Melissa Bailey Photos
It’s going to happen — the highway that split downtown from the Hill will be filled back in, undoing the mistakes of the past.
That news came Friday, as U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (at right in bottom photo) and U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (at left) announced the city has won a $16 million federal Tiger II grant for the Downtown Crossing project. The plan aims to undo what is now commonly seen as a mistake — tearing down the Oak Street neighborhood over 50 years ago to clear the way for Route 34, which was supposed to connect to a highway that was never built.
The project will transform the Route 34 Connector from a limited access highway to an “urban boulevard,” and create 10 acres of developable land for labs and offices between the North and South Frontage Roads. It will make way for developer Carter Winstanley to build a $140 million, 10-story building of labs and offices on a piece of no-man’s land between College Street and the Air Rights Garage (pictured above).
Click here to read a city narrative of the project.
“Route 34 has divided our downtown for decades,” DeLauro declared at a 1 p.m. press event at the Smilow Cancer Center. “For just as long, we have been trying to reconnect those pieces.” That reconnection has been the city’s top infrastructure priority for some time, and a goal of hers for 30 years, she said.
“It’s unbelievable what has happened today,” she said. “We are going to see this project come to life.”
Mayor John DeStefano made the project a top priority this year. Borrowing a line from Vice President Joe Biden, he announced, “we think the grant is a big f‑ing deal.”
City Of New Haven Illustration
Phase I of the project makes way for Winstanley’s building to rise in the area outlined in red.
The $16 million in federal stimulus money will be supplemented by $8 million the state has already committed. The city plans to pick up the remaining $7 million tab, completing the costs for the $31 million first phase of the project, according to city economic development chief Kelly Murphy.
The city won the grant from the federal Department of Transportation through a very competitive process, said U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd. There was $600 million available nationwide, and over $2 billion in requests. Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation, called Dodd Friday with the news. He told Dodd “it was one of the best proposals” in the country, according to the Senator.
The city didn’t get as much money as it asked for. It asked for $21 million and was granted $16 million. That shortfall will be made up for with an extra $5 million in city funds, according to Murphy.
The successful application came after an unsuccessful one earlier this year, when the city applied for $40 million in Tiger money to support the project.
If building approvals go as expected at the city and state level, construction could start as early as 2011.
The first phase would slow down traffic exiting the I‑91/I‑95 highway interchange by narrowing the Frontage roads and eliminating Exits 2 and 3 on Route 34. Traffic entering Route 34 from the highway will be divided onto two paths: One express track that goes only to the Air Rights Garage, and another “local access” road that will lead drivers down a narrower Frontage Road toward the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.
The College Street overpass over Route 34 (pictured) will be filled in to the ground, becoming a more pedestrian- and bike-friendly street, with underground driveways leading to Air Rights.
Most significantly, the infrastructure changes will make way for Winstanley’s grand project, called 100 College Street. Design for the project is is already in the works. Winstanley owns over 1 million square feet of commercial space across the city, including significant projects at Science Park and 300 George St. All those buildings aren’t enough to hold the emerging biotech industry developing from intellectual property created at Yale University and its medical campus, he said.
City Of New Haven Photo Illustration
Winstanley said he already has several tenants — including some biotech enterprises — lined up to lease space in a proposed 400,000-square-foot development at 100 College St. The building (pictured in a photo illustration), which would sit on the land bounded by the Frontage Roads and College and York Streets, has been in the works for five years, he said. Friday’s news brought it one huge step closer to reality.
The project will create 2,000 construction jobs, 1,000 permanent jobs, and $1.5 million in property taxes, according to the city.
“This is a great, exciting first step” to making the development happen, Winstanley (pictured) said in a post-presser interview at the offices of La Voz Hispana. He said construction could begin as early as 2011, but he still has a lot of work to do, including obtaining several approvals.
The land Winstanley seeks to build on, bounded by the Frontage Roads, College Street and the Air Rights Garage, is owned by the state. The next step, said city economic development czar Murphy, is to arrange a deal with the state to transfer the land to the city, which would lease it to the developer.
Once the city owns the land, it would lease it out to Winstanley through a development agreement, which would need aldermanic approval.
Further down the road, Murphy hopes to do the same with other blocks of highway land closer to the highway, and develop more pedestrian-friendly “crossings” at Temple and Orange Streets.
Robert J. Alpern, dean of the Yale Medical School, said he’ll be watching eagerly as the project develops, because Yale is always in need of more lab space.
When buildings go up over Route 34, he said, “we can fill them up as soon as they can build them.” He welcomed the chance to knit the medical campus back together with downtown.
“There’s been a wall between us,” he said.
Yale Vice President Bruce Alexander said the Downtown Crossing will “humanize” a landscape that currently provides a barrier to pedestrians.
“New Haven is becoming more and more a people place,” he said.
Union Station
In other news, the city won about $160,000 in federal money for a different project — building a “transit-oriented development” around Union Station.
Through the NY-CT Sustainable Communities Consortium, the city applied for a pool of federal money to “help plan and coordinate sustainable, transit-oriented development along the I‑95 Corridor from New York City through New Haven,” a Dodd spokesman said.
The group won $3.5 million total. The money will go toward planning a new, multi-use complex around Union Station, Murphy said.