NORWALK, Conn. – One month after a group of Norwalk citizens pressed Common Council members to widen the scope of the Planning Committee to include all of Norwalk, committee Chairman Doug Hempstead is taking a step in that direction.
Thursday’s Planning Committee meeting will include Planning and Zoning staff going over the process of creating a new master plan, Hempstead said.
“It’s something people have been bringing up at meetings whether or not we have got anything done on the master plan,” Hempstead said.
Last month, Michael McGuire, Jackie Lightfield and Lisa Thomson urged committee members to change the way things are done in light of the recent controversies surrounding an application for a BJ’s Wholesale Club on Main Avenue, the mosque proposed for 127 Fillow St., and the plan to enlarge a house in the middle of Rowayton’s Farm Creek.
“There should be somebody from the planning department that staffs this particular committee,” Lightfield said.
Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Tim Sheehan is the staff person assigned to the Planning Committee, although the RDA is only responsible for a portion of the city and the committee is theoretically supposed to be planning all of Norwalk.
Hempstead said Thursday’s meeting is a “See how this works out, to, kind of test – it’s not a test, it’s more of ‘OK, I get it, it makes sense.’ It’s funny that there’s nobody that I can ever recall in 30 years (who mentioned it before).”
Sheehan can’t make Thursday’s meeting, he said, so it’s a good time to do an informational workshop for Council members, he said. There also is going to be a joint Planning Committee/Redevelopment Agency meeting late this month to get an informal presentation from General Growth Properties (GGP) regarding its intentions for the 95/7 site, Hempstead said, stressing that no formal application will have been made at that point.
GGP, of course, is looking to build a mall on the property. This would require a change in the Land Disposition Agreement with the city for the property, which is part of the Reed Putnam Urban Renewal Plan.
In addition to the introduction to the master planning process Thursday night, Council members are going to be told what has been implemented, approved or in process at P&Z from the current Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD), approved by the Council in 2008.
“The picture I have been getting is there are lots of things that have been done, it just happens to get done quietly,” Hempstead said.
Then, over the next three months, he plans to have staff members from other departments come in and inform the committee about accomplishments that are in line with the POCD, he said. That would include Norwalk Senior Environmental Engineer Alexis Cherichetti and Recreation and Parks Department Director Mike Mocciae.
“Maybe, hopefully, if we accomplish this, it becomes a tradition every time there is a new Council, maybe the Planning Committee at the beginning of the year could be given a snapshot (of the POCD),” he said.
He wasn’t thinking of zoning issues for Thursday’s meeting, but the door would be opened to questions and answers in the agenda with a light agenda, he said.
While no one had ever brought up having the RDA director as the adviser to the Planning Committee, there has been a suggestion of a Norwalk Economic Development Corporation to replace the RDA, Hempstead said. That would open the door to looking at planning for the entire city. “It had some merit and this may lead us there,” Hempstead said.
A Redevelopment Agency is an idea that dates to the 50’s, he said, and many cities and towns have moved on to an Economic Development Corporation.
As for GGP, Hempstead said he didn’t know what kind of presentation would be made later this month.
“It’s a changing moment for Norwalk, depending what they do with it,” Hempstead said. “I have a lot of concerns about a 900,000-square-foot mall being dumped in the middle of South Norwalk.”
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