Christopher Bockstael/ Svigals + Partners
Human beings were seen jogging, walking, and hanging out at the urban renewal-devastated corner of Legion and Dwight — in an architectural sketch displayed at a groundbreaking for a project aiming to make that dream a reality.
Paul Bass Photo
City development chief Matthew Nemerson, Continuum board member Tom Macy, developer Bob Landino, Mayor Harp, Walker, & Malloy at Wednesday’s Route 34 West groundbreaking.
The groundbreaking took place Wednesday at 243 Legion Ave. for an $11 million new three-story 30,000 square-foot headquarters at the corner of Legion and Dwight Street for a mental-health agency called Continuum of Care.
It’s the first of several new buildings being constructed as part of a $50 million development called “Route 34 West” by a Middletown company called Centerplan on a 5.5‑acre lot across from Career High School.
That project in turn is just the first step in an envisioned redevelopment of the remaining 16.2‑acre median between Legion Avenue and MLK Boulevard (along state Route 34) running from Dwight Street to Ella Grasso Boulevard. New Haven leveled a busy neighborhood along that land half a century ago during the heyday of urban renewal to make way for a highway that never got built. Now the city plans to build the wasteland of surface parking lots back up with the aim of restitching the Dwight, Hill and West River neighborhoods.
“This corridor has languished for decades,” Mayor Toni Harp observed before picking up her shovel at the groundbreaking ceremony.
She called the groundbreaking a first step toward not just “filling in this great divide” along Route 34 but metaphorically “reconciling” the broader city into “one New Haven.” The project — which is also to include stores, a garage, and either a hotel or medical offices — also promises to bring 250 – 300 construction jobs, 100 to 250 permanent jobs (55 jobs including existing Continuum of Care positions) and millions of dollars in new tax revenue once completed.
Rather than connecting neighborhoods, the Route 34 West plan creates another car-centered, suburban business-park-style design to a neighborhood that needs greener, more residential, walkable and bikable development, in the view of some opponents. (Read about that here and here.) They wanted to see more housing and a pedestrian-friendly design.
Although the opponents failed to stop this part of the project, Harp has repeatedly promised to include their concerns and ideas in the planning for the rest of the 16.2 acres. She said that the plan will become more residential as it moves west toward Ella Grasso Boulevard.
“We listen to the neighbors in this community,” Harp (pictured) said in her remarks. In a separate interview, she said that overseeing a democratic planning process for the rest of the project is one of her top goals for her appointee to head the neighborhood-renewal Livable City Initiative (LCI), Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
Meanwhile, Route 34 West’s architects Svigals + Partners displayed a new rendering of the Continuum headquarters at the groundbreaking. (It’s at the top of the story.) The drawing shows people actually walking on the currently forbidding block — the goal of opponents and proponents alike. The drawing shows a new tower at the corner of Dwight and Legion. The tower will be visible from the Yale hospital/medical district and lure pedestrians to the development with a signal that activity is occurring there, said Jay Brotman, a Svigals architect.
Brotman, Harp, Malloy and Continuum CEO Patti Walker.
The drawing also shows a first-floor storefront. It’s empty for now. The goal is eventually to have Continuum clients run a sandwich shop there and to put tables out on the patio, further encouraging public use.
A stairway rises above the three stories of the building, in the rear. It leads to the roof where mechanicals will be stored out of sight. The building will extend about halfway up the block toward MLK Boulevard upon its expected completion in mid-2016. The envisioned second building will house either the medical offices or a hotel and fill the other half.
The state put in $7.5 million toward the $11 million construction cost. The city also worked with the state to obtain $2 million through “new markets tax credits,” a federal program aimed at spurring development in low-income areas. (Read about it here.) This is the first project in Connecticut to make use of the credits, which Congress approved in 2000.
Addressing the 70 or so people crammed into a tent erected for the groundbreaking, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy (pictured between Harp and Dwight Alder Frank Douglass before speaking) said the project reflects society’s advances in addressing mental illness. Continuum sends workers to the homes of people with psychiatric and developmental disabilities and also runs residential facilities.
“No one is to blame for mental illness. For a long period of time in our history, we blamed the person who suffered for their malady,” Malloy said. He spoke of the connections between depression and substance abuse (in which people self-medicate), and of the need to “house people properly” during recovery.
We listen to the neighbors in this community," Harp (pictured) said in her remarks. In a separate interview, she said that overseeing a democratic planning process for the rest of the project is one of her top goals for her appointee to head the neighborhood-renewal Livable City Initiative (LCI), Serena Neal-Sanjurjo.
I hope the major of you have your bags packed.The major of you will be priced out of the neighborhood and not be able to afford the rents that the gentrification vampires will be charging you all.