How More Housing Revitalized a Suburban Downtown

In growing metropolitan areas such as New York City, suburbs often experience market pressure that leads to housing cost increases. As mayor of New Rochelle, New York, from 2006 to 2023, Noam Bramson presided over major zoning reform that added thousands of apartments to the city in Westchester County, which lies about 20 miles north of Manhattan and counts a little more than 80,000 residents. Research by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that from 2017 through 2021, New Rochelle added housing at more than double the rate of the U.S. and saw rents rise just 7% from 2017 to 2023—at a time when rents rose 31% in the U.S. as a whole.

This interview with former Mayor Bramson has been edited for length and clarity.

Courtesy of subject

Q: How did you first get interested in housing policy?

A: New Rochelle’s downtown experienced great economic success in the first half of the 20th century. Then, by most accounts, it underperformed in the postwar years, which was a matter of great concern to many residents and city leaders. So the desire to attract housing was initially based on an interest in revitalizing the business core.

Q: And so you made it much easier to build apartments right near commerce and near the train station. What was behind the thinking that New Rochelle needed more apartments?

A: I don't think it was ever framed quite in those terms by any individual or organization. We were certainly aware that the New York metropolitan area had a housing shortage, which was creating significant planning, economic, and human challenges. And we knew that by virtue of our significant transit assets, New Rochelle was a promising location for transit-oriented development.

Q: Right. Commuter trains run between New Rochelle and New York City multiple times a day, and the ride takes about 40 minutes each way.

A: Yes. And we were aware of the general planning, economic, and environmental goals that made housing in New Rochelle attractive.

Q: Was allowing more apartments near commerce and transit contentious?

A: Growth and economic development are almost always contentious subjects in every community. There's a certain percentage of our population that just was basically not on board with our vision; other concerns were more detailed, relating to schools, infrastructure, or impact on taxpayers.

Q: Did these sentiments in opposition to development change at all after the apartments began to be built and occupied?

A: The controversy surrounding change has, in my estimation, abated, as the plan has been implemented. Whether that’s based on broader support or simply resignation on the part of opponents is hard to gauge. But there’s now a reality that downtown has changed and is changing.

Q: So what did you actually do to allow more housing in New Rochelle?

A: We were working with 300+ acres for redevelopment, and we adopted a five-part comprehensive framework in late 2015 with several essential components. The first part was a “form-based” zoning code, meaning it was prescriptive about design but not use. Those zoning rules, which governed the entire redevelopment site, limited the size and look of buildings but allowed a wide range of residence types and commercial activities. Second, we completed a generic environmental review for our entire buildout plan, which greatly reduced the risks and upfront costs associated with having to do an environmental analysis for every single project within the redevelopment area. Third, we concluded a master agreement that gave a single developer an exclusive opportunity to build on several publicly owned sites, which mainly had been parking lots before. Fourth, we adopted a set of financial incentives that were calibrated to make New Rochelle as competitive as possible to investors and also assured our residents that development would come at a net positive for taxpayers. And finally, we undertook a comprehensive analysis of the impact of development on our services, including schools.

Q: Can you say a bit more about the generic environmental review? It covered all of the sites, not just parcel by parcel. Is that correct?

A: Yes. We recognize that environmental review is a necessary and legitimate part of any significant change. But we also were aware both that environmental reviews are costly—which has often been a deterrent for developers, particularly in markets like ours that have historically seen limited private investment—and that, sometimes, these reviews are used simply to block new housing. So our process was designed to address these concerns. Once the overall environmental review was processed through the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act, the individual projects that fit our vision only needed a much less cumbersome environmental assessment that didn’t require City Council approval or any of the other politically oriented steps that can drag out or imperil a project. This was instrumental in changing that risk-reward calculus in a positive way.

Q: So how did the added housing affect New Rochelle's businesses?

A: It’s still a work in progress; of the new housing that has been approved, only between a sixth and a fifth has been completed and fully occupied. But it’s already having a positive stimulus effect. Several new businesses, restaurants, and coffee shops have come in as a consequence of the new housing. So while the principal effects of the new housing are yet to come, the early signs are very positive.

Q: How about New Rochelle’s budget? What has been the effect of the new housing there?

A: it’s been very positive. The increase in public revenue from the properties where new development is located has been dramatic. That's true during the 20-year pilot period, which we’re in now and in which a partial property tax abatement is in place, and it’ll be even more true when the pilot period concludes and these properties move to full taxes. We’re already seeing other fiscal benefits, including permit fees, one-time contributions for capital and infrastructure needs, and sales tax generated by new population and economic activity in the downtown. There's no question that taxpayers are benefiting significantly from new development and will benefit even more in the years ahead.

Q: Speaking of taxpayers: What impact has this recent growth had on their lives?

A: I would say that property taxes are stabilized and coming in below the state property tax cap. And we’ve been able to make unprecedented investments in parks and open space; in water, such as replacing old pipes; as well as day-to-day services like schools and public safety, which are more robust and better funded than they have been for most of New Rochelle’s modern history.

Q: Often new development, especially housing, brings up concerns about traffic and parking. How did that work in your case?

A: There were certainly concerns about traffic and parking. As part of the environmental review process, the developers were required to either preserve or replace parking to the city’s satisfaction. And keep in mind that part of our goal was to create a downtown that is less car-dependent; in fact, for many of our new residents, car ownership will actually be undesirable. And so we're creating a living space in which one can walk to goods and services and use mass transit to access the entire New York metropolitan area. The idea is that even as growth creates upward pressure on traffic, the nature of this growth creates a compensating downward pressure on traffic.

Q: Did adding housing affect New Rochelle’s water or sewer infrastructure?

A: Investments in water and sewer infrastructure would have been required to modernize aging lines even without new development, but the anticipated growth added urgency to the work. The cost, although high, is far exceeded by new revenue generated from development. And with respect to stormwater and flooding, there are no meaningful impacts, given that all or almost all of the new development is occurring on previously impermeable surfaces.

Q: Earlier you mentioned concerns about how schools would be affected.

A: Yes, there were serious concerns in advance. So, to address those concerns, the city and school district undertook a joint analysis of school impacts. We came up with a formula for how many new students we might expect, based on our experience with prior projects. We looked at physical capacity issues and individual school buildings to identify potential tipping points that might necessitate school construction or expansion. All of that fed into what’s called “the fair share mitigation formula,” which is the one-time contribution to the city that each development pays. So it’s income to the city and school district that’s separate from the annual income derived by pilots [i.e., “payments in lieu of taxes”] or property taxes.

It turns out that, as we expected, the number of new students as a result of the new apartments has been much lower than you would find in a comparable number of single-family or two-family homes. And because of unrelated demographic trends, overall enrollment in the school district has actually been edging down—despite the growth downtown.

Q: Going back to 2015, when these first reforms were enacted, New York City and Westchester County have both lost Black residents—while New Rochelle has added Black residents. Do you see that as related to your city’s housing policy, or is something else going on?

A: It’s very hard to know, of course, because that statistic is based on thousands of individual choices, which may have a whole range of motivations. I don't know that I can attribute our holding on to Black residents as primarily a function of housing policy. But certainly in the broadest terms, making sure that there’s a spectrum of housing opportunities that work for everyone is helpful in making sure that our community remains demographically and socioeconomically diverse.

Q: You were reelected as mayor by large margins, both before and after zoning reform. To what extent was housing policy an electoral issue in any of the campaigns?

A: I think it’s instructive that since the early 1990s, the candidate for New Rochelle mayor who has been perceived as more pro-development has won every election, usually by a wide margin. But if you were to only observe public hearings and social media posts, you’d have a very different expectation. I think the majority of people in New Rochelle—not everybody, of course, but the majority—are supportive of the direction that the city government has taken and want to see a downtown that’s successful and vibrant and attractive.

Q: And finally: What advice would you offer to state or local policymakers looking to learn from your experience?

A: Every community is different, and the details would be different, but the sort of basic structure—environmental review, form-based code, master developer if necessary—is a model that could be introduced in almost any community that is desirous of well-planned growth. And the fact that we've been able to move from a community that was widely perceived as underperforming with respect to economic activity, and unable to get out of its own way, to now being the fastest-growing city in New York State is a testament to the power of our model and to the outstanding teamwork that made it possible.