Thomas Breen photo
High Street to remain a street, for now.
Yale has paused its planned conversion of High Street between Elm and Chapel into a pedestrian- and cyclist-only plaza — as it also pumps the brakes on other new-construction projects amid federal funding uncertainty under the Trump administration.
The decision to pause the long-awaited High Street conversion plan was made in February, a Yale spokesperson said on behalf of Alexandra Daum, Yale’s associate vice president for New Haven Affairs and University Properties.
“In February Yale decided to postpone the conversion of High Street between Elm and Chapel Streets to a pedestrian-centric area,” Daum said in an email comment Thursday. “The project team made our partners at the City aware of this decision as well as the community members who were involved in the steering committee for the project.”
Mayor Justin Elicker confirmed on Thursday that the university let his administration know earlier in the year about the High Street project pause. He said Yale put the project on hold as it braced for potential funding cuts and attacks on higher ed by the Trump administration.
The High Street-conversion plan was first announced in November 2021 as part of a six-year deal between the city and Yale. Per that deal, approved by the alders in April 2022, the city would maintain ownership of the downtown block while Yale would design a conversion of the street into a walkway open to pedestrians and cyclists. Yale would then fund the construction and maintenance of the car-free plaza.
“This was something that Yale wanted as part of the deal,” Elicker said on Thursday about the High Street plan. “It was important to them.” He said the “door [is] open” for future conversations between the university and the city about following through on this High Street plaza. But, for now, that project is on an indefinite hold.
The university undertook two weeks’ worth of underground utility “exploratory work” in August 2024 in pursuit of this project. And in October 2024, university representatives and architects with the New York City-based SCAPE Landscape Architecture held an online public meeting about the planned conversion. At that meeting, they laid out a timeline by which construction would start in spring 2025 and end in summer 2026.
Meanwhile, Yale is also pausing work on other new-construction projects thanks to that same President Donald Trump-induced uncertainty, as first reported Thursday by the New Haven Register’s Steven Goode.
Mayor Justin Elicker told the Independent on Thursday that Yale hasn’t given a list of specific projects to be paused.
Elicker added Yale has told the city that projects currently in motion — like the Science Hill build-up and the new School of Drama / Yale Repertory Theatre hub — will continue as planned.
No list exists of specific projects on hold, according to Daum.
He also said that delays to any of Yale’s projects will not impact the city’s projected building permit revenue for Fiscal Year 2025 – 26 (FY26), which begins July 1.
“While it’s great that the projects we have in process are going to continue as planned, the funding uncertainty we are experiencing calls into question a sizable percentage of our budget,” Yale’s Alexandra Daum told the Independent. “We have a healthy pipeline of capital projects in the very early planning process. We don’t know how much of an impact federal decisions will have on these projects, but we know that realistically there will be some impact, so we are being prudent.”
Paul Bass contributed to this report.
Looking south on High, from Elm, in October 2024.