Stamford Planning Board Special Meeting – September 8, 2025: 2035 Comprehensive Plan Page-Turn Review
Stamford Planning Board Special Meeting – September 8, 2025: 2035 Comprehensive Plan Page-Turn Review
The Planning Board held a special meeting to conduct a detailed page-turn review of the draft 2035 Comprehensive Plan, focusing on revisions made in response to public feedback. The meeting was primarily a discussion among board members and planning staff, with no formal votes taken.
Discussion Items
- Land Use Map Revisions: The board reviewed significant changes to the future land use map, particularly the residential categories. The categories were renamed from R1/R2 to RES1 (low-density detached) and RES2 (neighborhood residential with a mix of housing types). Many areas previously designated RES2 were reclassified to RES1, based on existing land use patterns, infrastructure, and flood risk. A hatching map was presented showing the extent of changes, primarily in Springdale, Glenbrook, Belltown, Eastside, Cove, and Hubbard Heights. Board member Ravi expressed appreciation for the revisions but recommended adding qualifying language to avoid a blanket perception that all RES2 areas could become duplexes or triplexes. He also suggested clarifying that ADU recommendations are for further study, not immediate permission.
- ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) Regulations: The board discussed proposed revisions to ADU regulations, which currently allow ADUs on lots of 10,000 sq ft or more with certain restrictions. The plan recommends studying best practices to potentially encourage ADUs. Board members Jeremy and Ravi emphasized that the plan should not be read as a mandate to remove all restrictions. The chair noted that any zoning changes would require a separate public process and planning board review.
- Parking Requirements: Ravi raised concerns about language suggesting eliminating minimum parking requirements in certain neighborhoods. Staff clarified that the recommendation is focused on the downtown area, based on a 2024 parking study that found 12,000 excess garage spaces downtown. Luke, the transportation planner, explained that actions 18.6 and 18.7 aim to eliminate parking requirements only where parking facilities exist, not in areas like Cove, East Side, or Springdale. Ravi asked for clearer language to avoid misunderstanding.
- Financial Impact Assessment: Ravi asked whether the plan’s recommendations could be accompanied by a financial impact analysis, given potential burdens on city infrastructure and services. Staff responded that the plan is a vision document with over 100 actions, many of which are private-sector driven, and that precise cost-benefit projections are difficult. The chair noted that the capital budget process will include ROI assessments for projects aligned with the plan. Ravi reiterated the need to communicate the financial benefits of development to the public.
- Public Hearing Schedule: Ravi suggested moving the public hearing on September 9 to September 16, or September 16 to a later date, to give the public more time to review the revised draft (released September 8). The chair explained that September 23 is unavailable due to a Jewish holiday, and extending the schedule would conflict with capital budget meetings and other dates. The board decided to keep the current schedule: public hearings on September 9 (virtual) and September 16 (in-person), with deliberation on September 30. The chair noted that the hearing could be continued if needed.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes or decisions were made. The board provided direction to staff to refine language in the plan regarding ADU qualifications, parking requirements, and the financial context of development.
- The board agreed to proceed with the public hearing schedule as planned, with the understanding that hearings can be continued if additional public feedback warrants it.
- The meeting was adjourned early (around 3:00 PM) due to loss of a quorum when some members had to leave.
Meeting Transcript
All right. Good afternoon. This is a special meeting of the Stanford Planning Board. The purpose of which is for the Planning Board to conduct a page turn review of the draft comprehensive plan with the with the consultant and team talking through strategies and actions with the opportunity for planning board members to ask questions and have discussions amongst ourselves. Present today, myself, Jennifer Gazeno, Chair, and Jeremy Linder and Bradley are present today. We have other members who are on vacation, but this will be recorded for their listening as well as the public's listening pleasure. So if we could go ahead and have our presenters introduce themselves for the record and we'll go from there. Sounds good. Eliza. Hi everyone, I'm Eliza Decker, planner at Sasaki and member of the 2035 planning team. So today we really just wanted to provide the planning board an opportunity to talk amongst yourselves, ask questions. We'll go through page by page the plan. Stopping and diving deeper where you guys want to. So we'll start with the land use sections and then we'll move vision by vision. Unless there are unless there are questions that you want to start with. If there's if there's a different alternative, Jennifer, feel free to interrupt. This will be a walkthrough of the draft that will be coming out in a couple of days, not the prior. And I know that there's going to be a lot of overlap between the two, but we could do, we could do either. So I did want to do the July draft, but we could do we could do the new one if if you think that would be a better idea, which I think there's certainly benefits to doing that. Can I put it in the case? Yeah. Yeah. I think uh at least I didn't have the time to go through the new argument myself. I think it came in warn eight or something like that. Uh which it would certainly do in the next four-day dollars. Uh, but I think it'll be really useful for us to focus on what has changed uh from the previous draft because it's a 168-page document and I'm sure you didn't change all of it on 168 pages, right? And there was obviously no need to do that. So uh maybe if you could focus our attention on the changes that has happened. Uh to start with, and then of course, depending on the time, we can go through the other sections. Yeah, I agree with Ravi. I think that approach makes sense. Um, you know, uh the land use section is the one that's had the most changes, and I also I think it is worthwhile to make sure that we're paying attention to the totality of it. The um the comments we've been getting have been very narrowly focused on um a couple of sections and do want to make sure that there's awareness of the totality of what's in there. Okay. All right, so um let's get started with the land use section. Um let's use the revised plan, Eliza. Um we'll start with the land use section and really focus on the revisions. Um and then it was my impression that the actions, you know, are thing in each of the vision sections are things that the the board did want to become more familiar with. So we will focus on the ones areas where we responded to comments. Um in addition to you know, further showing what's what's in the plan besides just what we've changed. Um so Eliza, we can let's get stuve in. Sounds good. I know you were gonna pull up the document. Oh, sure. Yes. Let me get the July. So while Lancy's calling that up, um the kind of most substantive um changes that we've made is kind of noted um in kind of our overview of changes um that will be kind of coming out on the eighth. Um really do center around the land use section. Um we shared an update with um kind of the city and um public yesterday, just showing changes to the future land use map, um, especially kind of centered around some of the um lower density residential categories. And then the updated um draft will also um have kind of a clearer look at what areas of the city have actually changed um in terms of kind of land use from the 2015 master plan.
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