The Stamford Zoning Board held a regular meeting on July 23, 2024, continuing consideration of a text amendment to ease adaptive reuse conversions, approving a special permit to modify affordable housing units at 18 Dock Street, and deliberating on a major residential development at 800 Long Ridge Road. Several items were continued to the July 29 meeting, and two special permits were approved unanimously.
And in this tax change. Because uh, if it comes to floor area, there's no problem. You have the floor area and and it doesn't change, and you just convert it to a different use. You convert uh uh a uh a manufacturing use to an office use, and you have a building that has a certain floor area, and you fit as much office in as as you would think you can fit, but with units per acres, it's different. And this is an example illustrating how that would work in practice. Okay, well, I'm looking at the text change and it's dated February 6, 2024. Is that the latest version? No, there was one send out last Friday, actually per email. And that's where you have all these calculations in it because there's nothing in in this version here about all that. Yes. What the look, how about this? It's it is kind of late. What if we hear from the public and then continue this till next week, and then we can go over the new text that um please that was circulated last Friday? Please thank you. Um so I saw some hands were raised. Umina, let's hear from the public. Yeah, first we have Mr. Steve Garst. Please uh introduce yourself and give us your address, please. Can you unmute um I'll take the next one? Mr. Eric Adela. Hi, everyone, can you hear me? Yes, yes. Um, I would love to be able to share my screen if that's possible. I don't believe you can do that. Okay, um, well, then uh hopefully you guys will be familiar with the building. I'm an adaptive reuse developer. Can um can you give us your your name and address, Mr. Elman name and address, please? Eric Edelman 400 Main Street. Okay, uh I'm an adaptive reuse developer. I specialize in converting historic office buildings into um residential, and so to what Ralph was just speaking about, one of the challenges is oftentimes these buildings are built to the lot line, and so when you look to convert them to residential, even though they're in areas that are already zoned for residential, it's impossible to get them to conform to uh the full residential requirements. So, for example, we have a 33,000 square foot building that we're zoned for all the units we'd like to build, but it requires 3,000 square feet of amenity space that we have nowhere to put because we're keeping the existing elevators, and um there's no space for the 3,000 square feet of amenities we're supposed to put. Um, so while we can fit all the units we'd like uh without the change that Frank's excuse me, Ralph's talking about there's um no ability for us to convert the building, and as a result, this building is already um decreasing in assessment, and so the property tax it contributes each year is declining, it's over 90 percent vacant at this point, and so the situation the city is faced with is do you want um you know vacant over the building was built in 1926, so it you know deteriorating office building that it that contributes less and less property taxes, or is there some relief for developers so that they can convert to a conforming use? Um, but in this case with um less amenity space than would otherwise be required. Um so there's some, but we there's nowhere to fit 3,000 square feet. Um, so this is an example where it benefits the city because it's more housing, it creates a high paying um you know, high tax contributing asset instead of a deteriorating asset, but it does need some help from zoning because as the zoning is currently written, it's it's um it's destined to go to zero basically and just be valued on the land basis and tore down, and it's a it's a historic office building. Um so this this is the Dunkin' Donuts building downtown. It's called the Valor Building, yep. Yeah, okay. It's on the corner of Maine and Atlantic. Um, and so you know, Bill, you made a comment earlier. What is you know, what is the city get by allowing more housing? You know, in this case, it's quite clear, and that the city A gets more housing, B, it gets a huge increase in the tax revenue generated from the building. C it um preserves a historic asset. This building was built in 1926 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Um, so as a whole, it it's a huge benefit to the city and the counterfactual, which is um, you know, the requirement requirements are so onerous that a developer can't make the project pencil, which you know, if we had to build on the roof and add another elevator um that went up to the roof, uh the deal doesn't work. Um, and so at that point it just sits, you know, as vacant space, and then maybe one day someone will tear it down and uh try to build something there instead. But I think preserving our history in hundred-year-old buildings, um, this is the perfect example of you know what Ralph was talking about about trying to help ease or facilitate the conversion of office to residential.