Fairfield TOD Study

When the Fairfield Metro Metro-North station opened seven years ago, the Town of Fairfield had already completed two years of planning for redevelopment of the land around the station area. The Town updated its zoning in the area to allow for a higher density of commercial, residential, and mixed uses to capitalize on the anticipated development interest that would accompany the new Fairfield Metro train station. They approved a development proposal for one million square feet of office development. Over the last few years, multifamily housing materialized instead.

Goody Clancy led a team that established updated market analysis, infrastructure capacity analysis, and an urban design vision for transit-oriented development around the Fairfield Metro station. Our team then developed new land use and zoning recommendations for the Fairfield Metro station area and the Downtown station area to allow for the envisioned development. Recommended technical changes included:

  • Reducing the minimum lot size of sites eligible for TOD development
  • Adjusting TOD height limits to encourage modern floor to floor heights in new construction
  • Increasing allowed residential density to better match desired building types
  • Focusing ground-floor commercial uses at key intersections, corridors, and nodes
  • Requiring open space as part of new residential development
  • Equalizing parking requirements for dining and retail uses to enable easier tenanting and flexibility of use
  • Encouraging shared parking and car sharing services
  • Requiring electric vehicle charging stations
  • Requiring enhanced buffers around parking lots and structures to promote greater sustainability better
  • Requiring additional accessible units beyond fair housing requirements to be built in new multifamily residential development to serve Fairfield’s senior households

For more information about this project: https://www.fairfieldct.org/tod

Read the draft plan: https://www.fairfieldct.org/filestorage/10726/11028/12429/69549/70627/DRAFT_FairfieldTODStudy_2019-05-28.pdf