New Canaan housing panel calls for lumberyard master plan before building

Other Committee · Meeting of July 30, 2026

New Canaan housing subcommittee wants a master plan before building on the lumberyard. The Affordable Housing Committee's Project Development Subcommittee reviewed a corrected community survey of 452 responses (45 had been lost to a data error) and four scenarios, built on HUE points under Connecticut's 8-30g statute, ranging from 32.5 to 151 points needed by 2032 depending on whether private projects on Weed Street and Hill Street are completed. Member Jeff Williams argued strongly against building at the lumberyard "before the town really does a great job of planning," citing Darien's Corbin District as a model.

Member Mike Sweeney cautioned that converting units at Riverwood to affordable housing runs "south of $500,000 per unit" but isn't simply a cash cost, since it requires restructuring the property's market-rate financing. Members approved their May 28 and June 30 minutes and will push for firmer Riverwood cost data before the full committee meets August 10.

In the full story:

• Who Was There
• Organizations And Documents Referenced
• The complete report — 2,870 words

Source: the Other Committee meeting of July 30, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.

The Full Article

Roll Call and Minutes

The Project Development Subcommittee of the New Canaan Affordable Housing Committee convened a special meeting on July 30 with seven members on the roll: Christa Nielsen, Hillary Ormand, Bill Paret, Bob Strong, Mike Sweeney, Jane Williams and Jeff Williams. Members approved the minutes of the May 28 and June 30 meetings in a single motion, moved by Jeff Williams and seconded by Jane Williams. The bulk of the meeting was devoted to a single agenda item: reviewing a draft report on the subcommittee's community engagement work, meant eventually for the full committee.

The Corrected Survey Report

Subcommittee member Christa Nielsen has been drafting a report documenting the subcommittee's public workshop, held May 19, and its community survey. She told members she had discovered what she described as data corruption that dropped 45 responses from the survey pool of 452 submissions, and that she used AI assistance to recover and clean the missing data. She said the correction does not change the report's overall findings but may shift some individual figures from an earlier draft members had already reviewed. Jane Williams had flagged the discrepancy after asking Nielsen a question about incomplete surveys, prompting the review. "It's always good to put eyes on it a second time," Nielsen said, thanking Williams for the catch.

Several members praised the draft's narrative treatment of the survey data. "I thought the narrative, you drawing the narrative out of those statistics, was really quite well done," one member told Nielsen, adding that a close second read had not turned up any interpretation they disagreed with. Nielsen said she had deliberately erred toward including too much material, reasoning it is easier to cut a long draft than to reconstruct missing material later.

One correction of a different kind surfaced during the discussion: Jeff Williams noted the draft's acknowledgments did not list him as a committee member, an omission Nielsen attributed to confusion between him and fellow subcommittee member Jane Williams, who share a surname. "I'm so sorry," Nielsen said. "I just didn't have your name at the top." Williams accepted the apology but called it "kind of important."

The Case for a Lumberyard Master Plan

The meeting's substantive debate centered on the town-owned lumberyard site, which the subcommittee has previously identified as its preferred location for a significant affordable-housing project. Nielsen laid out how she envisioned the eventual report's structure: background on the subcommittee's charge, the "big ball, small ball" site-selection process that predated the subcommittee, the public-involvement process that narrowed the field to the lumberyard, and a recommendation that any project there proceed only alongside a formal master-planning process.

Jeff Williams argued for that master-planning requirement more forcefully than anyone else in the room, saying he had spent considerable time studying the issue, including a personal visit to Darien to review its Corbin District redevelopment. He praised the design work behind that project as "brilliant," while criticizing some of its four-story buildings as overly dense, and argued New Canaan should undertake a similarly deliberate public process for the lumberyard and the broader Elm Street corridor.

"I really think it would be really and really unfortunate for us to do anything to that site which binds us to using the overall composition of that site before the town really does a great job of planning," Williams said. He suggested the town would benefit from bringing in an outside planning consultant, though he stopped short of naming a specific person by name in a way the subcommittee had actually retained. A second member responded, "I don't disagree with you, Jeff. I mean, in an ideal world that is what we would do, and I worry sometimes we don't live in an ideal world."

That same member argued that if a proper master plan for the lumberyard would take too long to meet the town's affordable-housing deadlines, the subcommittee should be prepared to fall back on converting units at Riverwood instead: "If we find ourselves in the position where to do the kind of planning that Christa would know how to do... and it's going to take too long for us to make our notional deadline, then darn it, do Riverwood — just get on with it."

Members did not vote on a master-planning recommendation at this meeting; Nielsen described the conversation as informing a recommendation the subcommittee would eventually bring to the full Affordable Housing Committee.

Four Scenarios: Weighing New Construction Against Riverwood Conversion

Nielsen presented four planning scenarios she had developed, built around Housing Unit Equivalent (HUE) points, the metric the state uses to determine when a municipality has done enough to qualify for a moratorium from further 8-30g affordable-housing appeals under Connecticut law. All four scenarios assume the town's next moratorium threshold arrives in 2028, with a second, larger threshold targeted for 2032.

Scenario A, the "low build" case, applies if two privately developed 8-30g projects on Weed Street and Hill Street are both completed, leaving the town needing roughly 32.5 additional HUE points by 2032. Within that scenario, Nielsen calculated the town could convert about 22 units at Riverwood — on top of roughly 20 units already expected to be converted for the 2028 moratorium — bringing Riverwood to about 40 percent affordable. Alternatively, the town could build 22 new affordable units at the lumberyard, or build a mixed-income "Lumberyard Phase One" of 101 units, 22 percent of them affordable and the rest market rate.

Scenario B applies if only one of the two 8-30g projects is completed, requiring roughly 84 to 85 additional HUE points. In that case, Nielsen said, converting only the units needed at Riverwood would leave an impractically small remainder of market-rate units in an otherwise 92-percent-affordable building, making a full conversion of Riverwood to 100 percent affordable more likely. Alternatively, the town could build 57 units at the lumberyard at 80 percent of area median income, or 100 units split evenly between affordable and market rate. A fourth option would combine a partial Riverwood conversion with a smaller lumberyard build.

Scenario C is the most demanding: if neither 8-30g project is completed, the town would need the full 151 HUE points from public-sector action, requiring either a fully and deeply affordable Riverwood conversion — with half of units at 60 percent of area median income and 47 percent at 80 percent — or a fully affordable 100-unit lumberyard project, or some combination of both sites.

A fourth scenario, which Nielsen described only briefly as effectively starting the analysis over, was not discussed in detail at this meeting.

Jane Williams proposed adding a fifth planning case: one in which the lumberyard and train-station area are removed from consideration entirely pending a master plan, meaning nothing is built there before 2032. "After the conversation we've had this evening, I think it would be good to have an option like that in there," she said. Nielsen agreed to add it.

The Financing Question: Why Converting Riverwood Isn't Just $500,000 a Unit

Much of the meeting's practical discussion concerned what converting Riverwood units from market rate to affordable would actually cost the town, a figure the subcommittee still does not have with confidence. Mike Sweeney, drawing on Housing Authority conversations, said the number that has circulated informally is "south of $500,000 per unit," but cautioned that figure is not simply a cash outlay for things like new appliances.

"All the financing structure was done on market rates," Sweeney said. "When you lowered your rent, you've got to pay down that loan so that you can still continue owning it." Another member likened the cost to "a buy-down or an exit fee" within the project's financing package, noting that it also draws down equity and reduces ongoing rental income, since affordable units typically bring in less revenue than market-rate ones.

Nielsen said a town official identified in the meeting only as Chris had begun analyzing the Riverwood conversion financing question but was not ready to discuss it publicly, and that further detail would likely require input from Tuck Burman and others involved in the property's original financing. She said she planned to follow up after the meeting with a contact identified only as Scott to get harder numbers before the August 10 full committee meeting. Nielsen separately credited a "Chris Wilson" with having built a financial model, or proforma, estimating the cost of building new affordable units and how those costs would be funded; she said the subcommittee needs a comparable model built for the Riverwood conversion option to make an apples-to-apples comparison.

Mixed-Income Philosophy and the HOPE VI Precedent

A recurring theme was whether the town should pursue 100 percent affordable projects or mixed-income developments that blend affordable and market-rate units. Nielsen said she believes mixed income should be part of the town's approach, particularly at a prominent site like the lumberyard, warning that an all-affordable building there could later be regretted even though it would generate HUE points faster.

Mike Sweeney, asked directly whether the Housing Authority has developed a consensus on how far to push a mixed-income model, said it has not. He described the Housing Authority's current holdings as entirely affordable at varying depths, including tax-credit units, RAD units and Section 8 voucher units, with no market-rate component. Sweeney drew on his own professional background, saying that 15 years ago he worked in New Orleans on the rebuilding of public housing destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, using HUD's HOPE VI program, which favored roughly a three-way mix of low-income, moderate-income and full market-rate units over rebuilding 100 percent affordable housing.

"There is data from those programs in terms of success and the successful outcomes," Sweeney said, adding that he recalled research showing better outcomes for children raised in mixed-income communities compared with fully low-income ones, and that mixed-income models offer residents "stepping stones" to move up rather than facing a steep cliff between subsidized and market-rate housing. Sweeney and Jane Williams both volunteered to pull together supporting research for the eventual report, with Williams noting she could draw on Sweeney's professional materials from New Orleans.

Several members separately noted that current town policy incentives, driven by 8-30g's ratio-based scoring, tend to reward large, single-site, entirely affordable developments over smaller mixed-income projects spread across a town, and suggested the eventual report could flag that as an unintended consequence worth raising with state lawmakers.

The Mulch Pile Site: Why Waveny's Senior Housing Plan Is Off the Table

Members briefly revisited whether the report needs to address the so-called mulch pile or leaf pile site, a town parcel near Waveny LifeCare where the senior-living organization has proposed roughly 150 units of senior housing under a long-term ground lease. Members said the site's deed appears to restrict use to recreational, educational, open-space or health-care purposes, a restriction they believe an attorney general's opinion from roughly a decade ago addressed, though no one on the call could locate the letter during the meeting. Nielsen said she would try to track it down.

Members said Waveny has indicated it does not want the project to negatively affect the town's affordable-housing ratio and has discussed either offering a financial contribution, such as an affordable-housing grant, or a payment in lieu of taxes, to offset any impact. Waveny has also offered to pay for extending sewer and water infrastructure to the site itself. Members agreed the report could include an appendix summarizing the deed restrictions and explaining why the site is not being actively pursued for affordable housing, while noting public sentiment, reflected in a "Hands Off Waveny" social media page, appears skeptical of development there regardless.

Unfinished Business: The School Question

One member raised, without resolving, whether the report should address concerns about school enrollment impact, a topic members said came up repeatedly at the May 19 public workshop and in survey comments but was not addressed in the current draft. Nielsen recalled that a school superintendent had told the Housing Authority the impact would likely be limited, particularly for a mixed-use project, but members agreed the point may need further input from the Board of Education before the report is finalized.

An Aside: Charter Revision Ballot Questions

Late in the meeting, subcommittee member Hillary Ormand, who also serves on the New Canaan Town Council, gave an update on unrelated business: the town's Charter Revision Commission has delivered its final report, recommending six ballot questions plus a contested seventh addressing 12-year term limits for appointed town boards and commissions. The Town Council voted down the term-limits question, which Ormand said had emerged from a split CRC vote as a compromise after the commission could not agree on making the Planning and Zoning Commission or Board of Finance elected. A 45-day window remains for a citizen petition, requiring signatures from 10 percent of the electorate, to place the term-limits question on the ballot anyway.

"I'm not for term limits," Ormand said. "I think 12 years sounds like a lot, but it's actually not when you consider the breadth of experience that we have on some of our boards and committees and commissions." She said she supports another recommended change, eliminating the requirement that Board of Finance members own real property in town, calling the current rule "a vestige of an older time." Ormand said the remaining six ballot questions had broad, if not unanimous, council support and would appear on the November ballot alongside state and congressional races. She said the CRC's full report is expected to run in the Sentinel the Friday after next.

Procedural Steps and Outcome

The subcommittee took no formal vote on any housing recommendation at this meeting. Nielsen said she would incorporate the evening's feedback, including Jane Williams's proposed "hold the lumberyard" scenario and Hillary Ormand's suggestion that the report include a section on potential legislative fixes, into the working draft. She said she would be away for the full Affordable Housing Committee's next meeting, scheduled for Monday, August 10, and asked other members to continue pressing for Riverwood cost data in her absence. The meeting closed with a motion to adjourn from Ormand, seconded by Mike Sweeney, approved without objection.

Implications and What Is Next

The subcommittee's draft report, once finalized, will go to the full Affordable Housing Committee, which meets next on August 10, to decide how to use the material and whether to formally recommend a master-planning process for the lumberyard. Until the subcommittee obtains firmer cost data on converting Riverwood, comparing it against new construction at the lumberyard or a smaller site like Richmond Hill will remain an estimate rather than a decision point.

Christa Nielsen — Project Development Subcommittee member; authored and presented the draft community engagement and survey report. Hillary Ormand — Project Development Subcommittee member; also serves on the New Canaan Town Council; gave the Charter Revision Commission update. Mike Sweeney — Project Development Subcommittee member; spoke from a New Canaan Housing Authority-connected perspective on financing and mixed-income housing. Jane Williams — Project Development Subcommittee member; raised the survey data-correction issue and proposed the "hold the lumberyard" planning scenario; left the meeting before adjournment. Jeff Williams — Project Development Subcommittee member; argued for master-planning the lumberyard before development. Bill Paret — Project Development Subcommittee member per roll call; individual remarks could not be attributed with confidence from the transcript. Bob Strong — Project Development Subcommittee member per roll call; individual remarks could not be attributed with confidence from the transcript. No members of the public spoke; this was a working session of the subcommittee with no public comment period.

Referenced but not present: Scott, a contact for Riverwood/Housing Authority financing questions; Chris and Maria, town or committee staff cited as analyzing Riverwood conversion financing; Chris Wilson, credited with building a financial model for new-construction costs; Tuck Burman, a financing contact tied to Riverwood; Rick Ross and McCarthy, private developers cited as potential partners; Kathleen, referenced secondhand regarding a Charter Revision Commission objection.

New Canaan Housing Authority — manages the town's existing affordable housing; source of the rough Riverwood conversion cost estimate cited by Mike Sweeney. Riverwood — existing apartment complex discussed throughout as a potential conversion target from market-rate to affordable units. Connecticut General Statutes Section 8-30g — the state affordable-housing appeals statute underlying the town's HUE-point moratorium targets for 2028 and 2032. Weed Street and Hill Street developments — privately built 8-30g projects whose completion status determines which of the subcommittee's four planning scenarios applies. Waveny LifeCare — senior-living organization exploring roughly 150 units of senior housing on the "mulch pile" site under a long-term ground lease; discussed regarding deed restrictions and possible financial offsets. New Canaan Charter Revision Commission — delivered a final report with proposed ballot questions, discussed in Hillary Ormand's update. New Canaan Sentinel — local newspaper expected to publish the Charter Revision Commission's full report. Darien's Corbin District — cited by Jeff Williams as a comparison point for a deliberate, multi-year public planning process and mixed-use redevelopment. HOPE VI — the federal HUD program Mike Sweeney cited from his prior professional work in New Orleans as a historical model for mixed-income redevelopment.