Re: [CornwallCommunityNetwork] Planning+Zoning to Allow Multi-family Housing/Condos in Cornwall??

I read through the "Background for the Proposed Housing Amendments"

document, and as someone who has thought quite a bit about the

economics up here and recently started up a business in Cornwall I

thought I'd throw in a few comments:

First, I quality for both of these things:

"As more and more of our homes were bought by people with income levels

prevalent in New York City, as opposed to CT, there was a steady

increase in the inflation of home values, which was greatly

exacerbated by the COVID pandemic."

And since I've been building out the Market for the last however long

I have 0 income so also:

"As per the 2020 US Census, Cornwall has 732 households living here

full-time. Of those, anyone earning less than 80% of the “Area Median

Family Income” (as calculated by HUD, the federal Department of

Housing and Urban Development) who is spending more than 30% of their

monthly income on housing qualifies for Affordable Housing."

(Though technically we just missed the 2020 census.)

The challenge to Cornwall is that there are no achnor institutions to

provide a baseline of employement. We have Mohawk Mountain, Trinity,

the Northwest Lumber and the Market who provide most of non-trade jobs

(appologies if I've inadventantly missed anything), and at least for

the market only a small number of the 25 or so people we employee

actually live in Cornwall. (If we closed at 2 I could probably cut

that number in half.) Most of these jobs are part time, and a good

chunk are the hours that people don't want to work, e.g. the baking

crew that gets in at 5am, or people working holiday weekends, etc.

Most people live scattered around the area, with a plurality living in

Winsted or Torrington. We're doing crazy culinary experiments and

have all sorts of fancy toys so that helps attract people who are

interested in that sort of thing, but ultimately we are paying way

over minimum wage to get people to make the drive. Going high end is

both a offering for customers as well as a recruiting tool to get

employees.

Without a Kent School, Hotchkiss, Highwatch, Salisbury School, Indian

Mountain, Mountainside etc -- something that brings in big money from

afar -- its hard for these towns to be something more than a tourist

economy. March -- when the private schools go on spring break -- is

the slowest month of the year. Kent businesses have a huge benefit

because the private school kids can walk into town.

Having more affordable housing (or better public transport, haha,

maybe a fleet of self driving cars) is absolutely a requirement, and I

can't begin to tell you how many people reguarly ask me about places

to stay or rent or whatever and what limited stuff that's around goes

to the AirBNB crowd. As a business owner I'm more than happy to have

that crowd come in. But if the ultimate goal is to keep kids around

then they need economic opportunity in addition to a place to live.

And that means making it easier to open businesses here.

Without a series of once-in-a-life-time events I wouldn't have opened

a business here, and it's an incredibly elaborate scheme anyway,

involving chocolate genetics and a factory in Bogota etc. The only

reason I chose Cornwall in particular is that I live here.

And as helpful as everyone in Cornwall is, there's a lot of

regularitory friction which makes it very hard.

"We have had a zoning regulation allowing increased density of housing

development for many years (the “Planned Conservation Zone”) and there

has never been a single application"

Lets make the regulations better for sure, but how do you increase the

number of applications?

Will Schenk

http://willschenk.com

http://tezlabapp.com

On Jun 9, 2024 at 7:04:00 AM, Steve Schmidt via groups.io <Steveschmidtct=gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:

Thank you for your response, Anna, and for the work that you do on the Commission.

I continue to be concerned that a private company like Vessel Technologies that was named one of the worst landlords in NYC could be permitted to develop affordable or other housing here. You mention that not having a sewer system is a deterrent to such developers, but there will soon be a sewer system in West Cornwall. Vessel has also expressed interest in building in Cornwall and this area., and Vessel has certainly shown that it has no problem suing towns in CT when they try to stop or limit development.

How do the proposed regulations address this issue? How could Cornwall prevent a developer like this from building if the regulations allow for private developers? And what about the risk of the town being sued at significant expense to Cornwall residents?

Allowing private developers to build here is a radical change to the current regulations. Did the Planning and Zoning Commission consult the Town Land Use Attorney about the potential legal implications/pitfalls of allowing private developers to build housing developments?

Secondly, how did the Planning and Zoning Commission come to the conclusion that private developers would be better than the Cornwall Housing Corporation or another not for profit?

Finally, I believe the proposed regulations define multi-family housing as being three or more housing units on a single residential lot. Is there a limit to how many housing units there could be? And would this require a special permit and/or be allowed in all zones in Cornwall?

Thank you for clarifying.

Steve

On Fri, Jun 7, 2024 at 8:01 AM Steve Schmidt via groups.io <Steveschmidtct=gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:
Thank you, Anna, for this information. This is very helpful.

Do you have a document that shows the current regulations and what changes are being proposed that you can also post?

Steve

On Thu, Jun 6, 2024 at 6:02 PM Anna Timell via groups.io <annatimellmd=gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:
There is now an explanatory document on the Cornwall website that explains the background for the upcoming Public Hearing. You can access it at https://cornwallct.org/2024/06/03/notice-materials-for-upcoming-pz-public-hearing-june-11-2024/.

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