The Naugatuck train station is a small plexiglass box with a single bench, a lone dot in the expanse of the concrete parking lot, just across from the loading dock of a post office.
It’s exactly the type of car-centric development that David Kooris, executive director of the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, wants to avoid. A construction site just south of the station will soon be the home of a larger train station and a mixed-use apartment complex with homes on top and businesses on the bottom floor.
“We want vibrancy,” said Mayor Pete Hess, on a recent walking tour of the site. “We want people walking, eating, drinking, shopping using the train.”
It’s paired with a project to improve walkability in the nearby downtown, where workers were putting in new brick sidewalks late last month. It’s an expensive project, and the town will need improved infrastructure, Hess said. Just when he was worrying over the small town being unable to afford the cost, “out of nowhere, an angel came from above, and it was CMDA.”
The Connecticut Municipal Development Authority, formerly called the Municipal Redevelopment Authority, was established in 2019 as an unfunded entity and officially got money and started work last year. Since then, at least 11 cities have passed ordinances agreeing to work with the quasi-public agency. Another 10 are in the process, Kooris said.
[RELATED: CT agency aimed at increasing housing convenes, picks director]
He’s hoping more towns along Metro-North will join in the coming months, and for those that have started, he’s aiming to have projects in the works later this year, he said.
The authority is statutorily charged with helping municipalities build up their downtowns and districts near public transportation. In addition to helping with the planning process, the agency has $60 million in bonding that towns can apply for to help spur development.
”The way that I describe it is: we’re trying to help give communities the tools they need to be the next best version of themselves,” Kooris said. “That means taking what’s there and tweaking it to provide more housing, more support for local businesses, more riders for transit.”
CMDA is governed by a board of directors, and chair Felix Reyes said they’re focused on supporting Kooris. Reyes, the director of economic development and planning in New London, said he’s encouraged his city to work with CMDA.
“We see New London’s downtown is changing fundamentally, because now it’s becoming not just a center of commerce or a center of business, but it’s also becoming a neighborhood, because a lot of our historic buildings are being revitalized to include housing on the second floors and above,” Reyes said.
To work with the agency, town councils need to adopt a resolution to enter a partnership with CMDA. They then decide what area of town they want to work in, whether that be downtown or a public transit station.
CMDA works with contractors to help evaluate the town’s zoning and where they can “substantially increase” housing supply, Kooris said. The town also then becomes eligible to apply for CMDA funding.
Kooris is waiting for the next biennial budget to pass to determine the details of his next steps. Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget included $1.2 million for the authority, while the legislature’s proposal included $700,000. How much money he gets will determine how many staffers he can hire for the agency, Kooris said.
As CMDA grows, Kooris hopes to find ways to connect towns to more state funding and, eventually, cut through red tape around development projects. He hopes that towns that participate can work their way through environmental approvals and other state permitting more quickly, he said.
The CMDA has been a priority for Lamont, who touted his support during the past couple of legislative sessions. He’s proposed it as a way to increase the state’s housing supply and boost the economy.
Connecticut lacks tens of thousands of units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest income residents, and people across economic classes are struggling to pay housing costs. This has posed difficulties for employers, who need places for workers to live.
Lamont has spoken often about the need for more housing for the workforce and painted CMDA as the agency to resolve the issue without statewide control of zoning. He’s supported local control of zoning issues.
The agency is centered around a land use concept known as transit-oriented development, which encourages walkable neighborhoods with easy access to public transportation. It’s a growing movement across the United States and has been particularly popular among land use and urban design advocates.
The idea has been controversial in the Connecticut legislature. For the past few legislative sessions, lawmakers have considered another proposal to encourage more transit-oriented development known as Work, Live, Ride. This year’s version of the bill would prioritize certain infrastructure funding for towns that opt to establish denser districts near train and bus stations.
Opponents have said that it would usurp local control and mean that those towns that don’t opt in may struggle to get funding that they need for bridges and roads.
In 2023, opponents submitted testimony on the bill to provide funding to the CMDA expressing fear that the authority would require too much density and require substantial changes to towns.
But Kooris sees CMDA as a way for towns to get creative.
“We would help kind of focus everyone in on this limited geography and say, ‘OK, what are we all trying to get out of this development? What do we all think is needed to unlock the potential of this place?,’” Kooris said.
That can mean allowing for more infill development of three- and four-family units, more accessory dwelling units or mixed-use development like what’s underway in Naugatuck. Often, Kooris is focused on what may seem to be smaller details such as how many drive-throughs are allowed in the area, the amount of parking or making sure the town has pedestrian-friendly infrastructure such as raised crosswalks.
Michelle McCabe, executive director of Connecticut Main Street Center, said the creation of CMDA is a good sign for Connecticut downtowns.
“Village centers are complex ecosystems that have a lot of different stakeholders trying to succeed in them, whether it’s your small businesses, your arts and culture, the residents who live there, the way that the streets are designed for mobility, for traffic, it all comes together,” McCabe said.
Kevin Brown, executive director of the Norwich Community Development Corporation, said the work with CMDA will help the economy in his town. It has several blighted buildings and former mills, and he wants to see those revitalized, particularly downtown and along the water.
“When you talk about sort of the anchor point for this and transit-oriented development, we are already upping the ante on our economic development and our residential downtown living near our intermodal transportation center,” Brown said, of the transportation hub at the mouth of the Yantic River. “And so this just really is, you know, to use an analogy, throwing gas on the fire for the forward momentum of the city of Norwich.”
Much of Kooris’ inspiration comes from historical Connecticut, he said, when towns had thriving main streets and a variety of businesses within walking distance. Often, he thinks about historical images and maps of towns from the 1920s, 30s and 40s.
“We were introducing the car, but we weren’t yet governed by it,” he said. “So you accommodated the car, and you started to have parkways and stuff like that, but they were used to connect these walkable, transit-oriented communities to one another.”
He believes in the concept of “environmental determinism,” which means that the way people behave is largely determined by their environment. So, there are ways to encourage people to drive less and interact with their neighbors more, just through urban design, he said.
“We create the context within which we can then perform,” he said. “If you build all your community around wide roads and car dependency, then you’re going to drive everywhere. If you build your community to be walkable and mixed use, then you might walk a good chunk of the time.”