To the Editor:
The Weed Street dispute should be judged by what it would produce, not by the label attached to it. Arnold Karp’s court-backed 8-30g proposal at Weed and Elm would put 102 units on the site, with about 30 percent set aside as affordable housing. His alternative “Plan A” would reduce the count to 62 units, but it would produce zero affordable units and rely on a $3.2 million payment to the town instead.
That trade-off is not a serious affordable-housing outcome for New Canaan. Using the $620,000-per-unit estimate already discussed in town planning work, a $3.2 million fee would support about five new affordable units. A 62-unit multifamily project in a normal multifamily zone would have to meet New Canaan’s inclusionary requirement of 15 percent affordability, or about 9.3 affordable units. The 102-unit 8-30g project would provide roughly 30 affordable units. Five is not comparable to either number.
The claimed downsizing also deserves scrutiny. Reducing the number of units does not necessarily reduce the building’s effect on adjacent homes. If the 62 market-rate units are larger and the ceilings are higher, the project can remain large in mass and height even with fewer apartments. Neighbors would still face a building that is difficult to reconcile with the established scale of Weed Street.
New Canaan has worked to earn 8-30g moratoriums by creating affordable housing and planning for future HUE points. A 62-unit market-rate building with no affordable units does not advance that strategy. It advances a private development outcome while asking the town to accept a payment that would produce far fewer new affordable homes.
The issue is not whether New Canaan should create affordable housing. It should, and it has. The issue is whether residents should accept a settlement that removes every affordable unit from a large multifamily project and still leaves neighbors with substantial height, bulk and traffic impacts.
Weed Street should not become the precedent for using 8-30g leverage to secure a market-rate project with no affordable housing at all.
Maria Weingarten
