Think small at Fort Trumbull

I got some interesting reactions when I floated the idea recently that the city might consider giving Fort Trumbull back, offering the still-undeveloped land up to homesteaders who would agree to build houses and live there, creating a neighborhood again and a new tax base.

Some people said they liked the idea. Some scoffed. Some in officialdom recoiled at the notion that the land might somehow go back to the people from whom it was taken away, since they've already been compensated.

A lawyer with the Institute for Justice, which represented the Fort Trumbull homeowners before the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote in to endorse the idea of organic growth in Fort Trumbull.

The attorney bristled, though, at the suggestion of any further urban planning, which might hinder people's dreams and aspirations for building a new Fort Trumbull all their own.

I was surprised to learn that John Brooks, executive director of the New London Development Corp., the agency behind plans for a big development buildout at Fort Trumbull, was not as dismissive of the idea of grass-roots growth for the area as I might have expected.

He suggested the agency would welcome new ideas for Fort Trumbull, even if there might be overwhelming technical and logistical problems, as there certainly would be in subdividing the property back into city house lots.

"My take is that a lot of things may be possible, although they may not be plausible," Brooks told me.

I get the sense, though, that the NLDC may be much more open to different development concepts than many people in the city realize.

And since it's pretty obvious no big developers are going to surface any time soon and secure financing for a large-scale Fort Trumbull project, thinking small appears to be a smart course.

Brooks said a homesteading plan, to think micro small, would hit some pretty big obstacles from the outset.

One of these would be infrastructure, since the new streets and utilities there were installed to accommodate development on big parcels - a hotel, for instance, or a condominium project.

There would be significant costs in physically laying out a new street grid and legally dividing the properties back into lots.

There would have to be a zone change, too, because single-family housing is not currently allowed.

The weak real estate market might also not support a homesteading plan, even if the new homeowners were given the lots, with the understanding they would have to build something.

The new neighborhood would have to be so desirable that it would be worth the investment. Indeed, there are neighborhoods in the city where a new house might not be worth what it would cost to build.

Still, there is a lot to recommend the idea of the city developing a real neighborhood again at Fort Trumbull.

It might be a short route to putting the property back on the tax rolls. It would write a happy ending to a national story in which, so far, New London has been one of the villains.

And it could be a credit to the city, an urban village, on the water, near the downtown and adjacent to a beautiful state park.

The most interesting thing I heard John Brooks say about a homesteading plan is that it could work within the confines of the existing Municipal Development Plan for Fort Trumbull, which may also be a lot more flexible than some people in the city realize.

The MDP, which would be hard to change, lays out broad development parameters, limiting the number of housing units to 80, for instance, and the number of hotel rooms to 250.

But those could be part of any number of combinations of developments, including either owner-occupied or rental housing units, or inns and bed and breakfasts. And none of them would be restricted to any particular parcel.

With new leadership in the city, it's certainly time to rethink the future of Fort Trumbull.

If there's not likely going to be big development there, you might ask a city councilor, if you know one, what's it going to be instead?

This is the opinion of David Collins.