Downzoning Huntington Station, Clever Planning or Just Plain Dense?

Map showing TOH's master plan including high density Huntington Station housing

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) has become very fashionable over the past decade and encompasses many practices that make intuitive sense.
• Increased transit ridership
• Reduced traffic congestion and driving
• Reduced car accidents and injuries
• Healthier lifestyle; more walking & biking
• Increased foot traffic and customers for area businesses
• Reduced dependence on foreign oil
• Reduced air pollution
• Reduced sprawl

Besides the AvalonBay proposal in Huntington Station, TOD projects are proposed or underway in Valley Stream, Amityville, Hempstead Village, West Hempstead, Rockville Center, Mineola, Patchogue, East Setauket, Freeport, Babylon, Brentwood and East Farmingdale.  The MTA is one of the driving forces behind the adoption of TODs.   The MTA has established a Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainability with the stated goal of ensuring that “two-thirds of all new residential and commercial growth in the MTA region between 2008 and 2030 is concentrated within a half-mile of an MTA station or within a quarter mile of two bus lines.”

Do more people and mixed income housing improve Huntington Station?
Setting AvalonBay aside for the moment, There are two questions central to the future of Huntington Station and ultimately to the entire Town which is served by the transit and businesses located there. First, is the neighborhood improved by increasing the density of its housing stock?  Next, if increasing Huntington Station’s housing and resident population density does provide a force to counter urban blight, is it wise for the Town Government to mandate a percentage of the new housing stock in the area be reserved for low income housing?

Gentrification tends to occur for one of two reasons.  Consumers may see the possibility of outsized benefits for the money they spend on housing compared to alternative neighborhoods.  Gentrification can also be investor-lead when developers determine that investing in a specific area is likely to be more profitable because the cost of acquisition and development is low compared to the potential for the neighborhood.  Both consumers and investors are being driven by the notion that they are buying a diamond in the rough and that their involvement will help polish the area into a more valuable gem.  Inherent in the end game for consumers and investors is that the value of the neighborhood must increase, which will make it less hospitable to negative influences like crime.  In NYC gentrified neighborhoods have seen this cycle take hold and build momentum of its own – as neighborhood value and thus prices increase, crime decreases which further increases the perceived value and prices of a neighborhood.  The virtuous cycle spins away and another SoHo is born.  It is important to note that a significant side effect of this progression is that along with negative factors, some long-time neighborhood residents become priced out of the neighborhood because as valuations rise, so do rents and taxes.  The engine that drives gentrification is the promise of increased value but in the process of doing its work, this engine also displaces both good long-time residents and negative influences.

Difficult to find successful examples of mixed income housing
The Town has attempted to address the displacement of the good but poor in Huntington Station by engineering low and moderate income housing into its TOD rules.  The idea is that the economically disadvantaged will find a path out of poverty if they live among stockbrokers and schoolteachers, get acquainted with them, and learn the ways of the mainstream world.

Columbia University sociologist Sushi Venkatesh, author of American Project, a 2002 study of life in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes, puts some serious questions to the Town’s theory in his book, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Venkatesh contends that the plight of the urban poor isn’t for a lack of role models so much as reliable connections to institutions that over the long term could turn their hard work into lasting gains.  He points out that in the short term what these residents need is a community tolerant of off-the-books work, something that’s unlikely to be welcome in a squeaky-clean mixed-income community.

Keeping in mind that neighborhood gentrification can be lead by investors as well as consumers, does it make sense to legislate low income housing into the future of Huntington Station?  One of the Station’s current problems is that too much low-income rental housing has made the area an attractive haven for crime and criminals.  An approach that allows TOD projects to move forward without affordable housing restrictions would create incentives for both investors and individual homeowners.  Investors’ profits would increase and/or the density required to yield an acceptable return would decrease.  Potential homeowners may regard the infusion of investment in the community as an opportunity to purchase and polish some existing rough rental diamonds into more polished and valuable owner-occupied housing knowing that the town has not artificially capped the valuation of the neighborhood.

Some potential scenarios if the current TOD zoning proposal is passed
Huntington’s Town Council may or may not follow through on its plan to vote July 6 to downzone 26 acres of property in Huntington Station that would pave the way for the proposed AvalonBay development to move forward.  Even if the vote is again postponed or the current zoning proposal fails, TOD has gathered enough momentum with our towns, developers, the MTA and the state that another TOD proposal is almost guaranteed to make its way to the Town Council in the near future.  The Town itself has has anticipated more TODs in the TOD zoning proposal that is currently up for a vote.  That proposal allows for TOD rules to be applied to other proposed developments over 10 acres, a portion of which is within half a mile of the Huntington Train Station.  Assembling 10 acres close enough to qualify is not as difficult as it might sound.

The Jack Abrams Intermediate Learning Center school property is 13 acres and is close enough to qualify for TOD designation.  Avalon’s 1Q2010 earnings report shows $110.7M in capital costs to construct their 349-unit project in Garden City.  Assuming the current school location would support the same density as the 26-acre proposed project in Huntington Station, the school could be replaced with 265 housing units.  If the cost structure is the same as Garden City, the result would be an $84M TOD on Lowndes Avenue.

Alternatively, there are a number of areas surrounding the Huntington Train Station where most or all of the housing is not owner-occupied, making land acquisition relatively easy.  A developer could acquire all the property between Railroad St. and Columbia St. and have 17 acres.  Stitching together the property between Winding and Columbia St. creates a site just over 10 acres large or acquiring all the property on the west side of Tower St. along with the houses on Allison Ct. results in a 10.3 acre parcel.

It must also be noted that the 10-acre threshold in the current TOD zoning proposal is not difficult to change.  The Town commissioned VHB Engineering to produce a white paper in response to questions raised during the AvalonBay public hearing this spring.  The white paper dated April 9 states:

It should be understood that although the subject property may be the only property that currently meets the minimum ten-acre criterion for rezoning to the HSTOD, there is nothing that precludes the assembly of parcels in the eligible geographic area to meet this criterion.  Also, should the Town Board ultimately determine that the reduction in the minimum lot size criterion of the HSTOD is required to achieve the goals of its adopted comprehensive plan, the Town Board could modify such criterion.

Huntington Station TOD, Not “if”, but “when”?
In case you had any doubts, the VHB document makes it very clear that Huntington’s Town Council has already decided that a Huntington Station TOD is a good thing.  The Council has designated the Station for high density housing in its comprehensive plan.  The MTA is pushing for TODs all over Long Island.  The State is on board, Feds like the plan as do dozens of advocacy groups and neighboring municipalities.  It is already very late in the game to be asking whether or not Huntington Station ultimately becomes the location of TOD, the forces in favor of TOD are numerous and very powerful.  If TOD in the Station does come to pass, a thorough vetting of the rules of engagement is critical. The MTA’s Blue Ribbon Commission provides a long list of factors that need to be considered and planned lest the good intentions and profit motive of any TOD are undermined:

From the MTA’s Blue Ribbon report: Challenges to TOD achieving potential
• No universal working definition of TOD − Actors engaged in TOD had varying goals and visions and thus may employ strategies that contradict each other
• No universal goals or performance standards to measure success of TOD
• TOD functions as both a node and a place and therefore must achieve a functional integration of transit uses with surrounding uses
• Different actors value function as a node while others value TOD as a place
• For example, a regional node may create large demands for parking, while parking may disrupt aspects of place
• Planners lack guidelines for translating location efficiency into concrete prescriptions for TOD – what makes a place has not been codified
• Place making in itself is difficult
• Few advocates for place making
• Inherent complexity of TOD due to synergy of varying uses and functions
• TOD frequently occurs in a fragmented regulatory and policy environment
• No comprehensive plan or vision and many local governments suffer from a significant leadership gap
• Transit agencies can overestimate the impact on value that transit can have if market conditions are not supportive

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