A consultant hired by the city said the long-anticipated Main Street widening project in Derby is flawed because its design is too much like a highway, and therefore will not help the revitalization of the Derby Redevelopment Zone.
The consultant, Marina Khoury, said the widening project, as planned, will replace Derby’s Main Street/Route 34 with a thoroughfare — one that is designed to simply move trucks quickly through Derby on the way to Interstate 95 in New Haven.
Those truck drivers won’t stop to shop in Derby, nor will they move to the city, the consultant said. The road’s design should work for Derby, Khoury said, not just for traffic counts.
The planned widening will not attract the kind of economic development Derby residents said they want to see in the redevelopment zone, Khoury said.
Instead, it will attract the type of development currently seen in east Derby along Route 34 — cookie-cutter box stores with oversized parking lots.
“We understand it (Main Street) is a truck route. Truckers take it from (Interstate) 84 all the way down to I‑95. So we understand it is a regional road. But we feel it can be designed much better than it is,” Khoury said.
She said the current widening plan for Main Street has some good elements, such as wider sidewalks and a median to ease traffic approaching pedestrian crossings.
But the design needs more work, Khoury said.
“However, the way it is drawn, this section, sorry if I offend people, is like lipstick on a pig,” Khoury said of the road’s design. “It’s a highway section going through your downtown, and you deserve better.”
Khoury urged Derby residents and elected officials to lobby the state and whomever else to tweak the project, which is supposed to break ground at some point in 2018.
Press the play button below to listen to an audio clip.
Khoury is an architect and urban planner with DPZ Partners, the company hired by Derby to create a new plan for the city’s redevelopment zone south of Main Street along the Housatonic River.
She made her comments Nov. 17 in front of about 70 people during “The Big Reveal,” a meeting that was part of Derby’s “Downtown Now!” initiative.
Derby is using a $445,000 grant for DPZ to create a new plan for the stagnant downtown redevelopment zone.
“Downtown Now!” has been a series of forums during which consultants, city officials and the public have talked about what they want to see in the redevelopment zone — and downtown Derby in general.
Earlier this month during “The Big Reveal” the consultants offered three conceptual plans for Derby’s redevelopment zone — but the consultants also shared brutally honest opinions on Derby’s planning policies.
First, they said Derby needs to break its habit of tearing down old buildings on Main Street.
Even a blighted building there generates more money than an empty lot, they said.
Renovating old buildings instead of wrecking them is a better investment, the consultants said.
Second, they said the city must convince the powers that be to tweak the Main Street widening plans — especially if they want healthy, long-term development to prosper in downtown Derby.
The 2018 widening project, by the way, will result in more buildings being torn down on the south side of Main Street.
DPZ’s assessment was a literal surprise to Derby officials. The opinions were not shared with Mayor Anita Dugatto prior to the “The Big Reveal” meeting Nov. 17.
Khoury said her team was advised not to talk about their problems with the Main Street/Route 34 widening, but felt compelled to do so out of professional duty. She did not say who advised against it.
Derby officials have repeatedly promised the widened Main Street will not be a highway through Derby’s heart.
Rick Dunne, executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, has been involved with the Main Street widening project for years.
Dunne’s agency is overseeing the project, which will see Main Street/Route 34 reconstructed from Bridge Street to Ausonio Drive near Home Depot.
Dunne, a lifelong Derby resident, said he’ll work with the city to see whether the project should be tweaked.
But he was offended by Khoury’s characterization of the Main Street widening project.
“I thought the analogy was insulting to the community,” he wrote in an email. “If the Main Street design is the lipstick, exactly who is supposed to be the pig? It sounded like that was her team’s opinion of Derby. I ignored it the first time she said it, but after she repeated it several times it became quite evident that she was looking down her nose at us. I can’t believe we paid a half million dollars for that kind of treatment.”
Immediately after the meeting Dugatto said she was prepared to meet with Khoury and the state Department of Transportation to talk about the widening project.
“I can assure you that NVCOG and the City of Derby will work collaboratively to lobby DOT for additional modifications that best serve the interest of Derby’s residents and the future prosperity of our downtown,” Dugatto said in a prepared statement issued Monday evening.
DPZ Partners, headquartered in Miami, are champions of “new urbanism,” a design style that de-emphasizes the use of the automobile. The movement is basically the antithesis of McMansion subdivisions that dominate communities.
Instead, new urbanism stresses more compact communities with sidewalks and narrow streets, and housing and businesses mixed in. The roots of new urbanism can be found within the Victorian neighborhoods of New Haven, according to Wikipedia.
Ideally, people who live within a “new urbanism” community also work there — or have easy access to a train station that can carry them to work.
DPZ has created plans for more than 200 communities in the U.S.
The three plans presented at “The Big Reveal” were explained in broad strokes.
Each stressed a mix of uses — small, unobtrusive manufacturing could exist next to housing. Each design had a mix of retail, housing (presumably marketed toward millenials) and “job shops,” such as small manufacturers that could employee a dozen or so employees.
The buildings themselves would be a variety of shapes, so that they could accommodate an array of uses over the years.
The “U Street” option would yield 469 residential units (townhouses and apartments), 96,000 square feet of retail and 66,000 square feet of the “job shop.”
The “Central Park” option would feature green space and 466 residential units, 106,000 square feet of retail and 37,000 square feet of “job shop.”
The “First Street” option would have 364 residential units and 102,000 square feet of retail. The “job shop” square footage wasn’t included in the preliminary plan.
Lisa Brailey, of Derby, attended the majority of the “Downtown Now!” public forums in Derby.
She was impressed with the DPZ staffers and their associates who have been helping the city. The process has been inclusive of the public — and eye-opening, Brailey said.
“I’m interested in what happens in downtown Derby,” Brailey said. “What happened in the past seems to have been a travesty, but it’s ripe to be turned into something, and it’s great to see people coming in with great ideas, and different ideas.”
Brailey said she hoped the design of the Main Street/Route 34 widening could be changed to benefit downtown Derby.
“To create a highway space in our downtown and to then have it end at a right angle heading toward New Haven, it seems ridiculous,” she said.
Khoury said the immediate next step for the “Downtown Now!” process is to set up a meeting with government officials to discuss tweaking the Main Street/Route 34 widening plan.
Next, DPZ must finalize its report to Derby, and make zoning change recommendations to the Derby Planning and Zoning Commission. Then they must go to the Derby commission to get approval to rewrite a portion of the city’s zoning code to embrace “form based” zoning.
