New Haven Independent

Michael Morand, Yale’s Vice President for New Haven and State Affairs, and the architects of the new health center building, seemed to wow members of the City Plan Commission on Wednesday night with their renderings of the flaring new three and a half story structure. It is to be built on the triangular plot of land between Lock and Canal Streets angling toward Prospect, but at a distance, and backing onto the Rose Building that houses the Yale police and Dixwell community center.

“How did you come up with the look of this building?” asked City Engineer Richard Miller, after architect Mack Scogin (pictured below with Yale’s University Planner Laura Cruickshank) explained that cars and pedestrians entering the complex to drop off patients along a circular drive off Lock would then experience the building as having flaring walls.

“Well, that’s a story too long to go into at this site plan review,” answered Scogin. But the short answer, according to Morand, was that the odd shape of the building is a reflection of the irregular, even trapezoidal shape of the Grove Street Cemetery’s layout as it has evolved over the centuries. The walls of Grove Street, Scogin pointed out, also are leaning. “In fact, the idea of the building really is an extrusion of the land on which it sits. As you enter the site, it falls below grade.” As in a cemetery.

The “rusticated” textured natural materials to be used are also going to reflect the stone of the Grove Street Cemetery walls and other university buildings, according to the architects. The manganese brick (which Cruickshank is holding in the photo), although dark under the neon of City Hall, will turn golden at sunset, and reflect the effects of light at different times of the day.

The health center’s 323-car parking garage (yes, always more parking), tucked between the Rose Center building and Scantlebury Park at Bristol Street, will be faced with the perforated metal screen (held by Scogin) to reduce the heavy visual effect of concrete and to allow air flow.

Commissioners had some concern about the additional traffic exiting onto Bristol Street, which is only 20 feet wide. With minor conditions to address that concern and to integrate the site with the Farmington Canal, the commissioners approved the site plan Wednesday night. If building permits are granted in the timely fashion expected, said Cruickshank, the cemetery-inspired new Yale health services complex should be complete by 2009.