NORWALK, Conn. — Norwalk Common Council members are again prepared to swallow a bitter pill and apply an unflattering label to a favorite part of town – the word “slum.”
Applying the slum/blighted designation to SoNo is necessary to get federal grant money, Redevelopment Agency officials said at last week’s Planning Committee meeting. The item should be on the agenda for the May 19 Council meeting, although with a reference to state statute instead of the nasty “slum” word, Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Tim Sheehan said.
“An area designated as “slum, blighted, deteriorated or deteriorating” (slum/blighted) is eligible for funding targeted at addressing such deficiencies,” Director of Community Development Planning Tami Strauss said in a memo to the committee. “In order to maximize the funding resources available to projects in the South Norwalk TOD Redevelopment Area, it is necessary to determine whether or not the area meets the state and federal definitions of slum/blighted.”
“OK, our legacy is we declared a slum down there,” Councilman Rich Bonenfant (R-At Large) said at Thursday’s committee meeting. “Officially, it’s now going to be called a slum. I’d like to hear from the other people, I’d like to hear from the real estate agents, ‘Well, now this helps me sell houses in South Norwalk.’ I’d like to hear from the Board of Education that’s trying hard to hold families in Norwalk and saying, ‘Wow, we can brag now, we are officially a slum.’ I’ve got a hard time with that.”
“The issue is more black and white because there is a state statute for identifying an area,” Planning Committee Chairman Doug Hempstead (R-At Large) replied. “… You’re right, it may not be best terminology.”
District B Councilman Travis Simms left the meeting before the discussion on a South Norwalk blight designation began, as did Sharon Stewart, an at-large councilwoman who lives in South Norwalk.
In studying the Redevelopment area in reference to Zoning regulations, the Cecil Group, a planning and design firm, analyzed the current conditions as they relate to the definition of “slum, blighted, deteriorated or deteriorating,” Straus said in her memo. In order to meet the federal standard, 148 of the 590 properties in the South Norwalk Transit Oriented District need to exhibit deteriorated or deteriorating conditions, Straus wrote.
No problem.
The Cecil Group found that 443 of the 590 properties, or 75 percent, exhibit one or more of the following deficiencies:
- Structural age (pre-1978 construction – probable lead paint)
- Location in the flood zone (potential for flood blight)
- Included in the 2007 brownfields inventory
- Detrimental land uses incompatible with residential uses
“I don’t consider most of South Norwalk as truly blighted as most people would think of blight … abandoned buildings all over the place and that kind of thing,” Hempstead said.
“We are assuming all of lower Manhattan would qualify as a blighted area,” Councilman Bruce Kimmel (D-At Large) said, referring to the flood plain aspect.
“If you are using that standard, then most of Rowayton would be,” Sheehan said.
Deteriorated or deteriorating, Sheehan said.
“HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) looks at the area as an area of opportunity,” Sheehan said. “What we are really recognizing is there is a need for additional investment into the neighborhood, not that it is significantly blighted to a degree that we would normally have the standard definition that Mr. Kimmel would think of.”
“This is a bit of a discussion we have been having for many years about the legal definition of blight,” Kimmel said. “In order to achieve certain redevelopment goals, it forces you into a situation where you have to recognize what often could be a very nice community that happens to live in a flood zone, (it is a label that) enables the community to get hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we have to go through this effort, even though it has nothing to do with what people have in their minds about what a blighted area is. We have been having to deal with this for over a decade.”
Bonenfant voted against it. Committee members Hempstead, Kimmel, Shannon O’Toole Giandurco (R-District D) and John Kydes (D-District C) voted in favor.
Leave a Reply
You must Register or Login to post a comment.