April 24, 2009

A faulty connection:
a severed neighborhood gets reconnected

The key to connecting the medical campus with downtown is to tear down a connector—the Oak Street Connector, also known as Route 34. Plans to do that are now under way.

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said the goal of the project is to “create a footprint for what happens to New Haven over the next 15 years.”

At an April 20 news conference, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. stood in front of three easels with aerial renderings of downtown New Haven and unveiled an ambitious plan to “create a footprint for what happens to New Haven over the next 15 years.”

According to DeStefano, the plan will 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 sales, personal income and property taxes.

The linchpin of the plan is the removal of the Route 34 East highway and the restoration of a street grid that knits the city back together and connects the medical school with the downtown.

DeStefano said the plan took two years to develop and is a joint effort between the city, Yale-New Haven Hospital, the Yale School of Medicine and the Economic Development Corporation of New Haven. Reconfiguring the public infrastructure is expected to cost about $45 million and will be paid for through a combination of federal, state and private development funding. Engineering work for this phase of the project has already begun.

This will create opportunities

The thick pink lines on this aerial view of downtown New Haven show the proposed boulevard that will be created after the connector is removed. The white area in between will be developable land. The thick yellow line represents new street proposals.

“This is one of the most exciting projects for the medical school,” said Dean Robert Alpern, who spoke at the news conference. “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.”

Alpern said the plan addresses two important issues faced by the medical school: its disconnection from “such a vibrant downtown” and its ability to grow. “To be honest, we’ve been somewhat landlocked,” he said, “but now, with plans for the conversion of the downtown, this will create the opportunities for a lot of new research buildings.”

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who secured a $5 million federal allocation that has funded the project so far, applauded the plan’s architects for thinking big and acting boldly. “There has to be a visionary quality about how we move forward,” she said.

A private-sector project will jump-start the initiative. Plans are moving forward to build a “sister building” to 300 George St. between the Air Rights Garage to College Street in the Route 34 East right-of-way. Developer Carter Winstanley said he’s ready to break ground on the 300,000-square-foot office and lab building as soon as the state land and air-rights transfer is completed.

“This is one of the most exciting projects for the medical school,” said YSM Dean Robert Alpern, who savored the moment with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

The second part of the project centers on Church Street South. The first step, according to DeStefano, is the expansion of Lafayette Street between College and Church streets to create a local access road parallel to Route 34.

As part of the project, some buildings will have to be torn down. But Monday was a day to celebrate visionary leadership and bold action; that subject, it seemed, could wait for another day.

—Jennifer Kaylin

Photos by Jennifer Kaylin. Rendering by Clough Harbour Associates

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