New Haven Independent

“My concern is preserving, maintaining, and expanding the businesses already embedded downtown,” said Ken Braffman, a lawyer and a member of the New Haven Economic Development Commission. “I don’t want them all to flee if too many non-tax- paying entities come downtown.”
“Let’s give some thought to flipping the positions of Gateway Community College,” offered another architect. “Move the college to the Orange-State Street site, which will be closer to transportation, and let the planned hotel and conference center rise on the Macy’s and Malley’s site.”
“The area needs mini-stores, a mini-Sears or supermarket so residents don’t have to drive to get their food.”
“Well,” said Andrea Pizziconi (at right in photo), a downtown building owner and mixed-use urban developer, “I think it’s absolutely critical to have local merchants, on streets of intimate human scale, to anchor this new community. As beautiful as wide piazza-like open spaces may be, I don’t know of any retailer who will lease a space near a piazza that is near Route 34.”
“A glass enclosed winter garden type of space platformed out over Route 34 just might relieve the darkness of New Haven winters,” offered landscape designer Chris Ozyck. “It could be a destination for farmers’ markets, spill-over from the theater, and be programmed with music and other events; it might become New Haven’s wintertime ‘Green.’”
These were just some of the many voices — diverse, passionate, highly creative, cacophonous and quirky — that were raised on Saturday at a well-organized public Design Workshop, on the Gateway Downtown Development Project, on the Gateway Downtown Development Project.
“What we all have in common,” said Herb Newman (pictured), of Herb Newman Partners, who conceived the master plan and design guidelines for the project, “is a profound love for New Haven and the great potential for a humanizing revitalization that the project represents.”

A Makeover South of the Green

The general parameters of the project, approved by the Board of Aldermen in February 2005, are well known: demolition of the Coliseum and relocation there of the Long Wharf Theater and a hotel complex; relocation of Gateway Community College to the former Macy’s and Malley’s sites adjacent to the Temple Street Garage; and revitalization of George Street area linking these two “nodes,” as the architects call them, with new retail, residential, and public usage, along with new parking to support all this. (Click here to see and read more about the plan.)
But the devil was very much in evidence in the extensive architectural and urban planning details discussed at the workshop.
After an orientation, some 60 to 70 participants were divided into seven working groups, each facilitated by maps, plans, and volunteer architects the commission had assembled: David Barkin, John Bunton, George Knight, Keith Krolak, Ben Ledbetter, Alan Organschi, Arthur Ratner.
“Pound for pound,” said Pizziconi, who was mentored by Yale’s Bruce Alexander in the importance of recruiting local merchants in development, “there is more brilliant architectural talent in New Haven than anywhere else in the country.”
Each group chose several issues or problems nearest to its heart to study and to make a presentation on 80 minutes later. Ratner’s group, for example, which included the winter garden plan, also stressed the possibility of incorporating “green design” into the entire project, including, for example, outfitting future parking spaces with solar panels and plug-in facilities for hybrid cars, and in general building on Connecticut’s prowess as the nation’s center for fuel-cell development.
A strong sense of designing for the future also imbued the ideas of Keith Krolak’s group. “Let’s do what needs to be done, zoning-wise, to make downtown truly pedestrian oriented, eliminating as many above-ground parking structures as possible. Imagine,” he said “not too many years hence when there might be a train to New York that will take only an hour and you can walk through a beautiful environment to Union Station to board it.”
“If the anchors of the project are Gateway and Long Wharf,” said Alan Organschi’s group, “the answer to the question of what we do in between along George Street is already there. It is to follow the precedent of the successful Ninth Square as a model for formal space, with art spaces and cultural institutions empowering a diverse development.”
Apart from love of New Haven, the vast potential of this project, and the knowledge that its ramifications affect the entire city, there were few points of consensus among the famously independent-minded architects. One was perhaps to find creative means to address the extensive architectural “edge” issues, such as the acreage along Route 34 and how to make such space viable. Conceal it with a wall or buffer, said one participant. Build an intimate zone of shops in front of it, suggested another. But would that not cut off the hundreds of people who work in the Knights of Columbus tower? Be careful, said a third, not to create public space along the corridor that no one will want to visit. Maybe five or six smaller-scale public sites rather than a single big one.
While the importance of mixed-use space — retail space, for example, being critical on the street level of the new Gateway Community College buildings — some of the architects expressed concern that the college might be satisfied with only a bookstore and not aggressively court other businesses good for the students and the neighborhood. Shouldn’t Yale’s British Art Center, with its bakery, jewelry store, and other businesses on the street level, be a model? And how could this be guaranteed?
Another consensus issue was perhaps the need to put parking underground as much as possible. Such solutions to the parking infrastructure, however, could easily collide with the engineering realities. “Much of the ground in the project area,” said Richard Munday, “is near the water and will support not that many levels under ground.”

More To Come

So many details remain in play, but not all. For example, Gateway Community College’s site does not at this point appear subject to change, according to Tony Bialecki, city government’s deputy director of economic development. The school and the city have invested, he said, too much in site-specific planning, and the state funding arrangement is set. However, the nature of the hotel/conference center was certainly still a “malleable” issue.
Was the workshop a success? “The questions are on the table to enrich the discussion,” said Munday. And, according, to Bialecki, the discussion was advanced in another important way. In attendance, among the architects, he said, were representatives from Gateway Community College, Long Wharf Theater, and Knights of Columbus, the future usage of whose property, especially along the Route 34 Connector, being a subject of some agitated concern.
“It was vitally important,” Bialecki said, “for these people, the participating principals, to hear the message and the concerns from the ground level.”
While there have been numerous public hearings since aldermanic approval in February, and even a public exhibition of the suggested designs, the design workshop was a first: deeply interactive, and soliciting ideas that will be incorporated into documents and future planning.
“I think we’ll do more of these, a variety of these,” said Bialecki. “Perhaps first with the residents of Ninth Square who will be going shopping in the new area. Not that much is in stone. We’re still early enough in the process so that all these ideas will enrich the dialogue.”