Science Hill Build-Up Cleared For Takeoff

A green, landscaped, public-welcoming entry point to Yale’s northeastern campus is coming to Science Hill — as part of a Yale Bowl-sized redevelopment project, including a massive new lab and classroom building, newly approved by the City Plan Commission.

Commissioners voted unanimously in support of that proposal Wednesday night during their latest monthly meeting online via Zoom.

The local land-use body voted to approve two related applications — a site plan and a Class C soil erosion and sediment plan — for the Yale-owned addresses at 65, 223, 243, 285, and 301 Prospect St.; 320, 340, and 360 Edwards St.; 180, 256, and 260 Whitney Ave.; and 21 Sachem St.

University-hired attorney Joe Hammer and a host of Yale affiliates detailed the plans during the rushed final half hour of Wednesday night’s four-and-a-half-hour-long meeting. The two now-approved applications represent the final submissions for Yale’s planned new building up on Science Hill, which is bounded by Sachem Street to the south, Edwards to the north, Prospect to the west, and Whitney to the east. 

The centerpiece of that redevelopment plan is a new Physical Sciences & Engineering Building (PSEB), which will contain ​“research laboratories, offices, meeting and collaboration spaces, shared core research facilities and a café,” according to Yale’s site plan application.

The building will have four stories above ground and two stories below, with two enclosed mechanical penthouses. It will consist of roughly 228,555 square feet of gross floor area and an additional 109,054 square feet of below-grade space.

Wednesday night’s approved application also calls for the construction of a new ​“thermal plant,” which will be one story above ground and one below, and will provide ​“electrified thermal energy” as a centralized heating/cooling plant for the PSEB and surrounding buildings. It will generate cold and low-temperature hot water with geothermal heat pumps that will tap into Yale’s already approved ​“geothermal borefield” in the area.

As detailed at a recent public meeting about Yale’s plans for Science Hill, PSEB will comprise almost half of the entire Upper Science Hill Development project, which in total will consist of nearly as much square footage (600,000 square feet) as the Yale Bowl.

Click here to read about the City Plan Commission’s approval of other enabling projects for this larger redevelopment, including the demolition of a handful of buildings, like a 661-space parking garage, and the construction of a new 406-space parking garage.

“This is the latest in a series of applications related to the new Physical Sciences & Engineering Building on Science Hill,” Hammer told the commissioners on Wednesday night.

During the commission’s limited discussion of the matter — they started talking about it at around 10:05 p.m., after their hoped-for 10 p.m. meeting end time — Westville Alder and City Plan Commissioner Adam Marchand focused on how this project will affect the corner of Whitney and Edwards.

Stephen Brown, Yale’s associate director for planning administration, noted that the berms at that corner have already been removed. ​“It opens up the current, closed-off corner to a new large and expansive landscaped area with a park-like design.”

Brown described this area — with shrubs and trees and some expanded paving and a walking path — as a ​“public as well as Yale community park space.”

Marchand praised this reshaping of the Science Hill entry point at Whitney and Edwards as marking a shift in how Yale defines gateways to its campus. ​“There are a number of parts of Yale’s campus that are really amazing and wonderful, but they’re behind locked gates,” he said.

Not so with this design. ​“This project is opening up an entire part of campus that was really closed off to the public, effectively.” This area was previously a place where ​“people would drop their car off” and head somewhere else. Maybe, now, it will become a bit more of a destination, for Yale community members and members of the general New Haven public alike.

“It’s a very bold change for an often unnoticed part of campus,” he continued. ​“I really am excited that it’s going to be inviting” to passersby.

Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe and fellow Commissioner Joshua Van Hoesen praised the project more broadly, and the reshaping of the Whitney-Edwards area in particular, before all four of the commissioners present voted in support of Yale’s applications.

Yale’s site plan application describes a construction timeline for various parts of this Science Hill redevelopment project, starting last November. 

The PSEB structure itself is scheduled to begin construction in February 2026 and end in April 2030.