Perkins Eastman
Stormwater ribbon park anchoring new design.
City Point’s Hatley, Larrivee and Wharton at Tuesday presser.
City Point’s Angela Hatley, Paul Larrivee, and Jonathan Wharton have been waiting decades for the city to turn Long Wharf into a vibrant, accessible waterfront neighborhood seamlessly connected to the Hill and Wooster Square.
Now they at least have a plan that starts a decades-long march toward that vision.
Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Toni Harp and a host of city officials who worked on developing the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan.
Mayor Toni Harp and a dozen city officials rolled out that plan Tuesday afternoon in the second-floor conference room at the new Canal Dock Boathouse on Long Wharf. They unveiled the final draft of the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan, a 100-page vision to build out the city’s 352-acre, underutilized waterfront currently separated from surrounding neighborhoods by I‑95.
Developed over the past three years in conjunction with the consultant Perkins Eastman and with a nearly $1 million grant that the city received from the state Office of Policy and Management (OPM), the plan proposes turning Long Wharf into five new walkable, mixed-use districts all connected by a “Long Wharf greenway” linear park.
Even if approved, the plan remains that — a plan. Officials estimate it would cost $100-$140 million in public spending to set the stage for that revival through new parks, stormwater management, and other coastal resiliency efforts. The plan envisions a combination of city, state and federal funding. The city would look for private builders to carry out the actual construction of the districts; officials said they do not at this point have any information to share about potential developers who might be interested.
That whole process, beginning with local Board of Alders approval through end of construction, would take an expected two decades.
Perkins Eastman.
The five new proposed Long Wharf districts.
Click here to read the full, final draft of the plan, which will be subject to a public hearing at the City Plan Commission on Wednesday night. If approved, the plan will go to the Board of Alders to be added as a formal amendment to the New Haven Vision 2025 citywide comprehensive plan.
Click here, here, here, and here to read about a host of public meetings the city held over the past year to put the plan together.
Thomas Breen photos
Mayor Toni Harp.
“Anyone who has moved to New Haven from elsewhere has always asked why?” Harp said during Tuesday’s presser. “Why haven’t we developed Long Wharf? Well, now we will.”
Speaking at the tail end of a procession of city officials who spoke about the economic development, multi-modal transportation, and coastal resiliency opportunities for Long Wharf envisioned in the plan, Hatley, Larrivee and Wharton offered a passionate endorsement from neighbors who actually live near Long Wharf and have long wanted to see the waterfront put to more productive use.
All three are active members of the Hill South Community Management Team, and all have participated in the community brainstorming sessions that led to the development of the plan.
City Point’s Hatley, Larrivee and Wharton at Tuesday presser.
Hatley, the management team’s communications director, said she has lived in City Point for 30 years.
“During that time I’ve heard a lot of ideas about what’s gonna happen at Long Wharf,” she said. “From casinos to malls. I must say, I am very excited about the current plans that have been presented today, if they come to fruition.”
In particular, she said, she hopes that these plans help enhance property values for her and her neighbors in City Point and the Hill.
“We’ve come a long way from the time when we had drag races on Long Whard,” she said, praising the new boathouse, Ikea, and Jordan’s.
“We’re also pleased that we residents have had a voice” in putting the plan together. “Whatever happens here impacts us. So far, so good from me.”
Paul Larrivee.
Paul Larrivee, another Hill South management team stalwart, said he has lived in the City Point neighborhood for all 69 years of his life.
He remembers in 1972 seeing a big billboard on Sargent Drive that advertised “the future site of the Long Wharf development.”
The Canal Dock Boathouse.
“That’s in 1972,” he said on Tuesday. “What year is it now? That’s quite a long ways, over 40 years ago.”
Like Hatley, he said he hopes the plan will bring much-needed new tax revenue to the city so that small property owners like himself can experience some tax relief.
Jonathan Wharton.
Jonathan Wharton— who in addition to being a Hill South management team regular is also an alternate on the City Plan Commission, the former chair of the local Republican Party, and a political science professor at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) — praised the city and Perkins Eastman for making sure to include city residents in the development of the Long Wharf plan.
“I think it was great that it was very much all about finding as many stakeholders, as many individuals, as many voices as possible,” he said. “The workshops were tremendous.”
Long Wharf’s two-way protected cycletrack.
To Wharton, the key provision of the plan is and should be how to stitch back together the Long Wharf with the Hill, City Point, Wooster Square, Downtown, and Union Station in a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly way.
He said the two-way protected cycletrack at Long Wharf and the creation of the investment in the “Food Truck Paradise” are good starts. He called on the city to try to figure out how to create some kind of pathway directly from Union Station to Long Wharf, so that bus and train travelers to the city can easily get to and from the waterfront.
“There are some elements that are already there,” he said, “that we just have to find some way of connecting.”
Perkins Eastman
A map of a new proposed Long Wharf.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Tuesday’s press conference.