The
Design Review Team brochure includes Design Guidelines but this
would go much further, Pade said. 

“This
really forever changes the direction this town goes,” Pade said. “It’s an
entire change in culture on how we approach land use.”

It’s
one of the suggestions Pade made to selectmen last week after several
discussions on land use and the town’s Design Review Team, which advises the zoning
commission on applications. The team often meets with developers and makes
suggestions about architecture, landscaping, lighting and similar aspects before they go the Zoning Commission. Earlier this summer, the Chamber of Commerce advocated it be dissolved and after numerous discussions, Pade has made the following recommendations:  

• “1. Establish threshold jurisdictional limits. Changes to approved
  site plans that fall under certain thresholds would not be required to go to the Design
  Review Team (DRT) or possibly Zoning. An example of a regulatory mechanism
  that allows this is attached. (See “Technical and Minor Changes”).
• 2. Engage in a public process to develop comprehensive standards
  in the form of Design Standards, Village District Regulations, or Form Based
  Codes (design standards/ regulations/ codes) for specified areas of Route 44,
  and possibly Collinsville.
•  3. Remove/ reduce the use of special permits to regulate the
  commercial corridor (and Collinsville). Instead, streamline the process by allowing
  administrative approvals for projects that meet adopted design standards/ regulations/
  codes. 
• 4. Do not preclude development that is not foreseen. Provide
  freedom for projects that wish to deviate from specific standards/ regulations/ codes.
  (Applicants should have the option to go before the Commission/ DRT to seek
  approval of developments that do not comply with adopted standards).”

Selectman
Lowell Humphrey said he felt the Design Review process has resulted in some good designs and while he said he does not oppose standards, he questioned whether such a process takes too many decision out of the public view when specific projects are proposed. 

“If
a lot of this moved to staff, is there a risk of losing input from abutting
property owners?” Humphrey asked. “What kind of input does the neighbors have
before construction begins or remodeling?”

Pade
said it would be a huge change but would allow parties on all sides to know
what is expected and have those conversations ahead of time. Many changes in the current rewrite of the Zoning regulations
address what abutters have suggested in application after application, he
added.

Still
Humphrey said he still had concerns. 

“My
experience has been that a lot of people don’t pay much attention until the dump
truck back up in the lot next door,” he said.

Humphrey
said the town should also help abutting owners not just businesses. Sevigny
said he felt that such a process is more helpful to citizens, who would know
exactly what the town’s plans are.

“Now
we have no idea and it causes a lot of conflict when developers come in with
their plan,” Sevigny said, adding that the town will now tell developers “what we
want.”

Whatever
the town decides in terms of the design process, it won’t be a quick one. Officials
said projects such as that Zoning Rewrite and the updated Plan of Conservation
and Development, while somewhat related, have to be finished first.

Another
change that could happen quicker is a proposal to combine the town’s Planning
and Zoning Commissions.

Selectmen
discussed the idea of brining that proposal to a town meeting but made no final
decision.

Chief
Administrative Officer Robert Skinner said the town would adopt an ordinance to
dissolve planning and zoning commissions and then create a singular one. 

Skinner
is drafting proposed timelines for both ideas and bring it to selectmen in time
for their next meeting on Sept. 11. 

See
documents related to the discussion here. 

Hear
the entire conversation from the last Board of Selectmen at here. 

The Design Review discussion begins approximate 12 minutes in and the Planning and Zoning Commission one about one hour, three minutes. 

Visiting the Taylor garden of Jack and Carol Nowacki feels a little bit like island hopping.

Enter the West Hospital Street yard from the side, and guests run right into a landscaped patch where some of the couple’s nearly 20 varieties of shrubs and bushes thrive. Turn the corner, and they see a latticed archway set off in an island full of multicolored perennials and greenery, which provides an entryway to a tiered expanse of flowers and bushes.

“We’ve planted the garden so that something is blooming all the time,” Mrs. Nowacki said.

The couple has lived in the home for around 35 years and used to have a pool, vegetable garden and not much else in the yard. The vegetables encompassed a 20-foot-by-25-foot swath of the property, but the Nowackis decided to remove them after wild animals kept swiping the food.

“We’d plant, and they’d eat,” Mrs. Nowacki said.

The couple started to really put together the garden’s current incarnation around 14 to 15 years ago. They also removed the pool and replaced it and the vegetable garden with the islands of landscaping. Regular grass grows in between.

“This became our empty-nest project,” said Mrs. Nowacki.

Perennials account for around 95 percent of their flowers, ranging from forsythia to primroses to wisteria. Just a few petunias make up the annuals planted each year.

“I like so many flowers,” Mrs. Nowacki said. “It’s hard to pick one flower as my favorite.”

Among the flowers, the Nowackis planted bushes and shrubs like holly, red twig dogwoods, azaleas and rhododendron. They interspersed decorative grasses and surrounded the plants with shredded brown mulch, some of which came from wood cut down in their own yard this year. They built walls to one side of the yard with the help of their neighbors, Nick and Connie Genova, and Mr. Nowacki added brick edging to the islands.

“Wherever you look, there’s work we put into it,” Mr. Nowacki said.

Creating and keeping a garden of such scale does pose challenges, like reining in the growth if it becomes too overwhelming. They split one patch of decorative grasses into four when it grew too large and replanted the sections elsewhere in the yard.

And while growing perennials is more affordable than having to buy new annuals each spring, it also requires maintenance every fall. The Nowackis must trim back the plants to “put the garden to bed” for the winter, then hope the growth survives the chilly weather.

“Then in the spring, the fun begins,” Mrs. Nowacki said.

Caring for the space takes time, but Mr. Nowacki, a retired accountant, noted gardening was a release for him.

“You’ve got to enjoy just being out,” he said.

Everything in their garden has a story, the Nowackis pointed out. One of the islands houses a couple of their collections, the rocks they “relocated” from 47 states they visited plus bowling balls they picked up at yard and estate sales and now use as garden decorations. They now encircle one of the 13 trees on the property, which include the varieties of crepe myrtle, Asian lilac, dogwood, oak, chestnut, rose of Sharon, flowering Japanese cherry and flowering plum.

Several statues of angels plus ones of St. Francis, St. Theresa and the Blessed Virgin Mary also dot the landscape. The centerpiece of the tiered and largest island in the garden is a concrete, smiling Buddha statue the Nowackis have affectionately dubbed “Bubba.” He stays out all year and helps them celebrate various holidays with the help of decorations.

“We have fun with him,” Mrs. Nowacki said, noting they are not trying to offend and adding with a laugh, “People think we have too much time on our hands.”

The garden is always changing, and the Nowackis keep thinking of ideas. They even picked up a few during their travels to all 50 states, although they turned down one concept, in which a home lined its driveway with old toilets turned into flower pots.

“I said, ‘No. I’m drawing the line there,'” Mrs. Nowacki said.

Mrs. Nowacki recommends aspiring gardeners become friendly with the folks at their local gardening centers, whom she credits for the help they provided her and her husband in making their ideas come to life.

“That’s like Disneyland to us when we go there,” she said.

Contact the writer: cheaney@timesshamrock.com, @cheaneyTT on TwitterMeet Jack Carol Nowacki

Residence: Taylor

Family: Son, Peter, Arizona

In their garden: More than 30 varieties of flowers, including black-eyed Susans, lilies, phlox, hibiscus, primroses, salvia, peonies, forsythia and wisteria; nearly 20 varieties of shrubs and bushes, such as holly, St. John’s wort, red twig dogwoods, azaleas, rhododendron and pillar barberry; multiple grasses; and trees including crepe myrtle, Asian lilac, dogwood, oak, chestnut, rose of Sharon, flowering Japanese cherry and flowering plum.

Tip: “Make friends with your gardening center people, because they’re your best resource,” Mrs. Nowacki said.

new haven Lee Cruz is always a man with a vision.

On a sweltering summer day, he explained how the shuttered 1915 Strong School is the perfect site for a combination performance center and office space for public and private arts groups, of which New Haven has many.

At the heart of the project is the large 3,500-square-foot room, with easy access to the street, that at some point over the school’s long history served as the cafeteria/auditorium/gymnasium for its young students.

Cruz explained that it will easily accommodate 100 seats in groups of 20 low-risers that could be configured differently, depending upon the performance.

On hand for this tour was John Fischer of the Shubert Theater, Rachel Bernsen, a dancer with The Big Room at Erector Square, Debbie Hesse of the Greater New Haven Arts Council, and others from the community.

An earlier visit included representatives of Long Wharf Theatre, CitySeed, the Mary Wade Home and Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services.

It was a testament to interest in the conversion that Cruz held his small audience of theater, dance, music and visual arts officials for the hour-long tour in the non-air conditioned, three-floor historic building with its original terrazzo floors and Collegiate Tudor-style architecture.

The proposal was put forth by the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association, which has 260 Fair Haven families among its members, in conjunction with a coalition of arts organizations.

Cruz, the community outreach director of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, helped get the association formed, one of the most successful in the city in terms of local grass-roots involvement and direction.

They are calling the project Strong Performing Arts Center, or SPACe, and as they seek foundation and city approval, Cruz said they already have 17 groups expressing interest in renting space, four of them private businesses.

Among those further along in their deliberations is the Bregamos Community Theater and Arte Inc., a Latino arts organization in Fair Haven. A Montessori program also wants to rent two classroom and take advantage of the playground on the site.“What makes the performing space possible is the rental of the rooms,” Cruz said of the various classrooms, some with more amenities than others, as well as the former administrative offices.

The day-to-day operation, lighting, security, landscaping and an administrator is estimated to cost some $300,000, which is doable at 70 percent occupancy. The classroom rents would range from $1,000 to $1,400 a month with some $500 to $700 for the offices, or about $10 a square foot.

“We wanted to stay competitive,” said Cruz, who already has an architect-developer on board as an advisor, a retired technical theater director and a facilities administrator.

The Mary Wade Home, a senior assisted living facility, is a well-respected part of the neighborhood where it has expanded several times and revamped nearby housing for purchase by some workers.

“We have a potential audience other than community people of 200 people who work at the Mary Wade home. They would like to do more for their employees, but all their space goes to the elderly,” Cruz said.

There is a parking lot for 70 cars on Grand Avenue and two bus stops that city residents could easily access.

Cruz envisions some small area for a concession stand in the theater with art hung in the wide corridors upstairs.

He suggested to Bernsen the possibility of putting in a floating floor as a better cushion for dancers.

“It would make it a little bit more protective,” he said.

Passing a whole line of cubbies where the kindergartners stored their clothes, Hesse could easily see this being incorporated into an exhibit.

For several years, Strong School was used as swing space as the city’s schools were renovated in a $1 billion project. At that time, it put about $1 million into new windows, a new roof and furnace at Strong.

“We will benefit from that renovation,” Cruz said.

The city has also gotten a letter of support from six aldermen from Fair Haven, downtown and East Rock.

“A community arts center in the heart of Fair Haven could serve as an economic driver to complement the community that residents and businesses have built in that section of the city,” they wrote.

At the end of the tour, the group emerged onto the roof where there was a great view of the Quinnipiac River, the Grand Avenue Bridge and area churches at one end; East Rock at the other and the Knights of Columbus building downtown. In between, there was the clock at the Fair Haven Middle School, which chimes on the hour until early evening.

The ideas for the roof space came fast and furious: a roof garden, a small bar to serve the theater guests. Whether it would be permissible under code enforcement is not clear, Cruz said, but for now they’ll keep planning and dreaming.