Allan Appel Photo
Yale Major Projects Planner Alice Raucher.
Three walkways will connect the Greenway trail and the new campus. No gates will block the walkway linking the Greenway to Prospect Street. And a temporary landscaped area with raised picnic tables will sprout at Sachem and Prospect until the theater slated for that corner is designed and built.
These were some of the minor changes that emerged Wednesday night as the City Plan Commission unanimously approved a detailed site plan review for Yale University’s $600 million new mini-campus just north of the Grove Street Cemetery.
Site of the new colleges on Prospect Street between Sachem and Canal.
Ground is already being readied for the two new residential colleges, temporarily dubbed North College and South College, in an arrowhead shaped seven-acre plot of land between Sachem, Prospect, Canal Street, and the Farmington Canal Greenway.
The two colleges are the first the university has created in 50 years. The two, to be built in the same faux-Gothic style of the current campus, are to house 800 students and open for academic business in 2015.
“There are no material changes since the PDD [Planned Development District] approval in October,” said Yale Major Project Planner Alice Raucher.
Click here for a story with a fuller description of the colleges and the initial passage of the PDD. (A PDD is a zoning change created by the city to aid development.) It passed the City Plan Commission in October last year.
The Board of Aldermen’s Legislation Committee approved the plans in December. The full board gave its blessing in January 2011. Click here for an article on that meeting.
Courtesy Illustration.
At the initial site plan review in October, several commissioners had expressed concerns that “Prospect Walkway” linking Prospect Street to the Greenway on the west be open to the public and welcoming.
Aldermanic representative Justin Elicker and chair Ed Mattison.
Aldermanic representative Justin Elicker briefly revisited those concerns Wednesday night with Yale Associate Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs Lauren Zucker:
Elicker: “The walkway’s for everyone? No gates, no closed access?”
Zucker: “Currently no gates — open.”
Elicker: “‘Currently’?”
Zucker: “No plan for them.”
He also touched lightly on the status of the theater planned for the corner of Sachem and Prospect, even though that was not part of the night’s submission, as it has not yet been designed.
Temporary landscape plan for the Sachem/Prospect corner
When Elicker asked for a timeline, Zucker replied, “We’re focused on the colleges now; we’ll come back [for the theater design approvals].”
Raucher said that until that emerges, a temporary interim landscape plan for the theater area on the corner has been decided upon. The beech tree currently at the corner will be preserved. Around it, on a raised circular concrete slab or platform reached by steps from the street, will be tables and eating and gathering areas.
A green screen of trees and vines that can be illuminated at night will connect this temporary area to the college structures. “We’re treading lightly on [the temporary] site,” Raucher said after the meeting.
The unanimous approval came with a handful of minor conditions including that Yale work out a more detailed pedestrian and vehicular plan for the Winchester/Sachem intersection; a signage plan for the colleges be submitted to City Plan before design; and a fuller interim landscape plan for the corner theater site be submitted within six months.
Elicker called on Yale and City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg to consider putting in a stop sign at the Winchester/Salem intersection and to consider other safety measures for the many cyclists who use that route to the Greenway trail.