Planners returned to a room full of skeptical West River neighbors with plans to redevelop Route 34, scaling down the size of stores but remaining firm on the direction of Legion Avenue traffic.
More than 60 people packed into the old aldermanic hearing room in the basement of the Hall of Records Thursday night to hear city officials and a Boston-based consultant discuss their revised plans to revitalize Route 34 land that has lain fallow since the redevelopment orgy of the 1960s. The land runs along Legion Avenue and North Frontage Road from Dwight Street to the Boulevard.
The meeting was hardly a love fest. But it went more smoothly than the last attempt to move the project forward at a meeting last month that had been characterized as the final public tune-up for the for planned $100-$200 million, 10 – 15-year revitalization effort. That earlier meeting veered off the rails; residents said they felt “blindsided” and left out of the planning process.
City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg brought only a couple of city planning and development staffers and the four people from consultant The Cecil Group to the meeting to that last meeting. By contrast, a phalanx of city staffers and consultant troops showed up Thursday night to answer any questions.
Thursday evening did not start auspiciously for the city ranks. Former police officer and neighborhood activist Stacy Spell, pictured, read a two and one-half ‑page letter from a West River residents and others calling themselves concerned New Haven citizens. It charged that the plan as it was being presented would create “an island that will further segregate and sicken us… We request that this process continue with a new and more collaborative approach to develop an acceptable Concept Plan.”
The group was upset at playing a reactive role. “The opportunities we have been offered were to respond with minor modifications to an existing concept. Collectively, we feel that we have not had adequate opportunity to use our knowledge resources to nurture and shape the Draft Concept Plan,” the letter stated.
West River neighborhood organizer Kevin Ewing, who also is a member of the city Development Commission, said he favors scrapping the process and starting all over again, plugging in concepts from the consultant’s work where applicable.
A PowerPoint presentation by Cecil principal Steven G. Cecil included a plan to link Winthrop Avenue to North Frontage Road. Unlike at last month’s meeting, a number of consultants and city staffers were ready to address issues such as finances and job growth. The PowerPoint presentation should be up on the City Plan website later Friday, Gilvarg said.
Retail is important, but the job growth foreseen for the Route 34 corridor will be in medical-related businesses, said Craig R. Seymour, principal of RKG Associates of Durham, N.H.
Clayton M. Williams Jr., small business development officer for the city’s Office of Economic Development, said he has money for two new businesses to be developed “right now” in or near the corridor. “I want to create two new businesses to do business with” area hospitals, he said.
The consultant did not accede to suggestions from the audience last month to rip up North Frontage Road and let Legion Avenue be a two-way road. Cecil and city traffic and parking chief Michael Piscitelli explained that there are good reasons. They had to do with traffic-calming and the need for on-street parking, since some people who live on one end of the corridor would not be able to walk to the stores planned blocks away. Neighbors wanted one two-way road, not two one-way roads.
After Cecil’s half-hour presentation, attendees were supposed to split into groups to discuss topics such as traffic and economics, but most continued to give opinions and suggestions to Cecil directly. He said he would review the dozens of suggestions, ranging from the traffic pattern to who would be develop the tract.
Traffic and pollution were some of the main themes, along with aesthetics and neighborhood cohesion.
Patricia Kane seemed to hit home with Cecil as well as with her fellow citizens. She said the Route 34 area is not the same place in many ways as when the project began many years ago, and those changes have to be taken into account.
Although others favored strategies including starting from scratch and having neighborhood groups act as developers for the project, others said the process is working and progress had been made.
“I’m not saying what you’ve done so far is not good,” said resident and activist Tokunbo Anifalaje. “You’ve done great things. You’ve been available to me often. We have to continue the dialogue. We have to start listening to each other.”
Cecil said he was “personally grateful” for the feedback. “We are truly engaged. It isn’t easy and we respect the time you have put in,” he told the group.
Gilvarg said the city and Cecil would regroup and study the results of Thursday’s meeting. Unlike last month, there was no promise of a delay while the tidbits are being digested.
“We could go on doing this forever,” she said, adding that she wasn’t sure taxpayers would be happy if they spent more time and resources on this planning phase.
Frank Panzarella, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years or so, said he looks forward to a time when children can play in the corridor. He said that although the fallow block-wide grassy area is “the city’s biggest park,” he is afraid to allow children to cross the busy streets to get there. He said hopes this project will present the solution.
How about a plan to RESTORE the community to what it was before Route 34 DESTROYED it, not just "revitalize a corridor"?
The only way to do this is to rebuild a neighborhood that people can walk around and that has no pollution - basically, what was there before. Neighborhood-friendly, walkable streets that people want to spend time in. Top car speeds have to be capped at around 15 MPH, like they commonly are in most parts of Wooster Square, East Rock, Westville and other neighborhoods of New Haven. Otherwise, pollution will increase and nobody will walk, no matter how much the city wants them to.
Route 34 can be shut down and redirected while the city spends some time restoring the area and making it actually healthy again. Currently, the area is in the midst of a public health crisis.
Priority one should be the community's well being. This area of the city has suffered for too long and that's what it deserves. Everything else, including how to get traffic through to serve downtown, should follow.