Paul Bass Photo
The road to connectivity: Work begun on State Street bike lane.
Highlights from Wednesday's press conference.
The work of excavators mixed with officials’ visions of bustling downtown blocks Wednesday as New Haven started rebuilding a new stretch of State Street — or rebuilding a version of the old one.
Elicker: We're reconnecting Wooster Square, the Hill, and Downtown.
The occasion was a press conference held in the graffitied-over, mural-covered I‑91 underpass at State and Bradley Streets.
A block away, a crew from Laydon Industries was digging up the western side of the street to make way for a new bike lane. That’s step 1 of Phase 1 of a two-part $6.7 million Lower State Street Redesign Project aimed at undoing mistakes of urban planning past: The city wants to make State Street from Trumbull to Water Streets a place again for walkers, cyclists, train-riders, apartments, maybe even stores. Not a place primarily for speeding cars.
The state- and city-funded project is expected to take about two years to complete. It will narrow State Street’s four traffic lanes to two. That will make room for new bike lanes and pedestrian tracks. It will add 650,000 square feet of buildable land (including on current underused parking lots) for 450 new apartments near the city’s two train stations.
Or, as planners and politicians put it nowadays, for “transit-oriented development” (“TOD” for short).
Officials at the press conference spoke of recapturing the urban vitality and density on a stretch that had become a suburban style car-oriented mini-highway over the past half century. First the construction of I‑91’s Exit 3 in the 1960s wiped out homes and stores at the northern end of the stretch. Then parking lots replaced other stores and homes on block after block along the railroad tracks. A 1980s-era beautification project widened the street to make room for floral medians. The city kept WTNH in town by luring it to build a suburban-style, street-life-eviscerating fortress as its new HQ at the corner of Elm and State.
State Sen. Martin Looney reminisced at the press conference about visiting that stretch as a kid in the 1950s. He bought padded football pants at Alling sporting goods. People bought groceries at an A&P. Cassidy’s and McGuire’s Irish bars did steady business.
A question is raised by reminiscences: How precisely can urban planners recreate the past?
People now more often buy groceries at supersized supermarkets, not at smaller A&Ps popping up throughout a city (the way Subway and Dunkin Donuts franchises do today). Same with sporting goods. Office space is going begging, especially with the spread of remote work.
On the other hand, many young adults and empty nesters have moved back to cities in search of antidotes to the soul-numbing suburban sprawl sprawl caused by mid-20th century urban flight. In fact New Haven can’t build apartments fast enough to fill them, especially affordable ones. Cities can be thriving, busy places again, even if in some different ways from the past.
And people still go to bars, not to mention restaurants. The northern “upper” side of State past the Bradley I‑91 overpass hums with that mix of apartments, shops, and eateries.
“This is about connecting communities back,” said Hill/Downtown Alder Carmen Rodriguez. “We are stitching communities back together where it was disconnected.”
Mayor Justin Elicker noted the need to build housing statewide, given Connecticut’s 2 percent vacancy rate. The 400-plus apartments made possible with this road reconstruction, combined with all the housing going up in the Ninth Square and Wooster Square and Audubon Street, will bring many more people downtown to support commerce and build community, he said.
State Rep. Roland Lemar, who co-chairs the legislature’s Transportation Committee, spoke of how the Lower State Street project reflects the TOD philosophy: It enables people to live near trains, not to mention cross the street easily to go to work or school or friends’ homes. Rather than seek to “move as many cars a fast as possible.”
A WTNH reporter asked about his colleagues who drive to and from work. Will this inconvenience them?
The response came from city Chief Civil Engineer Christopher Flanagan: The project includes synchronizing the lights along the corridor. Not just to lower the frustration of drivers. But also to make it easier for humans to cross the street.
Examples of how best-laid official plans can evolve in unplanned ways: Scenes from an officially sanctioned beautification mural on the walls of the Bradley Street I-91 underpass, along with unsanctioned graffiti enhancements.
I can't help but feel this is an overcorrection. Motor vehicles are very much part of American life and while they may be considered gauche in such a sophisticated city like New Haven, many of us shop at WalMart and Costco to make ends meet. We drive to work and pick our kids up from school. New Haven isn't NYC and it isn't Yale, it's still a city of working folks. I love the idea of connecting neighborhoods, but at some point we'll be left with an elitist disneyland. I am thoroughly torn.
I wonder if there was a press conference in the 1960's before they leveled State St in the name of progress.