Work Begins On Downtown Crossing

by Thomas MacMillan | Mar 22, 2013 12:39 pm

(7) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Transportation

As soon as next month, be prepared to find an alternate route into downtown—a $24 million project will be underway, transforming the face of the city. As part of the newly begun Downtown Crossing project, the city plans to shut down the Oak Street Connector’s Exit 3 some time between April 15 and May 15. That news was announced Friday morning as city, state, and federal officials gathered to break ground on the project. The event marked the official start to Phase 1 of the construction of Downtown Crossing, in which the city will begin the necessary road work. The project is designed to undo the mistakes of half a century ago, when the city demolished hundreds of buildings and displaced hundreds of families to make way for an ill-conceived “mini-highway to nowhere.” Rt. 34 will be filled in with “boulevard streets” and mixed-use buildings, designed to “knit together” the Hill with downtown New Haven, Mayor John DeStefano said. Downtown Crossing is expected to create 2,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs, said DeStefano (pictured). The two biggest economic engines in the city are Yale and the hospitals, DeStefano said. “This ties them together.” Developer Carter Winstanley will build a $100 million building at 100 College St., destined to become the new home of Alexion Pharmaceuticals. The land will be conveyed to Winstanley in June. Work on the roads will continue until June 2014. After Exit 3 is closed in April or May, Exit 2 will close in late fall. Asked if people should expect traffic delays, DeStefano said people should remember that there are lots of ways to get into New Haven. He recommended Exit 3 off of I-91, which delivers cars to the intersection of Trumbull and Orange streets, and I-95 Exit 45, which gets out at the Boulevard. People have gotten used to using Rt. 34 to get into town, but it was originally intended to be a passage to the Naugatuck Valley, DeStefano said. Quoting Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (pictured) said, “This is a big—deal.” Downtown crossing will rebuild “the guts of our city,” she said. Gov. Dannel Malloy (pictured) saluted the project and its potential to create new jobs. “That’s what we need to do in this state,” Malloy said. “We understand the greatness that New Haven is.” Not everyone was so enthusiastic. Elm City Cycling’s Mark Abraham said that while he’s excited about the jobs that Downtown Crossing will create, the bike advocacy organization can’t support the project. The plans are still not as bike- and pedestrian-friendly as they could be, he said. He mentioned the planned crossing at Church Street, which will be a long distance for pedestrians to cross. “I think they could have been more progressive about it,” he said.

Share this story with others.

Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

posted by: New Haven Urbanism Avoiding traffic congestion is mostly a matter of people getting used to having to around the city, rather than through it. The Boulevard to and from I-95 will have to become the primary way of getting from one side of the city to the other, while Route 34 becomes a way for people to get downtown, or for people who are already downtown to get out - similar to how the Trumbull Street, Humphrey Street and Willow Street exits function off of I-91 and how the Church Street South Extension functions off of I-95 on Long Wharf. Route 34 will no longer function as a viable cross-town route, which I think makes a lot of sense. Like any functioning city, the most efficient way across will be to go around using a Boulevard system - look at Florence, Paris, or Vienna. If we can turn the current Boulevard, which is really just an arterial highway, into a true boulevard with infrastructure for pedestrians, cycling, transit and dense mixed use buildings fronting the street, then it will be much more likely that Route 34 can develop as a true urban environment and not the hybrid highway-big parcel development it is currently being planned as.

posted by: newhaven55 on March 22, 2013 1:38pm My office window overlooks the corner of South Frontage and College Street. Since the work started a few weeks ago, I have witnessed delayed ambulances because of the narrowed lanes on College, an accident involving a construction truck and many near collisions because of narrowed lanes on S Frontage and the entrance ramps. Traffic is a nightmare and I cannot think how worse it will become as more exits are closed. PLEASE involve more police and traffic directional help

posted by: anonymous on March 22, 2013 1:47pm Jonathan Hopkins is absolutely correct. We need to heal this scar right through the middle of the city by removing it entirely, and going back to what we had before Mayor Dick Lee. Unfortunately, we’ve recreated it, and widened it in some parts - it will take another generation or two now to correct the mistakes of Mayor DeStefano. I agree with newhaven55 that, from a safety perspective, the construction phasing is being badly mismanaged. For example, all pedestrians on College Street have been redirected from crossing at the far side of College & North Frontage as cars come off the highway (the place most of them used to cross - because it probably was a safer intersection) to the near side, directly in front of the off-ramp. Cars speeding off the off-ramp do not easily see pedestrians crossing against several lanes of stopped or slowed traffic.

posted by: Atwater on March 22, 2013 3:25pm 200 permanent jobs? 200 permanent retail/service jobs. Jobs that pay minimum wage, jobs that won’t allow a person to support themselves if they want to actually live in the city they work in. Or, 200 jobs that are unobtainable to most city resident. Sure, this is a good project. One right in line with the economic segregation caused by gentrification. This crossing might correct a physical divide between downtown and the “hill”, etc, but, it won’t do much to correct the socio-economic divide that exists in this city.

posted by: anonymous on March 22, 2013 5:01pm Atwater - would you rather than those jobs stay in Cheshire? You are right that development can be a lose-lose situation, but density can be good if people actually interact with one another and cities incorporate a mix of incomes. For example, if there were a transit line connecting the train station, Hill, and Downtown, the workers at this new building might actually mix with residents of other socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. A transit line would also make the land valuable enough that a developer could afford to build something with a mix of workforce housing, not just luxury units. As the former Mayor of Bogota says, “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.” The real tragedy is that this area was planned with no transit improvements. Apparently the planners believe that “only poor people take the bus” and that there is no value in serving those who are not upper-middle class professionals in East Rock and Westville. Although transit probably could not have been ready in time for the one new building, it could easily have been added a few years after that, or during future “phases” of this project. We can thank Jorge Perez, Adam Marchand, and the CCNE group for killing that possibility when they voted down millions in streetcar & bus system study grants that the State & Federal government had lined up for us at virtually zero cost to the City. Perez et al made the worst economic development decision in New Haven’s 375-year history.

posted by: Stylo on March 22, 2013 11:28pm Atwater - “Or, 200 jobs that are unobtainable to most city resident.” How Marxist of you to say. There are no magic jobs that pay big wages but require no qualifications or education.