Supporting housing at the Danbury Fair mall, restaurants on downtown parking lots are ‘big ideas’ for city
DANBURY — Rezoning the Danbury Fair mall to allow housing, and targeting downtown parking lots to encourage shops and restaurants are “big ideas” leaders should consider in the city’s new master plan, a consultant urged this week.
“Maybe the mall is able to continue as it is, but the trends we are seeing nationally would suggest that they need to adapt in some way … and we need to be sure zoning is supportive of whatever may occur at that property in the future to keep it active and viable,” said Francisco Gomes, a consultant working with Danbury leaders to develop a zoning plan for the next 10 years. “If you look at an aerial (photo), there is a decent amount of surface parking downtown — (t)hat is always a very obvious place to look for new housing and new retail and new restaurant space.”
The consultant’s recommendations came during a 90-minute Zoom discussion about updating Danbury’s zoning to encourage economic growth, and to preserve the city’s open space and suburban character. An overdue public engagement campaign for the master plan is set for September — one month after leaders are scheduled to compete the research phase and begin to draft new land use rules.
“We are the seventh largest city in Connecticut, but you go into Tarrywile Park or (Candlewood) Lake and you can’t believe you’re in an urban environment,” said Sharon Calitro, Danbury’s planning director and a key member of the group overseeing the master plan update.
Calitro stressed the balance between progress and conservation had to be struck in the city’s historic Main Street district, in the heart of the downtown corridor.
Danbury property at 9-11 Liberty Street, where the city is seeking developers to construct a building with shops on the ground floor.
H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media
“We have been careful to craft our regulations about a height restrictions, so we don’t overpower our historic district, which is on the National Register of Historic Places,” Calitro said. “We have to protect the historical integrity in the district and also incentivize people to have that density downtown.”
One way to encourage more economic development downtown is to make it easy for developers to convert parking lots into shops, restaurants, and apartments.
“[T]o leverage that opportunity, you have to address the parking needs with something other than surface parking,” Gomes said. “You have one (parking garage) on Main Street and the other one near the ice rink and the train station. The question is, where does the downtown stand with its parking needs?”
The city, which highlighted the parking lot opportunity in a recently completed transit-oriented development study, is courting developers to invest in a municipal parking lot on Liberty Street. City Hall believes the lot is ideal for a multi-story building with shops on the ground floor.
One element Danbury can’t control in its master plan is downtown landowners’ visions, a city leader said during the discussion.
“I just wish some of the downtown landowners had a little more vision, a little more imagination — to look at a building or to look at an area and say, ‘What can we do here to bring the whole area together, to make it flow better?’” said Arnold Finaldi, chairman of the city Planning Commission and a member of the master plan review group. “I just hope there is some of that downtown, because I think downtown will benefit from it.”
On Danbury’s booming west side, owners of the Danbury Fair mall have not signaled to the city plans to follow Milford’s Connecticut Post Mall, which has proposed to reinvent itself with 500 apartments and 450,000 square feet of commercial and office space.
Last week, a senior property manager for Danbury Fair said the mall was attracting new businesses to fill vacancies left by the COVID-19 crisis.
Danbury’s consultant said the city should be preparing for a scenario like the Connecticut Post Mall.
“Some malls are beginning to redevelop to incorporate housing on the site and I think this will be one of the big ideas we are likely to address,” Gomes said. He added leaders needed to “figure out if there is anything the city should be doing to support the future of this site.”
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