CORRECTION: The photo caption in an earlier version misidentified this pair.
The general consensus of a panel discussion May 8 on public and private sector partnership in retail development was: keep the public out of the process.
The speakers weren’t advocating a closed-door policy to retail development. Instead, their argument was towns and cities need to develop clearer standards and avoid making every new development a special-permit project.
Speaking at an International Council of Shopping Center’s Connecticut State Alliance Program roundtable in Middletown, Neil S. Pade, director of planning and community development for Canton, said, “The process is an exhausting amount of work.”
He and Kevin Jackson, chair of Canton’s economic development agency, said their town is working toward developing standards that allow retail developers to get administrative approval without the drawn-out expense of special permit hearings. “Why do we need to have that unfold in front of the zoning commission,” Pade asked rhetorically. “If you don’t meet the standards, then it becomes part of the special permit process.”
Jackson added, “We’ve identified 265 fiery hoops a developer potentially has to go through in Canton. We’re building a model that says if your design comes within our parameters, we will take out the rubber stamp and approve it.”
Lou Masiello, vice president of development at WS Development in Chestnut Hill, Mass., said there is a “significant brake” on commercial development that is absent on residential development.
Kevin Gray, a lecturer in real estate, Yale School of Management, Yale School of Architecture, said private developers and municipalities need to convince the public of the economic developments of commercial development vs. residential development that usually ends up costing towns more in expenditures than they produce in tax revenue. “The economic argument should work with the elderly … but it’s going to be a challenge,” he said, adding it’s hard to find any place in Connecticut where change is welcome.
Pade said development in Connecticut is going to focus on building density in areas already developed. “All of the flat, dry land has been built out,” he said.
The panel’s moderator, James L. Fuda, development manager for Alfred Benesch & Co. in Glastonbury, asked the panelists how they would educate the public about land use and density issues. “The lay public looks at density as a negative,” he said.
Massiello said the time to inform the public is during development of standards when emotions are absent and opposition isn’t rearing up against a specific development proposal. “It’s an opportunity for the community to talk in a calmer environment instead of in response to a proposal,” he said.
Developing standards absent specific proposals also eventually make the cost of development less expensive. Massiello said municipalities require various fiscal, traffic, environmental and historic analyses from developers. Most towns outside of the major cities don’t have staff capable of reading those reports so experts are hired — at the developer’s expense. “It’s better if the community knows the answers ahead of time. You may not need fiscal analysis if the design guidelines are done ahead of time,” he said.
Gray said from an academic perspective the biggest challenge retail developers face is not community standards but the Internet. People used to believe it was no different than catalogs. “But it will have an impact on Big Box retail,” he said citing a study his Yale students did of Peapod in Chicago. The Stop & Shop subsidiary there allows consumers to order their groceries on the web and pick them up at a drive-through facility. “Wouldn’t you think food would be the last thing to be sold on the Internet?” he said, adding retailers will need to find things that can’t be experienced online to be successful in Big Box retailing.
