Orange Intersection Ready; Temple Bridge Next

Goodbye, flashing lights and detours. Hello, new protected and signalized intersection: Starting next week, a long-in-the-works Orange Street crossroads connecting the Hill and downtown will finally open — and officials will begin pursuing the next step of ​“Downtown Crossing.”

That next step: The city will seek $22 million more in federal aid to help create a new Temple Street bridge and open up still more developable land atop the Rt. 34 corridor.

City Plan Senior Project Planner Donna Hall gave those updates Wednesday morning during the latest regular monthly meeting of the city Development Commission. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

Hall’s presentation focused on the latest with Downtown Crossing. That’s the $50 million-plus, state and federally funded overhaul of the Rt. 34 mini-highway-to-nowhere that city officials have been working on for nearly a decade.

The multi-phase project’s goals have included undoing the neighborhood-demolishing sins of mid-20th Century Urban Renewal; restitching downtown, the Hill and the medical district; and promoting the development of lab and office space, particularly for New Haven’s burgeoning biotech sector.

Back in 2016, Downtown Crossing Phase 1 saw the creation of the College Street bridge and the development of the Alexion building at 100 College St. A new 10-story, 500,000 square-foot bioscience tower at 101 College St. right across the street is also now in construction.

On Wednesday morning, Hall said that Phase 2 — which features a new intersection connecting Orange Street and South Orange Street across MLK Boulevard, South Frontage Road, and the Air Rights Garage Service Drive — will open next week.

“Phase 2 is now substantially complete, and the intersection is slated to open on Monday,” Hall told the commissioners. ​“All detours that have been frustrating the traveling public will be removed at that time, as well.”

The city has been working on Phase 2 since at least 2017. Construction began in the early summer of 2019. The Elicker Administration hosted a celebratory press conference about the then-in-construction new Orange Street intersection in September 2020. And Hall led a walking tour of the still-in-construction intersection for city development commissioners in October 2021.

“We had some supply chain issues” and some electrical connectivity issues that made it so that the Orange Street intersection couldn’t open last fall, Hall told the Independent after Wednesday morning meeting. 

Some of the supply chain-delayed products included pedestrian push button brackets that the city wound up needing to get specially fabricated. ​“You need to have all design components related to safety completed in order to declare substantial completion,” Hall said. ​“It’s got to be safe for all users” before this phase of the project could be declared done.

“All of those issues have been resolved,” she said, clearing the way for Monday’s planned intersection opening.

What exactly will that look like?

As an interim condition over the past few months, Hall said, the city has had flashing traffic signals in the Orange Street intersection, allowing for through-traffic coming off the highway to continue unimpeded heading west towards Church Street or turning north onto Orange Street.

Come 9 a.m. on Monday, she said, ​“there is going to be a signal where you reach Orange Street getting off of the Connector.” 

Vehicles heading north on South Orange Street behind the police station will also be able to get onto the highway again via that route, and will no longer have to take a detour across the recently reopened section of Columbus Avenue to get over to Church Street South and South Frontage Road before making their way onto the highway.

The turning on of the traffic signals on Monday will enable cyclists and pedestrians to take advantage of the first bike-protected intersection in the state, with landscaped islands separating bike lanes from vehicle travel lanes and pedestrian crossings. New bike lanes are also already in place at sidewalk level on South Frontage Road, and pointing towards Water Street and Union Avenue.

Pedestrians will need to make the trip across the new Orange Street intersection in two phases. After pressing a pedestrian crossing button and getting the signal, they’ll have to cross four lanes to an island in the middle of the intersection. Then they’ll have to press another button and wait for another signal before crossing the one-lane service drive and another four lanes to get all the way across the intersection.

Up Next: $22M Quest For Temple Crossing

Also during Wednesday morning’s Development Commission meeting, Hall spoke about the Temple Street connection work that is slated to take place as part of Downtown Crossing’s Phase 3 and 4.

Phase 3 work has already begun, and all of the funding for that is already in place, Hall said. That work included raising South Frontage Road by seven feet and the construction a bridge abutment on the south side of the planned new intersection to allow for the building of a new Temple Street crossing.

“Now we are working on MLK and doing some intersection improvements at Temple Street that will enable safe pedestrian crossing to the new development site at 101 College St.” That work should take roughly four months to complete, and should be done by the end of the summer, she said.

Phase 3, she continued, is all about ​“teeing up the connection” for a bridge to be built across Temple Street as part of Phase 4.

In particular, Phase 4 will include the raising of MLK Boulevard to allow for Temple Street to cross the Rt. 34 corridor ​“in an ADA compliant way”; coordination with United Illuminating around accommodating the ​“significant utilities” that currently exist on that stretch of the future intersection, including UI distribution and transmission lines; constructing an abutment on the northern side of the intersection to support a future Temple Street bridge; the construction of the Temple Street bridge itself; and the construction of certain modifications to the Temple Street Garage to allow for the new crossing for cars, buses, pedestrians, and bicycles alike.

It will also open up a new developable parcel of land, known as Parcel B, atop the Rt. 34 corridor between Church Street and Temple Street.

“This corridor is all about the future of New Haven and where we’re going,” Hall said. ​“We’re reclaiming all this land, which has really not been an asset for us in terms of urban design,” and — without displacing any existing business or residents — constructing new transportation connections and ​“building out this biotech corridor.”

In order to make all of that Phase 4 work possible, Hall said, the city is applying for a federal RAISE grant in the amount of $22 million. That application is due tomorrow, and the city expects to hear back from the federal government by the end of August on whether or not New Haven will be awarded that money.

“Hopefully we will get this RAISE application funded,” she told the commissioners. ​“It will allow us to complete this vision of the Temple Street connection, which will not only connect” downtown, the Hill, and the medical district, but which will also serve as an ​“important relief valve for traffic and congestion” in this part of the city.

Hall said that the state has already committed around $1.6 million towards Downtown Crossing Phase 4. She said the city will also have to contribute some money towards the local matching portion of the RAISE grant, if it is funded by the feds.

She said that, if the application is funded, construction on Phase 4 should begin in 2025 and should be complete by 2026.

All of this work, including creating new developable parcels of land, will mean ​“new jobs, new taxes, and taking something that was this edge, this hole, this barrier in the city, and not just creating connections, but optimizing the use of the land so that we’re achieving a normalized street grid and having it feel like an amenity,” Hall said.

Will the parcel that’s going to be opened for development touch ​“all four corners of existing streets” at South Frontage, Temple, Church, and MLK? Development Commissioner David Valentino asked. 

“Yes, that is the plan,” Hall replied. ​“The access drives will continue under the new building [at Parcel B] the same way they do under 101 College St. and [the still-in-construction] 101 College St. The building will have street frontage on all four sides.”

“It’s amazing how expensive it is to rebuild the city after the so-called redevelopment” that took place decades ago, Development Commission Chair Anthony Sagnella said. But, he added, this is all ​“very exciting,” and thanked Hall for her presentation and for her work.