Christopher Bockstael/ Svigals + Partners
Paul Bass Photo
Look how slowly these cars are driving, the architect said. Michelle Perez looked, and wondered: Where are the bikes?
Perez, a Fair Haven alder, was watching the architect, Christopher Bockstael of Svigals & Partners, present the latest vision for how a developer wants to begin rebuilding a 16.2‑acre stretch of Legion Avenue and MLK Boulevard — dubbed “route 34 West” — that the government leveled two generations ago to make way for a highway that never got built.
Her exchange with Bockstael demonstrated that the vision of “calm streets” may depend on the vantage point of the beholder.
The developer, Middletown-based Centerplan, has repeatedly updated the details of its plan in response to concerns raised by New Haveners about pollution, traffic, and design. The developer’s team (including Bockstael) presented the latest updated version this past Thursday night at a City Hall public hearing on the city’s plan to sell him the 5.39-acre megablock bounded by Dwight Street, MLK, Orchard Street, and Legion for $2.65 million.
Christopher Bockstael/ Svigals + Partners
The architect’s design for the finished project.
The developer promises to spend $50 million turning a surface parking lot there into a $50 million new home for the Continuum of Care mental health agency, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a parking garage, and a medical building or hotel. Click here for a previous story detailing the plan and the public’s concerns, and here for a story about the developer; and here for Mary O’Leary’s New Haven Register account of some of the arguments presented Thursday night about air quality and local hiring.
Developers Bob Landino and Yves George-Joseph speak with the press during a break in the hearing.
After hearing three and a half hours of public testimony on the project, with passionate voices for and against, the Board of Alders Community Development Committee voted to table the proposal until the next meeting rather than vote at the Thursday night meeting.
“There have been a lot of great [comments] tonight. A lot of paper,” said committee Chair Frank Douglass. “The committee needs time to digest it all.”
In response to critics, the developer and city officials presented some new tweaks to the plan at the hearing, in addition to previous revisions (like promises to use solar panels, install bike parking and cyclist-showering facilities, and have any restaurant on the block stay open at night):
• To make room for the project, the city plans to move the cars now parked on that block down to the surface lot at Sherman Avenue and Tyler Street. About 600 cars park on the current lot. The new lot will accommodate fewer cars, around 470, said city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli. And he announced that the city will agree to a sunset on that move — it will guarantee that the lot (envisioned for housing development as the Route 34 West plan advances) will no longer have cars on it in five years. Piscitelli called the sunset clause “a good thing” because it will pressure government planners to figure out how to promote alternatives to car travel.
• The developers will limit a new garage on the site to 600 parking spaces, not 800 as planned, if it turns out they end up building 120,000 square feet of new space rather than the full 120,000 to 160,000.
• They will include some 2,500 plantings to make the block greener.
Architect Bockstael talked about that as he presented a new drawing of what Legion Avenue might look like on the block including the new project and, across the street, Career High School. The drawing appears at the top of this story.
“It’s the right scale,” Bockstael told the alders. “It blends into the city. It’s going to be a great economic benefit.”
Sharing the public’s concern for safer streets for pedestrians and cyclists, the developers plan to put buildings close to the street. That, combined with trees and other plantings, makes the currently fast-moving wide avenue feel smaller. That in turns slows down traffic, Bockstael argued.
“I don’t see space for a bike there,” interjected Fair Haven Alder Perez, seated inches from Bockstael (pictured) as he presented poster-sized blown-up slides on two easels. “I’m going to get run over” cycling there, she said.
“This is an artistic rendering,” Bockstael responded, not an actual definitive detailed representation.
Perez asked as well if there’d be room to ride bikes on the sidewalk. Yes, she was told. But someone else informed her that it’s illegal to bike on sidewalks in New Haven.
Asked later, Bockstael said that the drawing reflects the builders’ intention to make it easier to bike and walk in the neighborhood, in part by slowing down traffic. That can be done in part by “softening” the streetscape and eliminating wide-open expanses, he said.
“When you bring the buildings closer to the road” and add the trees, cars slow down, he said. Psychologically, “the road starts to close in on you. When you’re out in the open, you floor it.”
After the hearing, Perez said the street in fact “looks too tight” for a bike-rider.
She likes to ride her mountain bike in Fair Haven, she said. But she doesn’t feel safe on the streets, anywhere in town. “There’s no room,” and cars zoom by.
“I ride on the sidewalk. They can arrest me for it. I’m not going to” risk personal safety in the street, she declared.
Perez was asked her reaction to the argument that a tighter-feeling street bordered by buildings and trees will make cyclists safer by slowing down cars.
“Yeah, right,” she responded. “A cop doesn’t make it slower. A building’s going to do it? I don’t think so.”
Cycling advocate Brian Tang (at front right in photo), testifying before the committee Thursday night, offered another idea for making the street safer for bikes: Building dedicated bike lanes, separated from car traffic, on MLK Boulevard.
Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen listens to Continuum chief Patty Walker answer questions at the hearing.
Slow traffic?? -- Cars in an architectural rendering generally don't exceed 0 mph.