What Makes Sense At Union Station?

Another parking garage, as pictured above?

Or, as pictured above, a ​“twin tower” of apartments and stores surrounded by smaller buildings with a pedestrian neighborhood feel?

Those are two competing visions now on the table for the 1.6‑acre asphalt stretch of Union Avenue between Route 34 and the existing Union Station parking garage.

The state Department of Transportation has approved plans to build a $60 million, 1,015-space, seven-level parking garage there.

Preservationists/new urbanists and officials in New Haven are scrambling to stop the plan. The Urban Design League, which is leading the charge, has now released a study both making the case against the state’s plan and sketching out ​“TOD” — ​“transit-oriented development” — alternatives packed with places to live, work, and shop.

The report repeats arguments New Haveners have been making for months: Rather than further deaden an expanse of concrete and pollute the air more with more cars, reinvigorate that part of town with new street life and mixed uses. It builds on work done at an Urban Design League-organized ​“flash charrette” (brainstorming design session) last month. (Read about that event here.)

“We can change Union Avenue from being, in planner’s parlance, an undervalued ​“sacrifice zone” — where giant facilities and infrastructure can be dropped with minimal consideration of the thousands of people who live and work in the area — to becoming instead a great and prosperous urban place,” the report declares.

Click here to read the full report.

What’s new in the report are the sketches and details of two alternative plans.

The Bekhrad-Wies Plan

One is by architects Fereshteh Bekhrad and Richard Wies. Above is one view of it, looking west toward Union Station.

Taking into consideration the area’s flood plain, Bekhrad’s and Wies’s 280,000-square-foot plan envisions a 50-square-foot platform upon which to build a floor of retail facing a sidewalk and pedestrian plaza, with two 10-story towers on top with eight apartments per floor. The platform would have room for 180 parking spaces as well as loading docks below it.

Other lower-rise buildings would be constructed on the platform as well, with first-floor retail, two floors of a total of 36 ​“residential/loft/office units (live-work units),” and another three floors of a total of 24 townhouses.

The Orr Plan

Architect Robert Orr came up with the second vision, taking as an inspiration the fact that Yale’s Saybrook College could fit into the same 1.6‑acre spot. Orr’s stated goal: ​“foster a sense of neighborhood.”

Like Yale’s residential colleges, this plan would assemble its mixed-use buildings around two interior courtyards, ​“quiet green space where residents and visitors can congregate.”

Orr places his tallest building closest to the train station, with the hope it would one day serve as the ​“starting point” of a walking route straight to downtown, as envisioned in earlier plans for the district (and perhaps in the next version of Church Street South, which has been demolished and may be rebuilt). A second taller mixed-use building would be placed near it.

Then Orr envisions a collection of smaller buildings with stores, ​“live-work units,” small businesses, with some connection or lure to the train station. He sees the space as attracting ​“young innovators and entrepreneurs looking to launch new projects.”

(More detail about the both plans can be found in the Urban League report.)

“Fulfilling Its Promise”

The administration of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy moved ahead with the second-garage plan despite New Haven’s objections; the governor noted that the city had been pushing for decades for a second garage to meet increased demand.

Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said in an interview after the November election that the new Lamont administration is open to revisiting the plan in light of the city’s objections, as well as arguments that the extra parking may no longer be needed.

The new Urban Design League report notes that planners almost succeeded in demolishing Union Station during the urban renewal era of the 1950s and 1960s. The building was saved, and then restored to its historic beauty — in time for a revival of interest in transit (and transit-oriented development).

“Fortunately, Union still stands today, a warm presence in the light of day, and shining like a giant lantern at night — a welcome sight from the street or from across the tracks,” the report reads. ​“New Haven Union Station stands as one of the state’s most beautiful and cosmopolitan train stations. We are fortunate, now that transportation planning is rediscovering the value of rail, to have retained this resource and the opportunity, one hundred years after the Station was built, to fulfill its promise.

“Union Station still has the potential to be the heart of our new economy, and the foundation of sustainable and humane urban development.”