nothin Brighter Nights Loom For Parking Garages | New Haven Independent

Brighter Nights Loom For Parking Garages

Paul Bass Photo

Crown St. Garage.

(Updated) Two forbidding downtown concrete parking garages will get brighter lights as part of a $5 million state grant approved Friday.

The Malloy administration put the $5 million grant request for New Haven garage improvements on the agenda of Friday’s Bond Commission, which voted to approve it.

Much of the $5 million will enable the parking authority to pay for replacing the old lighting systems at the Crown Street and Temple Street garages with bright, inviting and energy-saving LED light fixtures” as well as an emergency lighting system (at Temple Street), according to a submission prepared by the city.

Another $1.7 million of the grant will pay for concrete repairs and waterproofing and other miscellaneous repairs” at the 708-space Crown garage, which was built in 1971, and the 1,235-space Temple garage, constructed in 1962.

It’s high time that we get this done,” said Town Green Special Services District Executive Director Win Davis. Temple Street Garage has had the same lighting since the 1980s, orange‑y high-pressure sodium lighting. It really does not illuminate the garage to a level that makes people feel safe.”

Because most parking is off-street in the city’s central commercial district, Davis said, people feeling comfortable parking in those garages is crucial to the economic success of downtown New Haven.”

Investing in these kinds of infrastructure improvement projects will allow our city to continue attract people to our local businesses and grow our economy,” State Senate President Pro Ten Martin Looney said in a release issued after Friday’s vote.

Mayor Toni Harp has been asking for the state for $40 million for overall improvements, much of that for upgrading the Air Rights Garage, which the city owns in conjunction with Yale-New Haven Hospital. Part of the idea is that an upgraded Air Rights garage would provide more annual payments in lieu of taxes to city government’s depleted coffers. The city currently takes in about $1.5 million a year from those payments.

State budget chief Ben Barnes told the Independent that the Malloy administration decided to cap requests from cities at $5 million for Friday’s Bond Commission Agenda. That’s because the Urban Act fund — out of which these requests will be funded — had only $20 million in it overall for the fiscal year ending June 30, with hundreds of millions of dollars” of asks from communities statewide, he said.

After July 1 another $100 million becomes available under the act, Barnes said. So at that point I’m willing to consider more” of Harp’s overall requests for New Haven garage improvements.

It’s the final year of the [Malloy] administration. We’d like to make sure we leave cities in good shape,” Barnes said.

Also at Friday’s meeting, the Bond Commission approved $500,000 for a study about how to connect New Haven’s port to freight rail.

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