Survey shows 56 percent favor Lumberyard for New Canaan housing
Other Committee · Meeting of June 30, 2026
New Canaan affordable housing panel: survey points strongly to Lumberyard site. The Affordable Housing Committee's private development subcommittee reviewed results of a townwide survey drawing 452 responses, 310 of them complete, with 56 percent naming the Lumberyard property their preferred site over Locust and Richmond Hill. Members Jane Williams, Jeff Williams, Kristen Nielsen and a member identified as Mike presented findings showing 75 percent support for the town's affordable-housing moratorium strategy, well above the roughly 51 percent split on whether more housing is needed at all, and 61 percent opposition to relocating parking to enable development at the smaller sites.
"To get 77 percent of people to agree on anything is unusual," one member said of the moratorium-support figure among demographic subgroups. The subcommittee reached no resolution on rescoping its design contract with consultant Amenta Emma, which expired the day of the meeting, and will return to the question at the full committee's July 13 meeting.
In the full story:
- Who Was There
- Organizations And Documents Referenced
- The complete report — 2,879 words
Source: the Other Committee meeting of June 30, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.
The Full Article
Roll Call and Administrative Items
The subcommittee convened as a special meeting rather than a regular session, called specifically to review survey results before the fiscal year closed. Roll call recorded Kristen Nielsen, Jane Williams, Jeff Williams and a member identified as Mikey as present. Hillary and Bill Farrett were initially marked absent but joined within minutes, Hillary by videoconference from what a member described as a town council meeting; a fourth member, referred to only as Bob, did not join. A member referred to elsewhere as Chris Wilson was expected to join but is not clearly confirmed in the transcript as having done so. The subcommittee skipped approval of its May 28 minutes because they had not yet been drafted, moving directly into the survey review.
Survey Overview and Methodology
The subcommittee's public survey ran from May 19, the date of a related public meeting, through June 23. Organizers reported 452 total responses. During data cleaning, 142 records were removed for failing to answer at least one of four questions the subcommittee had intended to make mandatory — numbers three, four, six and seventeen — leaving 310 complete records used in the analysis presented Tuesday. One member noted the survey platform had not actually enforced those questions as required despite the design intent, which is why the incomplete records existed at all. The subcommittee treated 310 as its working sample size throughout the meeting.
Site Preference: The Lumberyard Consensus
The central finding, and the one members returned to repeatedly, was overwhelming preference for the Lumberyard property. Question 17 asked respondents to pick a single preferred site after reviewing all survey material; 56 percent of the 310 clean responses chose Lumberyard, compared with roughly 17 percent for the Locust site, 8 percent for Richmond Hill, and about 17 percent expressing no preference. "My take, that's a pretty strong response in my opinion," one member said in presenting the figure, noting the total was consistent even after removing incomplete surveys.
Members also reviewed what was driving that preference. Asked what factor most influenced their site choice, 48 percent of respondents cited neighborhood fit — the degree to which a site matched the character of its surrounding area — as the top consideration, with 31 percent citing points tied to the state's Section 8-30g affordable-housing statute and a smaller share citing "town control." One member connected the neighborhood-fit finding directly to Lumberyard's commercial zoning: "We're not trying to [wedge] it into a residential single-family residential neighborhood," the member said, adding that respondents whose top criterion was neighborhood fit would naturally land on Lumberyard given its non-residential surroundings.
Jane Williams presented a theme analysis of narrative write-in responses to Question 17, covering roughly 40 respondents who added comments, about 10 percent of the clean sample. Twelve of those respondents said they preferred multiple smaller sites to one large concentrated development. Ten raised concerns about building scale and whether it fit New Canaan's character, phrasing it, in Williams's paraphrase, as "the buildings are so large, why are we dead set on such large buildings?" Three respondents raised concerns about stigma and isolation from concentrating affordable units at a single site rather than distributing them, framing it as a "haves and have-nots" issue. Eight cited traffic and parking, six expressed skepticism about the town's planning process or competence, and three said the moratorium itself may be the wrong goal to organize around.
Community Attitudes on Need Versus Strategy
Two survey questions, framed on a zero-to-100 sliding scale, asked separately whether respondents believe New Canaan needs additional affordable housing (Question 3) and how they feel about the town's strategy of pursuing recurring 8-30g moratoria (Question 4). The town-need question averaged 51.48, which members read as an essentially even split. The moratorium-strategy question averaged 75.09, a markedly more positive response. "People feel more positive" about the strategy than about the underlying need, one member said, adding: "That means that people understand the case that's been made by town leaders and our committee that this is really a strategic decision more than a decision based on fundamental need in the community."
Site-by-Site Trade-offs
A member identified as Mike presented a series of questions built around trade-offs specific to each site. On Lumberyard, Question 8 found about 70 percent support for considering formal housing development there. Question 9 then asked respondents to weigh moving forward with housing now against a longer planning process: 18 percent favored more study before building, 32 percent favored moving forward with schemes now while still planning further, and 36 percent favored the site's largest undeveloped-parcel status supporting near-term development with planning for remaining portions later; 14 percent expressed no preference. Combining the two "move forward" options yielded a 68 percent supermajority, Mike said, while acknowledging the 14 percent no-preference group could plausibly lean either way.
Question 12 asked about the Locust site, described in the survey as small, compact and surrounded by neighboring properties. Responses split 24 percent well suited, 27 percent workable with reservations, and 43 percent not appropriate — a plurality view that the site carries real constraints. Question 15 asked about Richmond Hill, which members said cannot generate enough moratorium points on its own to justify development there in isolation. Twenty-seven percent said the town should consider it anyway, 24 percent said only in combination with another site, and 42 percent said it should not be prioritized — a combined 51 percent showing some level of support.
Question 16 asked whether respondents would support relocating public parking off the Locust and Richmond Hill lots to make way for housing, with parking centralized elsewhere downtown. Sixty-one percent said no, 25 percent said yes, and 14 percent expressed no preference. Members called the result one of the more resounding findings of the survey. "No, I mean from a planning perspective, I think it's pretty brilliant to have one site for parking and do housing everywhere else, but this says you don't," one member said in reaction. Another replied: "I would have guessed the opposite."
Design Scheme Preferences
Separate from site selection, the survey asked respondents to rank competing design schemes for each property (Questions 7, 10 and 13), using a ranked-choice format where lower average scores indicated stronger preference. Members said the scheme rankings were close across all three sites, unlike the lopsided site-selection results. At Lumberyard, Scheme 3 edged out the alternatives "by a hair," a member said, and the same narrow-margin pattern held at Locust and Richmond Hill. One member cautioned that the finding may partly reflect how difficult it was for survey respondents to visualize differences between schemes from the basic renderings provided: "A lot of people do have trouble visualizing. We had fairly basic drawings to work with," the member said, adding that the subcommittee itself may have spent more time studying the renderings than an average respondent could.
Demographic Cross-Tabulations
A member identified as Beth, with help from a member referred to as Christopher, presented demographic breakdowns based on three questions: length of residency, proximity to the candidate sites, and homeownership status. Respondents skewed heavily toward long-tenured residents: fewer than 5 years in town, 30 respondents; 5 to 10 years, 60; 10 to 20 years, 49; and more than 20 years, 166 — more than half the sample. Homeownership status was similarly lopsided, with 282 respondents identifying as owners against just 16 renters.
Beth said the town-need question (Question 3) held steady around 50 to 51 percent agreement regardless of how long a respondent had lived in town, and that support for the moratorium strategy held around 75 to 77 percent across nearly every demographic cut, including ownership status. "To get 77 percent of people to agree on anything is unusual," one member remarked. Proximity to the candidate sites produced one notable exception: respondents who said they lived near the Lumberyard property showed measurably dampened enthusiasm for it, while proximity to Locust or Richmond Hill showed little effect, in part because so few respondents — roughly 6 percent of the sample — reported living near either of those smaller sites. Jane Williams, participating remotely, asked whether the town's demographic breakdown by tenure and ownership could be compared against actual town population data; a colleague said research into that comparison was underway but incomplete as of Tuesday.
Write-In Comments and Survey Critique
Jane Williams reported that she had run the survey's open-ended responses, along with public emails received during the comment period, through an AI tool to identify recurring themes. For Question 6, which asked respondents to select up to five factors that mattered most to them, roughly 40 people wrote in additional factors under "other." Ten cited school and infrastructure capacity; nine cited town character and opposition to increased density, several invoking New Canaan's history as home to the "Harvard Five" architects and asking why the town was pursuing large "big box" buildings instead of a design competition; eight cited parking, traffic and commuter access; six cited local control, state-mandate opposition and developer accountability tied to 8-30g scoring; and four cited cost and financial sustainability.
A separate open-ended question, Question 21, asked what respondents found unclear or lacking in the survey itself. Roughly 20 of the write-in respondents, the dominant theme, criticized the renderings and visual materials as inadequate for judging the design schemes. Five respondents took the opposite view, saying the materials and survey construction were clear. Eight cited perceived survey design flaws or bias, specifically the absence of an option to reject all listed choices outright rather than select "no preference." Seven wanted a clearer explanation of the moratorium point math under 8-30g, seven said the survey should have included cost, traffic and impact study data, five asked why only municipal parking lots were being considered as sites, and several cited impacts on specific elementary schools.
Email Correspondence During Survey Period
Members said seven emails were received directly during the survey window, in addition to the platform's built-in comment fields. Two were from interns expressing support for the Lumberyard site. Four raised traffic and parking concerns. Three expressed a wish for mixed-use development. Others expressed skepticism toward state affordable-housing mandates; one, quoted by a member, stated: "Living in New Canaan is a privilege not a right. If you can't afford to build a home here or shop here to support the town, live elsewhere." One correspondent, described as a nurse, encouraged the subcommittee to consider workforce housing, prompting a brief discussion of a newer legislative provision that awards partial 8-30g scoring points for units designated as workforce housing, distinct from the standard 80 percent area median income threshold; a member said the exact point value needed further research.
The Amenta Emma Contract and the Master-Plan Question
The meeting's second major thread concerned the subcommittee's design consultant, identified as Amenta Emma. Members said the firm's original contract, which expired the day of the meeting, had been narrowly scoped to address parking replacement and affordable-housing massing at the Locust and Richmond Hill sites, producing the design schemes reviewed in the survey. With Lumberyard now the clear preferred site, one member said unspent contract funds would lapse at fiscal year-end and the subcommittee would need to negotiate new scope and secure a new budget allocation to continue the work.
Much of the ensuing discussion concerned whether the subcommittee's mandate extends to commissioning a full master plan for the roughly 100-unit Lumberyard property, versus a narrower brief focused only on the housing needed to meet 2028 and 2032 moratorium point requirements. One member argued for pursuing the fuller scope regardless of survey results: "I think regardless of the survey results I'm leaning strongly towards it needing to be part of a master plan," the member said, while acknowledging uncertainty about whether master planning "is within our mandate or outside of our mandate." Another member cautioned against delay: "We lose it. If we wait to have a master plan for the whole site, you're going to lose at least a year, and I don't know that we have a year to lose if we have 100 units to be built by" the 2032 deadline.
Members discussed scenario planning tied to the moratorium math, noting that if projects referred to as Elm, Hill and Irving move forward as expected, the town would need roughly 32 additional points toward its 2032 target; without those projects, the figure could run as high as 100 points. Members discussed converting portions of the Riverwood property as a fallback but noted that roughly 20 percent of Riverwood is already committed to the 2028 moratorium cycle, and that going only partway toward full conversion "doesn't make a lot of sense" without also going deeper on affordability. One member floated planning Lumberyard for a large unit count, such as 100 units, while reserving flexibility to build fewer of them as affordable depending on how close the town lands to its point target closer to the deadline. A member representing the Planning and Zoning Commission raised the idea of pairing any Lumberyard-specific work with a broader corridor study of the surrounding stretch of Elm Street, noting the town had not commissioned a site-specific plan for a town-owned parcel before, though it had done broader area studies, including one around 2014 or 2015 tied to a project referred to as the train station area, led at the time by a former town official named Steven Lasslo.
No resolution was reached. The member coordinating with the consultant said she would circle back with several other town officials, referred to as Tiana, Amy, Matt Moro and Scott, to gauge opinion before returning with a revised proposal. The subcommittee agreed to bring the contract question back to the full Affordable Housing Committee at its meeting Monday, July 13, after initially misstating the date as July 14.
Committee Takeaways and Scheduling
Closing the survey discussion, the meeting's lead facilitator summarized several takeaways: that survey respondents skewed toward longtime residents and homeowners; that Lumberyard was the overwhelming site preference; that design scheme preference showed little differentiation at any site; that support for the moratorium strategy exceeded the perceived need for affordable housing itself; and that residents were not open to relocating parking to ease development at the smaller sites. Members agreed to compile individual write-ups and tables from their respective sections of the survey analysis and send them to the meeting's organizer, who said she was available the weeks of July 20 and July 27 to merge the material into a draft report. After discussion of scheduling conflicts, members settled on Tuesday, July 21, at 7 p.m. for the subcommittee's next meeting. One member asked whether the subcommittee itself would formally end, or "sunset," once its report is delivered; another responded that the broader Affordable Housing Committee would continue to exist but "might not meet regularly" as a subcommittee once this phase of work concludes. The meeting adjourned on a motion that was seconded and approved without objection.
Kristen Nielsen — subcommittee member, present at roll call, appeared to facilitate portions of the meeting; exact role not confirmed against a roster. Jane Williams — subcommittee member, present at roll call; presented write-in comment theme analysis and asked about demographic benchmarking. Jeff Williams — subcommittee member, present at roll call. Mike (referred to at roll call as Mikey) — subcommittee member, present at roll call; presented site trade-off question analysis. Surname not stated in the transcript. Hillary — subcommittee member, marked absent at roll call, joined later by videoconference from a town council meeting. Surname given in the transcript is uncertain (see review). Bill Farrett — subcommittee member, marked absent at roll call, joined shortly after. Bob — subcommittee member, marked absent and did not join. Surname unclear (see review). Chris Wilson (also referred to as Christopher) — expected to join the meeting; participation not clearly confirmed in the transcript. Beth — presented demographic cross-tabulation analysis; not named at roll call. Role and surname unclear (see review). One unnamed member of the public — attended and offered comment praising the demographic analysis presented.
Amenta Emma — design consultant retained by the subcommittee; contract for parking and affordable-housing design work at the Locust and Richmond Hill sites expired the day of the meeting, prompting discussion of a rescoped agreement including possible master-plan work at Lumberyard. Connecticut General Statutes Section 8-30g — the state's affordable-housing land use appeals statute; cited repeatedly as the basis for the town's moratorium strategy and point-scoring system, including a newer provision for workforce-designated housing units. New Canaan Planning and Zoning Commission — referenced as the likely body to adopt any zoning overlay enabling affordable housing on the Lumberyard site, and as a possible lead on a broader Elm Street corridor study. Survey (May 19 to June 23, 2026) — the subcommittee's own public survey on affordable housing site selection, the subject of Tuesday's meeting; 452 total responses, 310 used in the reported analysis. Riverwood — an existing or planned affordable-housing property discussed as a fallback "bank" of moratorium points for the 2028 and 2032 cycles. Elm, Hill and Irving projects — developments referenced as contributing toward the town's 2032 moratorium point target; not otherwise detailed in the transcript.