New Haven Independent

The finish date for the Gateway Community College project, which proposes to relocate and consolidate the campus to Church Street at the sites formerly occupied by the Macy’s and Malley’s department stores, was recently pushed back due to the addition of a 600-speace parking garage to the design plans. It was originallly anticipated that the City of New Haven would provide 1,200 parking spaces for Gateway’s use, with 600 spaces in each of two garages, one of which the City would construct. But Deputy Economic Development Director Tony Bialecki explained that through discussions between the Connecticut Department of Public Works and the New Haven Parking Authority, it became clear that the proposed city parking garage would be too costly.

Instead, Bialecki told the commission, it made more sense from a planning perspective for the college to build its own garage in part of the former Macy’s site. Bialecki demonstrated on a map of the downtwon area how the garage would be enveloped by other structures at the college, a response to public hearings in which New Haven residents pleaded not to include any “suburban-looking” buildings in the project. While city planners are already moving ahead with this change, another public hearing has been scheduled on Sept. 27 for citizens to offer more comments on thse issue.

Concerns of commission members arose concerning the amount of parking that will be available to non-Gateway drivers downtown as a result of this change. Although approximately the same number of spots will be available to the college as originally projected — the college still plans to use at least 600 spaces in the Temple Street Garage — it is now up to the state whether the on-campus garage will be made accessible to people not affiliated with the college. Additionally, Yale School of Management Professor Jonathan Koppell expressed surprise at the “budgetary miracle” that allowed Gateway to include the new garage in its design. But Bialecki and Economic Development Administrator Kelly Murphy assured commission members that based on their discussions to date, the new garage will not affect demand for parking downtown, and the money the state originally planned to allocate to the destruction of Macy’s will now merely shift to be used for subsidizing the new parking garage and other infrastructural needs of the college.

Although commission members decided to hold off on officially approving the change to the Gateway plan until next month’s meeting, after more public hearings have been held, they did move to approve another proposal earlier in the meeting. The proposal, introduced by Helen Rosenberg at the Office of Economic Development, entailed the five-year lease of a 13,000 square-foot space on River Street to Compasso, a local business that has been around New Haven since 1970 and is looking to consolidate to one central site.

Rosenberg, who is overseeing the City of New Haven’s $20 million-plus redevelopment of the historic River Street section of Fair Haven, said she thinks this move would make it easier for the city to secure funding from the state by showing there are active businesses around the site. Moreover, Compasso would be able to clean up the site, relieving the city of this burden.

“It’s clearly a family business that I think would be a real assett to the area,” Rosenberg said. “They have been very willing to be partners with the city on this project.”