Just as the effort to build a baseball stadium in downtown Hartford appeared to be gaining support, the project was delivered a blow Tuesday night. The city's own Planning and Zoning Commission voted against it.
During a contentious meeting before a packed crowd, the commission voted 4 to 2 to give the stadium plan an unfavorable recommendation. The main concern - the city’s existing plan for the downtown North neighborhood calls for small-scale development - a stadium is anything but.
Commission Chair Sara Bronin led the opposition. "I know things come along," she said, "but there's three different documents here that say something that does not anticipate and is incompatible and inconsistent with a large-scale stadium super block use in this particular area."
Bronin, who’s a land use lawyer and UConn law professor, said she feared legal action against the commission were it to approve the plan. She also had serious problems with what she called a "failure" of process.
"I think the uses are all wrong," she said. "But putting aside the uses, I think the way this got before us is all wrong because I think that it's been done in such a slap-dash, hung-together way, where we're getting three different updates to resolutions in between the last meeting and now..."
The Commission’s recommendation can be overruled by the city council. After the vote, I spoke with Bob Landino. He's the CEO of Centerplan Development -- and is one of the city's chosen developers for the $350 million project to build the stadium, along with a supermarket, housing, retail, and more.
"I don't think it changes anything with our plans to move forward," he said. "And it really doesn't change the council vote, other than it's clearly a message that something with the master plan of development needs to be corrected at some point in the near future to make it consistent with our plans."
But if you're going to change a big-vision planning document to match the latest, greatest development, what's the point of having a big-vision planning document?
"To use it as a road map, without understanding that it needs to evolve, it needs to change, and it needs to mature to reflect current thinking and current trends, is somewhat limited," Landino said.
The city council meets later this week.
