39 Small City Anchor Institutions • Feature • Kooris for several projects to create housing with ground-floor retail – exactly the kind of development that could absorb new industrial workers without pushing them into car-dependent subdivisions on the suburban fringe. Future Development Strategy The CMDA is scaling in two directions: the agency is developing a district-scale state permitting framework that would allow cities to permit 2,000 or more units through a single process, rather than evaluating each project individually for its incremental impact. “A city should be able to wrap their heads around what the impact of 3,000 units will be,” Kooris says, “without relitigating it project by project.” Supplemental funding for taller buildings in land-constrained cities is also under discussion, a recognition that some cities face a simultaneous paradox of high housing demand and very little developable land. At the small end, the CMDA is expanding its target range downward, from a floor of 25 units to just 6, an attempt to reach smaller infill projects that don’t fit the traditional development finance model. ADU revolving loan funds are being explored for even smaller communities where the scale of need is different but the problem is the same. CMDA’s work to increase housing is fundamental to economic development. A city cannot attract or retain businesses if workers have nowhere to live, and it cannot grow its tax base if its most strategic parcels sit vacant or become tax-exempt by default. The challenges Connecticut faces, with institutions that consume land, zoning codes that block the projects they were meant to enable, and divisions that create aversions to important diversity in housing, are ultimately challenges about who can live and work in the city. –David Kooris The town-gown relationship has created this kind of fear and aversion to certain housing typologies.
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