, attorney William Hennessey, say that scale of a project is improbable because of the project’s economic constraints.
Steinegger declined to provide a final apartment count for his proposed project, mainly because the number is still in flux, he said. The property owner must submit a general development plan to the zoning board before any public discussions on the proposal.
Giving the buildings a new lifespan involves fixing the parking problem, something the developer says he’s gone to great pains to accomplish. The West Side largely lacks parking because many of the properties were built before modern parking requirements. (Old buildings and their parking infrastructure are grandfathered in when a zoning change happens.) To erect a new building, Steinegger must build a parking garage to accommodate potential tenants and their vehicles.
While cars and their impacts in the West Side come up almost every time the neighbors discuss the potential development, it has also spurred dozens of other discussions about the West Side and how it has been treated by city administrations past and present.
Bowser, for example, wants to see more homeownership opportunities, something she thinks would foster more pride from residents. And while it is unlikely that the properties along West Main would ever fit that mold, the proposed construction embodies the opposite of what Bowser wants to see in her neighborhood.
“We need affordable homeownership,” Bowser said. “That’s one of the issues — we have been a community in transition based on the neglect of city government. We need the opportunity to have people to have a real true sense of ownership by owning where they live, so that they can control the time that they will be in this community until they want to move, versus being pushed out.”
Though more apartments make some of the neighbors uneasy, Steinegger views them as exactly what the community needs. A new streetscape with parking neatly tucked behind the building, improved construction, upgraded amenities — these are all additions Steinegger believes he can accomplish by redeveloping the parcel. And the neighbors agree — to an extent.
Bowser wants to see the Steinegger estate demolish and redevelop its property to the aesthetic and functional standards required by the Village Commercial district, all without upping the number of units.
Debbie Joyner, another West Side resident, agrees that the neighborhood needs upgrades, but she wants to see the city undertake them without a developer saying what should be done.
Joyner views building less at a higher standard as the olive branch her neighborhood deserves. And if Steinegger declines? “Well, then that means your heart wasn’t in the right place right to our community after all,” she said.
Donald Corbo — a Stamford commercial real estate broker familiar with Steinegger and his work — believes the exact opposite to be true.
“He’s making a significant, significant investment in their neighborhood to make people have pride in their neighborhood,” Corbo said.
To some of the neighbors, the significant investments feel like a double-edged sword.
“Developers are not developing their property necessarily for social good. But they should be intentional about being good to humanity,” said Bonnie Kim Campbell, another West Sider who lives in the Martin Luther King Apartments just around the corner from the Steinegger property. Campbell adores Stamford, even though she feels like everything is changing around her.
Like some of her neighbors, Campbell feels skeptical about the proposed property. She’s watched apartment buildings grow in other parts of the city and wonders what it all means for her. By no means does she believe that Stamford or the West Side are perfect places, but Campbell is nervous about what newer properties could mean in the long term.
“I’m not against people making a profit,” Campbell said. “I’m not against my city doing well. I’m not against change. I’m not against green. I’m not against that at all. What I am against is people thinking that we are stupid.”