Paul Bass Photo
Murphy & Harp at Friday’s City Hall press briefing.
New Haven’s wish list for federal help includes one item that may not cost money.
Mayor Toni Harp unveiled the wish list Friday after she and top aides huddled with U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy.
They filled Murphy in on their top priorities for building up New Haven in the coming two years. The short list includes helping secure up to $33 million for public improvements as part of the $395 million plan to build a new urbanist-style mini-city atop the old New Haven Coliseum site; and $8 million for improvements to Tweed-New Haven Airport, with the eventual goal of adding flight service to the Washington, D.C., area.
State Reps. Lemar and Holder-Winfield confer with Murphy Friday.
Murphy promised to help secure the money. He said he’d seek to help get New Haven a new “TIGER” grant to continue filling in the old Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere in order to reconnect Orange Street with South Orange Street as part of the Coliseum plan. New Haven has promised to try to find $33 million in local and state and federal money for such infrastructure improvements as part of that plan. (Read more about that here.) Murphy acknowledged that it may be tough getting another competitive TIGER grant for New Haven, since New Haven has already received two of them. An alternative, he and Harp said, would be to convince the state to devote some of the federal transportation money it controls to the project. Murphy promised to take part in that persuasion effort. (Gov. Dannel Malloy pretty much promised to help the project, at Harp’s inauguration last week.)
“It puts a new face on the city. As the gateway to the city, it will over night make the city attractive,” Murphy said of the Coliseum plan, which officials approved last month.
“I’m thrilled” at Murphy’s commitment to help find the money, Harp said at a City Hall press conference following Murphy’s closed-door briefing.
Harp said that right at the top of the wish list is a request without a price tag: for federal expert advice to help plan for rising sea levels.
Murphy and fellow U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal are trying to get a University of Connecticut research center started for this purpose, as many communities statewide seek to figure out how to build or not to build, and how to protect what’s already built, in the wake of ever-more-frequent climate change-sparked superstorms. That center would take years to build, if it’s built at all. In the meantime, Harp pointed out, New Haven needs to improve the Morris Cove Seawall and figure out the details of major development plans along the Mill River and the harbor.
After the press conference, development officials took Murphy to the Coliseum site. Click on the play arrow to watch them describe the hoped-for new street grid.