APT, Gateway Eye Long Wharf Moves

A park and pedestrian-friendly walkway where cars now roar down Long Wharf Drive. 

An automotive trade school where the former Gateway Community College building is starting to crumble. 

A new home base for all of the APT Foundation’s New Haven substance-use treatment programs in a building specifically designed to address neighbors’ concerns.

Those ideas stand at the center of a new plan put together by top city officials on how to transform Long Wharf — a waterfront neighborhood currently dominated by big-box stores, parking lots, and the highway — into a mixed-use district bustling with education, healthcare, and outdoor recreation.

On Wednesday evening, Mayor Justin Elicker and a handful of city departments laid out further details of their vision for a more walkable and commercial Long Wharf at the Betsy Ross Parish Hall on Kimberly Avenue.

Over 100 Hill community members and other interested residents filled the room — and offered largely receptive feedback.

The city’s more fleshed-out vision builds off of a years-long effort to redesign Long Wharf, which is under a building moratorium until the City Plan Department finalizes a new zoning code for the area. They would also work in tandem with climate resiliency efforts already underway by the shore, which include a new drainage system and flood wall.

The plans would have significant ramifications for Hill South residents, some of whom criticized the potential closure of Long Wharf Drive and some of whom praised the investment in technical education and park space.

They would also affect residents across the city — not only by creating a hub of resources by the Harbor serving the rest of New Haven and beyond, but by relocating current and proposed substance use treatment centers that have garnered pushback from neighbors in the Hill and Newhallville. 

Alder Carmen Rodriguez, whose Hill South/City Point ward includes Long Wharf, emphasized the value of community input: ​“It’s important that we see [the Long Wharf plans] from the ground up, not just reading it in a newspaper saying ​‘this is what’s happening,’ ” she said.

Elicker and other department heads, meanwhile, stressed that the plans are in early stages — that they could change based on neighborhood feedback and that it is too soon for the city to determine the timeline or cost of the sweeping proposal.

A New Home For APT

The APT Foundation is preliminarily planning to relocate its methadone services to a new building at Long Wharf, which it would design specifically for substance use treatment. 

According to current plans, the building would be located in what the city is calling the ​“Gateway District” — the section of Long Wharf adjacent to City Point, where Jordan’s Furniture and APT’s current offices at 1 Long Wharf Dr. are located.

APT currently offers substance use, behavioral health, and primary care in rented offices at 1 Long Wharf and 495 Congress Ave., the latter of which has long drawn complaints from Hill North residents about pervasive substance use and drug dealing outside APT’s doors. The organization also received intense pushback from Newhallville residents  when it sought to operate a methadone clinic at 794 Dixwell Ave.

If APT succeeds in building its own headquarters in Long Wharf, the organization would both relocate its methadone services from Congress Avenue and avoid expanding to Newhallville, according to the organization’s director, Lynn Madden.

“The Dixwell Avenue site is so residential,” Elicker said after the meeting. ​“This site is better because it’s not residential.” 

When Elicker asked the group for feedback on this portion of the proposal, Paméla Delerme raised her hand.

Delerme said she values the services that APT offers: ​“I have family who work in substance treatment and who’ve received substance use treatment.” Still, she said, ​“no one has mentioned the children” — kids who live in the neighborhood, attend school at Betsy Ross, and come to the future park at Long Wharf. She echoed concerns that neighbors of the Congress Avenue site have raised about needles.

Elicker responded that a Long Wharf APT Foundation base would entail constructing a new building from scratch. A specially designed building could guarantee space for patients to wait and decompress after receiving treatment and feature windows and lighting that disincentivize loitering and open drug use, he argued.

Madden added that she’s hopeful that APT will be able to decentralize and offer a mobile van of methadone services directly where patients live, rather than treating all of its methadone patients at one location. Such a plan depends on a set of state regulations expected to be finalized around April.

“One of our key goals is to treat people where they actually live,” she said. 

APT currently serves 1,275 patients at its New Haven locations, 450 of whom don’t live in the city, according to Madden. Many of those patients are low-income and uninsured, requiring the organization to save costs wherever possible, she said. The Long Wharf plan ​“would allow us to be in a space that we own,” rather than rent.

“Space really matters,” Madden said after the meeting. ​“Where you are, and how the space is conducive to respectful and decent care.”

Hill resident Thomasine Shaw said she doesn’t trust the APT Foundation, given the crime that has occurred outside its Congress Avenue location. She echoed an observation that APT has operated and planned treatment centers in majority-Black and Brown neighborhoods like the Hill and Newhallville: ​“The city of New Haven doesn’t have a good track record of taking care of its communities, especially Black and brown communities.”

“I don’t agree with you,” Elicker said. ​“We would not be here today if we did not care about everyone in this city.”

Automotive Center Pitched

If the city’s vision is realized, the APT building would be located at a to-be-determined spot within the ​“Gateway District” — where 10 different businesses and organizations could build a cluster of medical centers, stores, and other services.

Currently, that area includes over 20 acres of parking lot, where rainwater frequently floods and drag racers roar their illegal ATVs. 

City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli observed that in order for the Gateway District to thrive, ​“it will take 10 different developments to make this work.” 

Other than the planned new APT building, the city has two potential developments in mind.

One would be a new or rehabilitated site for the Regional Water Authority, whose current Long Wharf headquarters are in poor condition.

Another would entail transforming the aging, abandoned former Gateway Community College home at 60 Sargent Dr. into a new job training center focused on automobiles of the future, including electric cars.

Gateway, which is now primarily located downtown, would operate the program. The college would need to tear down the building and start from the ground up.

The plan would require the state to transfer ownership of the 7.23-acre property to the city — which state legislators are currently working to make happen.

“I love to see the Gateway program,” said Hill neighbor Magaly Cajigas. She offered three suggestions for other developments at the Gateway District: ​“Maybe bringing in an American Jobs Center,” where students and other job-seekers can find career guidance. Build another police substation or outpost. And ​“maybe a food store or grocery store for the food desert in the neighborhood.”

That last suggestion gained particular traction among other attendees of the meeting, some of whom called for a grocery chain like Trader Joe’s.

From Long Wharf Drive to Woonerf Park

Another critical component of the Long Wharf proposal presented on Wednesday is a plan to insert a park in the middle of Long Wharf Drive, converting the rest of the road into a parking lot and food truck-specific driveway. 

Current sketches of the park feature a 20-foot promenade, a dock for fishing and sea-gazing, a ​“water play area,” an area designed specifically for the neighborhood’s popular food trucks, a playground, and a series of pavilions that could host a farmer’s market, and — critically — public bathrooms, among other amenities.

Where Long Wharf Drive currently approaches Wooster Square, the city hopes to turn the car-centric path into a ​“woonerf” — a curvy, green-lined path shared by both slow-moving cars and pedestrians.

“The park looks beautiful,” said Michael Fox. ​“What do you envision for security?”

Police Chief Karl Jacobson said that eliminating Long Wharf Drive would ​“help us police better.” The design would allow the city to shut down the park at night and more easily regulate the entrances and exits, he said. ​“We’re looking forward to this.”

In response to questions about the drag racing that currently plagues Long Wharf and the Hill, Elicker said there are plans to put speed tables along the areas open to cars so as to deter ATVs.

“Won’t that be more fun for them?” asked Fox, to a laugh from the room.

“Our view is no,” Elicker said. ​“They spend a lot of money on those cars.”

Many residents responded enthusiastically to the park proposal, but some lamented the prospective loss of Long Wharf Drive.

When City Engineer Giovanni Zinn announced plans to ​“eliminate” the road, Hill South resident Paul Larrivee called out, ​“No, you’re not.”

Larrivee and his neighbor Angela Hatley expressed staunch opposition to the removal of Long Wharf Drive, as they have in meetings past.

Hatley said that transforming Long Wharf Drive into a park would eliminate a critical roadway she uses to drive out of her neighborhood. She said she understood that the entire city would benefit from a new park, but ​“you are doing it at the expense of the people who live here.”

Thomasine Shaw echoed this sentiment, describing that when she turns onto Long Wharf Drive, she thinks to herself, ​“This is an accident waiting to happen.”

Alder Carmen Rodriguez responded that constituents have told her that they feel unsafe due to the traffic at Long Wharf Drive, particularly as pedestrians and cyclists.

“I hope you all don’t see this as benefiting the city and not this neighborhood,” Elicker added, emphasizing that the park is intended for Hill residents to enjoy alongside everyone else.

By the end of the meeting, neither Larrivee nor Hatley were persuaded.