Have you noticed that New Haven suddenly looks a lot different?
From the edge of Water Street to Winchester Avenue, and especially downtown, construction is going full tilt, on schedule or even a little ahead, as though someone forgot to tell builders about that recession plaguing the city and the rest of the country.
In the process, construction workers are on the job. New offices, labs, classrooms, apartments, and parking spaces are coming online. And the face of the city has been changing.
Just in the last few weeks.
Nowhere is that change more iconic than at Park Street and North Frontage Road, where the Fusco Corporation is building a six-story clinical lab hard against the Air Rights Garage. All six stories are up. Crews have moved on to interior work and to putting on the facade — which is the delightful surprise. If 55 Park looks to you like one huge Rubik’s Cube, well, it’s supposed to. Planned completion: early 2010. Two hundred people have worked on putting up the $103 million building.
Also in place is a pedestrian bridge from 55 Park to another fast-risen new landmark, Yale-New Haven’s $457 million Smilow Cancer Hospital. An underground tunnel connects the two projects, too; 55 Park includes a loading dock for the cancer center.
All 14 stories of the 507,000 square-foot cancer hospital are up; workers are completing the facade. The project, on time and on budget, according to hospital spokesman Vin Petrini, is set to open in October.
Some 350 workers have had a hand in building the cancer hospital.
A block away, a third related project, 2 Howe St., is up, three stories ready to be fashioned into 24 apartments (some for low-income families long-term, others short-term residences for the cancer hospital’s patients and temporary hires). Those four stories of concrete behind the complex between North and South Frontage will be an 842-space garage. Pricetag: $55.5 million. Peak number of construction jobs: 100. All told, according to Petrini, “we have $700 million in the ground now” taking all three projects together.
Soaring into the air just as fast is what will be the city’s tallest apartment building: 360 State (aka the Shartenberg project). Its 31 stories of apartments (the top floor will be called #32 in the absence of a floor 13) will rent for as much as $5,000 a month, according to the developer, Becker Development. “We’ve constructed four stories of the north half of the building and poured the fifth floor,” reports Becker spokeswoman Sara Bronin. “The foundation work for the entire site has been completed. The north half of the concrete podium is scheduled to be completed in early June. The erection of the steel structure for the tower is scheduled to start in mid-June. The next major phrase (in addition to ongoing structural work) is the development of the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.”
So far “just under 100” workers are on the job each day, according to Bronin. That number will climb in mid-June as work “ramps up” toward the $180 million project’s summer or fall 2010 anticipated completion.
The 60 workers on the job on Water Street have put up all four stories and 78,000 square feet for the $41 million new home of the Metropolitan Business Academy. “All of it is built,” reports school construction coordinator Susan Weisselberg. “It is not enclosed, and building systems and finishes are in early stages.” Scheduled opening: January 2010.
That shiny building taking form on Prospect Street near Trumbull is Rosenkranz Hall, Yale’s new social sciences home. Anticipated completion: this October. Workers on the job: 65.
Across the street and down the closed-off block by Dixwell’s Canal Street, 170 workers have put up the frame for Yale’s four-story University Health Services building, which is moving from its smaller current home on Hillhouse Avenue. They’re aiming for a Summer 2010 completion.
A hop and a glide down the Farmington Canal Greenway, Winstanley’s far along on the 1,186-space parking garage it’s building on Winchester Avenue in the heart of Science Park. The developer is also fixing up Building 25 there and planning a project at the vacant Winchester rifle factory building at 344 Winchester.
Meanwhile, back downtown, one sad block remains empty and untouched amid the building boom. College Plaza did have popular small businesses in it. But a politically connected developer threw them out with city help to make way for a 19-story condo tower, then a luxury hotel — all of which is on hold.