Lot-Street Swap Eyed For Cut-Through

The city plans to trade a publicly owned parking lot for a private stretch of Fair Street in order to build out a better bicycle-and-pedestrian-friendly connection between Downtown and Wooster Square.

Deputy Economic Development Administrator Steve Fontana made that pitch at the regular monthly meeting of the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) on the second floor of City Hall.

Fontana said the city’s latest plans to reconnect the two adjacent downtown neighborhoods involve purchasing and reclaiming the block of Fair Street between Union Street and Olive Street, which is currently privately owned and closed off to public access. He said that the owners of the private Fair Street block, Stephen and Lucy Ahern’s SPA Associates, LLC, are open to selling Fair Street back to the city in exchange for a city-owned parking lot at 77 Olive St.

“Fair Street is and could be and once was a main thoroughfare between Downtown and Wooster Square,” Fontana said on Tuesday night.

Fontana said he has been working on the Fair Street reclamation project for two and a half years. The current plans to buy back Fair Street stem from a Wooster Square Planning Study that the city and the Boston-based design firm Utile produced in 2016 that singled out the private, closed-off city block as a potential salve for stitching together the two city neighborhoods.

(Click here to download a copy of the 2016 Wooster Square study.)

Fontana said that, if the city follows through and purchases the section of Fair Street in question, it will prioritize bicycle and pedestrian access on the newly-reopened city block.

But he said the current owners of the shuttered Fair Street block want more than money in exchange for selling it back to the city. Fontana said that the Aherns want to purchase the city-owned parking lot at 77 Olive St. just up the block between Chapel Street and Court Street.

Stephen Ahern did not respond to a phone request for comment by the publication time of this article.

The Aherns already own properties at 71 Olive St. and 81 Olive St., the latter of which is the new home to the Hope Child Development daycare center. Fontana said the Aherns want to provide 16 currently city-owned parking spaces to Hope, and block off another 9 currently city-owned parking spaces for the daycare center’s new playground.

That would leave only 24 city-owned parking spaces at the lot, he said. And the city’s Parking Authority currently leases out 62 parking permits for the 49-space lot.

Fontana said that the Parking Authority is open to working with current parking permit lease holders to find alternative spots at other city-owned lots in Wooster Square. He said the Aherns are also open to leasing up to 10 parking spaces at their property at 71 Olive St. to accommodate car owners displaced by the prospective 77 Olive St. parking lot sale.

New Haven Urban Design League President Anstess Farwell criticized the proposed parking lot sale for taking away mid-block parking from neighborhood residents.

“Don’t consider the sale,” she said about the parking lot, ​“but please keep going with Fair Street.”

“Unfortunately,” Fontana responded, ​“they’re linked.”

Fontana said his next step for the project is to touch base with Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg. If the city decides to go through with the parking lot sale and acquisition of the private Fair Street block, he said, there will be a public hearing before the Board of Alders, as is always the case when the city looks to sell publicly owned land.

Greenberg did not respond to an email request for comment by the publication time of this article.