Langan
Years after it was painstakingly dismantled brick by brick and boxed up in crates in a city warehouse, a historic New Haven harbor boathouse will rise again — as part of a shiny new multimillion-dollar waterfront building.
That building will be the Boathouse at Canal Dock, a $30 million addition to Long Wharf, a historical, cultural, educational, and recreational center planned for New Haven’s waterfront.
The public building will comprise interpretive displays, classroom and exhibit space, public boat storage, and locker rooms and storage areas. Part of the historic Adee Boathouse, dismantled in 2007 to make way for the expanded I‑95 Q Bridge, will be rebuilt inside the new boathouse.
City and state official gathered with designers and engineers at the Long Wharf Pier on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the completion of the first phase of the project’s design. The event was also intended to spread the word about a public meeting on Thursday to discuss the project. That meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the Hall of Records at 200 Orange St.
Officials have been working on this project for over 10 years.
It all began when the state started planning the new Quinnipiac Bridge. For New Haven, that construction meant further separation from the waterfront and the destruction of the historic Adee Boathouse, opened by Yale in 1911. After extensive negotiation, the city managed to reach a memorandum of agreement with the state Department of Transportation in 1999, which stated that the state would help with several measures to mitigate the loss of the boathouse and the imposition of the new bridge.
Among those measures was the new State Street railroad station, which ultimately led to the construction of 360 State, the new 33-story mixed-use downtown tower, Mayor John DeStefano (pictured) told the small crowd on the pier. The city also gained the Church Street South bridge, and now the boathouse.
Langan
The new 31,000-square-foot boathouse will sit atop a new 55,000-square-foot platform. Its $30 million cost is considered part of the state’s overall Q bridge budget. The project will include floating docks for crew rowing boats, kayaks, canoes, and sailboats. On the inland side of the building, there will be landscaping and other streetscape improvements.
Inside, the building will be used for historical and environmental education, as well as supporting waterfront recreation.
DeeDee Hamilton, a Spanish teacher in New Haven Public Schools, said she hopes to start a crew program for girls and boys. She said she’s looking at the G‑Row program in Boston for inspiration.
Al Marder (pictured), president of the Amistad Committee, said his organization is very much looking forward to the new boathouse. “We’re 100 percent for it.”
The historic Amistad Schooner docks at the Long Wharf Pier when it’s in town. The presence of a huge new boathouse geared toward education can only help draw attention to the storied former slave ship and the other historical locations of interest in New Haven and Connecticut, like the Freedom Trail, Marder said.
Marder pointed to the highway nearby, noting that 140,000 cars pass by everyday. The new boathouse might give some of those people an excuse to stop and learn about New Haven and Connecticut, Marder said.
Kristen Andrews, head of Schooner Inc, said she hopes her organization will benefit from the new boathouse as well. Schooner is a non-profit environmental educational organization that operates out of New Haven harbor. The organizations boat, the Quinnipiack, was docked at the pier on Tuesday. Andrews suggested some of Schooner’s young program participants could act as docents for exhibits at the boathouse.
The operation of the boathouse will be overseen by a new not-for-profit organization, the Canal Dock Corporation, said Karyn Gilvarg, head of the City Plan Department. The property will be owned by the city, which is aiming for it to be a “revenue neutral” project. The Canal Dock Corporation would set fees for kayak storage, and other day-to-day concerns.
The project is based on the 2002 agreement with the state, which set the $30 million pricetag. While the cost of the Quinnipiac Bridge has ballooned to $2.2 billion, the city is adhering to the $30 million price point set eight years ago, Gilvarg said. That money buys a lot less now than it did in 2002, she said. The city has had to reduce the planned platform size from 100,000 square feet to 55,000 square feet.
Gilvarg said construction could begin in late 2011 or early 2012.
The construction will incorporate parts of the Adee Boathouse. Originally, the plan was to completely reconstruct the historic boathouse. That turned out to be impossible. The new plan, drawn up by Langan engineering corporation, calls for the facade of the Adee boathouse to be rebuilt inside the glassy new building.
John Plante (pictured), a senior associate at Langan, said the facade will be reconstructed along with an interior stairwell and a common room with interpretive displays to tell the history of the harbor and boathouse.
It’s been a painstaking process, Plante said. A Langan staffer even tracked down the original plans for the construction of the Adee boathouse.
Gilvarg said she is not anticipating opposition to the plans at the public meeting on Thursday. Some people may not understand the history of the project, and all of the permitting and building constraints placed upon it, she said. That context may have to be explained, she said.
“I’m expecting a lot of enthusiasm,” Gilvarg said.