Officials outline plans to reconfigure Route 34

Over the next decade the “highway to nowhere” will vanish and be replaced by new stores, offices, and homes.

In the 1950s city officials believed that New Haven needed a highway link to the towns of the Lower Naugatuck Valley. The Oak Street Connector, a freeway extending from I-95 northwest, and also known as Route 34, was thought to be the answer—but the project was an undisputed failure. To clear the way for a never-completed segment of highway that severed Yale’s medical campus and the nearby Hill neighborhood from the downtown, 881 families were displaced and 350 buildings razed.

Now, more than 50 years after it was built, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. has proposed a plan to remove the connector, restore the street grid, and reknit the city’s fabric.

The plan, which DeStefano announced at an April 20 press conference, would nearly double the size of the city’s central business district; create 4.5 million square feet of new commercial, institutional, retail, and residential space; produce 12,000 permanent jobs; and generate more than $100 million annually in tax revenue.

A joint effort of the city, Yale-New Haven Hospital, the School of Medicine, and the Economic Development Corporation of New Haven, the plan is by all measures ambitious. A $5 million federal grant secured by U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro has funded the project so far. The cost of the plan’s infrastructure, estimated at $45 million, will be financed through federal, state, and private funding. Engineering work for this phase of the project has already begun, but it is expected to take years to complete.

A private-sector project will jump-start the initiative. Winstanley Enterprises, a property development firm based in Concord, Mass., is ready to break ground on a 300,000-square-foot office and laboratory “sister building” to 300 George Street between the Air Rights Garage and College Street in the Route 34 right-of-way as soon as the state land and air rights are transferred. Developer Carter Winstanley, owner of 300 George, envisions closing Route 34’s Exit 3, with several lanes of traffic rerouted. An existing entrance to the Air Rights Garage would remain.

“We are just ecstatic with the vision that the downtown will extend to the medical center and that we will be a part of it,” said Dean Robert J. Alpern, M.D., Ensign Professor of Medicine. Alpern said the plan addresses two important issues: the medical school’s disconnection from “such a vibrant downtown” and its ability to grow. The only limitation on growth in research and clinical care is space, he said.

“We’ve been somewhat landlocked. But now, with plans for the conversion of the downtown, this will create opportunities for a lot of new research buildings,” Alpern said.

The plan is “going to be a positive circumstance for the university,” said Bruce D. Alexander, J.D., Yale’s vice president for New Haven and state affairs and campus development. “We’ve been working hard whenever we had the opportunity to reconnect the central campus and the medical campus. This will be a very significant step forward.”

DeStefano said the plan is meant to “create a footprint for what happens to New Haven over the next 15 years.”

—Charles Gershman

A new ARRA for science as stimulus package boosts NIH grants around the country

In his inaugural address in January, President Barack Obama pledged to “restore science to its rightful place” and “not only to create jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” These goals are intertwined in a $10 billion allocation to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the economic stimulus package approved by Congress, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The package comes as welcome relief to biomedical scientists at the School of Medicine and elsewhere who have endured years of flat NIH budgets that result in de facto cuts after adjusting for inflation.

The ARRA moneys provided to NIH for “extramural” distribution include $8.2 billion for research grants, $1 billion to support construction and renovation at NIH-funded research institutions, and $300 million for the purchase of scientific equipment. An additional $500 million will support improvements and construction at NIH’s own research facilities.

According to Carolyn W. Slayman, PH.D., deputy dean for academic and scientific affairs, as of June 1 Yale scientists had completed more than 650 ARRA grant applications requesting nearly $387 million in support. Those grants are in addition to typical NIH awards, which last fiscal year totaled $350 million.

More than 250 of the ARRA applications, totaling almost a quarter billion dollars, were made under two new NIH grant initiatives. Challenge Grants, which will account for at least $200 million of the stimulus funding, will provide up to $500,000 per year for two years, and are aimed at what NIH terms “priority areas of research,” such as HIV therapy, pain management, and health disparities. Another $200 million has been assigned to Grand Opportunities, or “GO,” grants, which are targeted at “high-impact, well-defined, large-scale” research projects in such areas as nanotechnology, genomics, and Alzheimer disease.

In addition to providing jobs for postdocs, lab techs, administrators, and other Yale staff members, Slayman says, the ARRA grants will also indirectly, but significantly, stimulate the economy by providing revenue and jobs to equipment vendors and manufacturers, and to construction firms. Given the high historical percentage of Yale grant applications funded by the NIH, Slayman hopes that a “tsunami” of ARRA funds will begin arriving on campus this fall.

—Peter Farley

et cetera

Yale, city address chronic disease

New Haven is the first U.S. city to participate in Community Interventions for Health (CIH), an international project to address chronic disease.

Working with Yale’s Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE), CIH will study the effectiveness of community interventions in reducing the prevalence of chronic diseases. In New Haven, high rates of obesity put children and minority groups at elevated risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

CIH, which works with communities to improve health, is spearheaded globally by the nonprofit Oxford Health Alliance and locally by CARE, which is part of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation.

“We hope that innovative research conducted at Yale can be translated into vital policies and programs to prevent disease and promote the health of our citizens right here in New Haven,” said Jeannette R. Ickovics, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and public health, professor of psychology, and director of CARE.

—John Curtis

Emergency medicine a department

The Yale Corporation granted departmental status in June to the Section of Emergency Medicine, which had been part of the Department of Surgery since 1991. Gail D’Onofrio, M.D., the current section chief, was named chair of the new department.

A faculty committee recommended unanimously last fall that the section, which met standards for academic and programmatic importance, was ready to be elevated to departmental status. Emergency medicine has emerged as a distinct discipline during the past two decades, and 83 percent of all emergency medicine programs nationally are located within independent departments.

Emergency medicine is now the 28th academic department at the school. Since its creation as a section, it has grown from five to 33 faculty members, who have responsibility for 72,500 patient visits per year at Yale-New Haven Hospital and 21,600 visits annually at the Yale-New Haven Shoreline Medical Center in Guilford.

—J.C.


			Originally published in Yale Medicine, Autumn 2009. Copyright © 2009 Yale School of Medicine. All rights reserved.