Justin Elicker’s measuring tape, workers’ bright green t‑shirts and signs, and nearly four hours of passionate testimony couldn’t convince four alderman to make a decision on a resolution asking the city to remake its controversial design of the “Downtown Crossing” project.
East Rock Alderman Elicker and others were hoping that the Board of Aldermen’s Community Development Committee would support a plan submitted last month to convert the Route 34 connector into “a pair of two-lane urban boulevards” rather that the five-lane roads the city’s current “Downtown Crossing” proposal calls for. The city won $16 million in federal money to make over Route 34, long considered a huge mistake that divided the city and razed a neighborhood several decades ago.
Instead, at a meeting Wednesday night that drew close to 100 people, the committee decided not to decide. The committee will revisit the matter within next two weeks, announced committee chairman Marcus Paca after a short recess a little before 11:00 p.m.
The inconclusive ending didn’t reflect the meeting’s contentious debate, where sparks flew on both sides.
The debate was joined by proponents of a more walkable, bikeable Route 34 corridor. That group included Alderman Elicker, armed with a measuring tape to show just how far pedestrians would have to walk to cross the street. A woman who had been struck by a bus that broke her back in Washington D.C. offered passionate first-hand testimony about just how dangerous intersections can be.
City officials, meanwhile, argued that the Downtown Crossing design already incorporates many bike- and pedestrian-friendly elements. The city cannot afford to wait on getting the project going, they said. They were joined by a dozen construction workers in bright green shirts that read “Support Economic Development.” The workers spoke up in favor of new jobs associated with the project.
“Would you feel safe as a pedestrian walking all the way out those windows?” asked Elicker, his voice rising in volume as he walked away from the meeting table with a roll of measuring tape. He demonstrated that one of the pedestrian crossings envisioned by the city’s current plan would be longer than the length of the aldermanic chamber.
He called the appearance message of the green T‑shirts a “misleading attempt to lobby this committee.”
Neena Satija Photo
From left, Aldermen Dolores Colon, Bitsie Clark, Marcus Paca and Claudette Robinson-Thorpe.
When Elicker was done, Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark gave him a talking to for his “angry manner,” prompting gasps and mutters of “watch your mouth” from the audience.
“For God’s sake, both sides have got to stop this shit and starting talking to each other,” she said. “The last thing we want here is polarization. We can’t afford it.”
She wasn’t any happier with the labor group Elicker had blasted. Most of their testimony didn’t have much to do with the actual resolution, which calls for a prioritization of pedestrian and bike safety and doesn’t deal with jobs and economic development.
At left, New Haven resident and job-seeker Desmond Wilkes.
“I would like to have a job. And that’s all I want to say,” said a green-shirted Desmond Wilkes. Several more members of the group approached the committee with similar statements.
“Every single person in this room is for jobs. If they aren’t, they shouldn’t be here,” Clark answered. Eventually, as committee Chairman Marcus Paca continued calling up members of the group to testify, she asked him pointedly, “why do you keep calling the same side up?”
The group left en masse after they had finished testifying, about an hour into the meeting.
Asked afterward who organized the appearance at Wednesday night’s meeting, Wilkes was vague, responding, “I really couldn’t say that.” He said everyone in the group was a participant in the city’s Construction Workers Initiative, which was started years ago and that they decided to attend on their own. But he wouldn’t talk about who made or paid for the printed T‑shirts.
At the beginning of the meeting, Paca had said he would first bring up 10 people who supported the resolution, followed by 10 people who didn’t. But when he announced the end of testimony for “supporters of the resolution” after the labor group left, someone shouted out, “Weren’t they against the resolution?”
Paca.
Clearly, people were confused about who was for and against it, legislative staff pointed out. “It’s clear that they were in favor of jobs,” Paca responded shortly.
The city officials who testified next tried to assure the committee that they, too, were in favor of jobs — and of most of the bike-friendly resolution’s points. In fact, their plan already reflects most of what was in the resolution, they argued.
For instance, the re-built area will have “textured sidewalks” and “bike boxes” at intersections to help both pedestrians and bikers cross streets, as well as an off-street bike lane around the Knights of Columbus building.
After the meeting, traffic czar Jim Travers sketches out a proposed intersection with bike boxes and coordinated pedestrian signals.
And two-lane roads weren’t necessarily the answer to slowing down traffic, said Mike Piscitelli, the city’s assistant director of economic development and former traffic czar. He cited the Merritt Parkway and Ella T. Grasso Boulevard as examples of “extremely high speed” streets with only two lanes. The plans for the urban boulevards at Downtown Crossing, Piscitelli, said, reflect “the next generation of urban downtown streets…and they tend to be larger.”
Click here to see a report on the city’s plan, presented to the Community Development Committee.
Not to mention, the design isn’t finalized yet — and there’s more to the project than just Phase One. “Phase two will introduce newer sidewalks and that sort of thing,” said Bob Talbot, a project engineer with Parsons Brinckerhoff, the Boston-based firm in charge of the project design.
It was the message of the ticking clock which really seemed to hit home with the committee members. The $16 million federal Tiger II grant funding will only be “obligated” to the project once it’s put out to bid for construction — and that has to happen by September 2012.
“We don’t want to lose the money,” said the city’s economic development director Kelly Murphy. “[The plan] might not be perfect…but we want to keep moving and keep growing.”
After that point, Clark started asking questions about the timetable of every person who testified in support of the resolution. “Isn’t there a deadline?” she pressed. “Money is coming at a certain point. How do you deal with that aspect?”
Cycling advocate David Streever’s answer: It may already be too late. The city’s current plan is so far from the original proposal it submitted when it applied for the federal grant that the feds might have an issue with such a big change, he said. “The city may have already shot itself in the foot on that.”
After the meeting, Murphy dismissed his concerns. “He should put in context for the grant proposal,” she said. “It was for a lot more money…that vision is going to be constrained by funders, approvals, time frames.” (The city originally applied for $21 million and only got 16; before that it had been denied an application for nearly twice that).
State Rep. Roland Lemar, who co-signed the bike-friendly resolution along with 11 city aldermen, said he doesn’t think the state or the feds would pull the funding simply because the plan had changed from its original form. But the problem, he said, is that “the city has never designed a plan that reflects its priorities.”
In his testimony Wednesday night he repeatedly called the urban boulevards the city proposes “a local access highway” or “highway substitute.”
Despite hours of argument during the meeting, there was no consensus. While Parsons Brinckerhoff may move ahead on the design of Phase One in the next month, the committee will revisit the resolution within the next two weeks on a date to be set by Paca, and community groups will continue to suggest new designs. (Click here to read about the most recent public workshop on the project, organized by the New Haven Urban Design League.)
Anstress Farwell of the New Haven Urban Design League, called the resolution a “declaration of independence” for residents.
“September 2012 isn’t tomorrow night,” pointed out former Dwight Alderwoman Olivia Martson, vice-president of the Urban Design League, after the meeting ended. “The city’s just saying, ‘we need to make a decision by January 1 when the new alderpeople come in. Rush, rush, rush.’”
You can have jobs and good design at the same time. It just takes elbow grease and political will.