Bio Lab Plan Un-Jammed

It seemed as though Yale’s plan to build a new biology lab broke through a legislative logjam at City Hall Wednesday night.

Aftewards, Yale’s top official present lined up a phone date with the city’s top legislator — just to make sure. 

Yale Vice-President For New Haven Affairs Lauren Zucker made that appointment with Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker after a vote that took place at a joint hearing of the board’s Legislation and Community Development Committees.

The committees voted unanimously to approve an ​“overall parking plan” (OPP) Yale submitted for its central and medical campuses. The matter now goes before the full board for a final vote.

Yale needs that final full board vote in order to proceed with the plan to demolish its current J.W. Gibbs Laboratory on Whitney Avenue and build a 280,000 square-foot replacement.

Alders backed by Yale’s UNITE HERE unions have held up that plan for a half year by invoking a newly amended city ordinance requiring that they approve an OPP whenever Yale embarks on a major building project, even if (as in this case) the project includes no parking changes. They hesitated to schedule committee hearings on the OPP. Then they held a six-hour hearing without voting on the matter, continuing it another month, to Wednesday night’s second session.

Alders said they were doing so to press Yale to address widespread frustration in New Haven over university employees hogging neighborhood street parking spaces. ​“We heard the cry of the city,” Newhallville Alder Dlephine Clyburn remarked before casting her yes vote. Yale and business community backers claimed the unions have been using the parking issue as a pretext, hijacking a project that will create 280 construction jobs and send $4.4 million or more in building fees into city coffers in order to press unrelated campus labor concerns.

Whatever the truth, Wednesday night the committee finally voted to approve the OPP — with two conditions.

Westville Alder Adam Marchand, who works for UNITE HERE, authored those conditions.

The first condition has three parts. It requires Yale to:

• Open a satellite parking lot near New Haven’s Hamden or North Haven border, where commuters can park and then take the university’s shuttle to work. Many New Haveners complain that Yale employees park instead on East Rock, Hill and Dixwell residential streets for free all day, then catch the shuttle. Left unstated in the condition’s language is exactly where the lot should be, how many cars its should accommodate, or what hours the shuttle should run.

• ​“Partner with local transit agencies in order to provide reduced cost monthly transit passes to Yale commuters.” Unstated is how Yale should ​“partner.”

• Create a plan along with the city to ​“improve bicycle infrastructure to connect neighborhoods of New Haven to Yale’s Campus and to Downtown.” After the meeting, Marchand said he’s picking up on a call by cycling advocates to have four protected bike lanes run into downtown from the city’s eastern, western, northern, and southern borders by 2020. The city’s planning to build the first of the four now with state money.

The second condition adds details to how to go about resolving these OPP disputes with Yale for future projects. Any time Yale requests zoning relief or City Plan Commission approvals for new building projects, it would first ask the alders to certify whether the request falls under the new rule and thus requires an OPP approval from the alders, or whether it need not go through the process.

Marchand acknowledged at the hearing that he worded the first condition’s three parts vaguely. They represent goals, he said; the alders will discuss the conditions with Yale and then refine the wording when the full board takes up the matter — which is now scheduled to happen in September. (The full board meets only once in August. The matter gets a ​“first reading” then. The board would then debate and vote the measure at the next full meeting, on Sept. 7.)

Marchand and fellow alders praised the conditions for addressing the campus parking crunch by promoting alternatives to solo car commuting rather than pushing Yale to build new garages or parking lots.

“Yale does some good things” to promote alternative transit, Marchand said. ​“I believe it can do more.”

Let’s Talk

Lauren Zucker was less enthusiastic about the alders’ vote.

She said afterwards that it was too soon to weigh in on all the conditions; she had just seen the conditions for the first time. But she labeled them as ​“arbitrary” and argued that the vote still needlessly delays a construction project that could have otherwise gotten 260 people to work already.

She said the alders should have at least put the matter on the unanimous consent calendar for next week’s full board meeting rather than wait yet another month to have it considered under the normal process of having first and second readings. (This story details of how the alders fast-tracked a different project, in Fair Haven, by finding a way to have it considered under the unanimous consent calendar.” Alders can also schedule a special full meeting to move faster if they choose.)

Zucker also argued Yale doesn’t need to create a commuter parking lot. Yale’s garage on Winchester Avenue already has empty spaces, and commuters can catch the Yale Shuttle from there, she said.

As the lawmakers and the public filtered out of the alders’ chambers after the meeting, Zucker buttonholed Board of Alders President Walker.

“Why don’t you just unanimously pass it on Aug. 1 so we can get moving on the project?” Zucker asked her.

“I hear your request,” Walker responded.

Zucker then asked whether — if this amended version of the OPP matter indeed gets final approval by the full Board of Alders — Yale can finally get started building the Gibbs tower.

“I’ll call you tomorrow” to discuss it,” Walker responded.

“Call me tomorrow,” Zucker said. They then coordinated schedules — meaning that high-level conversation between Yale and the Board of Alders about difficult New Haven issues might actually resume instead of the two sides primarily taking public potshots at each other.

What About Parking?

It took close to two hours Monday night before the committees got down to debating and voting on the OPP plan. First the alders listened to more testimony from citizens about parking and transit problems in New Haven, continuing a hearing that already lasted some six hours last month.

Some speakers detailed how as Yale employees they feel they need to hunt for street spaces in neighborhoods, or how as non-Yalies they find it tough to park near their homes or jobs thanks to Yale employees taking their spaces.

June Miller, a barista who until recently lived on Orange Street near Willow, described how Yale workers daily hogged the spaces on her block.

“I would sit outside on my porch and would watch people turn off 95, turn onto Orange, and park right in front of my house,” Miller said. ​“They would hop onto the Yale shuttle. Their car would stay in front of my house from 9 in the morning until 6 at night” or latter.

Some speakers offered concrete suggestions for how Yale can contribute to easing the parking crunch.

Lisa Brandes — who as Yale’s assistant dean for student affairs and graduate student life works to ensure most graduate students don’t bring cars to New Haven— suggested that the university merge its transit operation with CT Transit to create one bus system.

That caught the interest of the two alders chairing the committees holding the hearings, Jessica Holmes and Frank Douglass. ​“I would love to have that conversation,” Holmes said.

A recent Yale grad and climate-change activist named Elias Estabrook suggested instead that Yale pay for passes for its employees and students to ride the local buses, thus enabling the CT Transit system to have more riders and support better service. He spoke of how Cornell University has done that in Ithaca, N.Y. as have Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Florida Gainesville in their respective hometowns.

Yale employee Alex Bozzi of Hamden raised the commuter lot idea, suggesting Yale put one at the former Stop & Shop parking area at Putnam and Dixwell.

During her testimony, Brandes observed that she’s ​“hearing that anybody can ride the Yale shuttle.”

Alder Holmes begged to differ. ​“The sign says you need a [Yale] ID” to ride, she said. ​“I think it would be great if anybody could ride the Yale shuttle. I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Later in the meeting, Holmes returned to the subject. ​“If Yale wants to invite all New Haven residents onto Yale shuttle services,” she said, ​“I would be totally excited about that.”