J Press Moving Back To York Street

I think that in general the Broadway District should be denser with more retail space and mid-rise apartments/office towers above. How I see it happening is that you would have to re-shape some of the streets that surrounds Broadway. Unfortunately, I think that most of the buildings that are adjacent to a lot of the businesses on Broadway would have to go down for redevelopment purposes.

~ The intersection where Broadway meets Dixwell, Goffe, Whalley, Howe and Tower Parkway would have to be re-shaped as well. (obviously for safety reasons and redevelopment purposes)

~ Lastly, the current parking area that sits in the middle of Broadway would be a perfect spot to put more retail, apartments, offices and even a parking garage for drivers who would want to spend time and go shopping in the area. Also, there probably can be a public plaza between the buildings too. But anyways, I would love for that to be a reality for Broadway in the future. Hopefully.

Quinn, I agree there's no reason for all those streets to converge on Broadway. The current setup handles traffic like some kind of a rural Montana highway interchange, but it is a disaster from an economic development point of view.

It would be relatively easy to turn Goffe 90 degrees and merge the end of it with Dixwell/Lake, or with Whalley/Dwight (by demolishing Sushi Mizu). Ideally you could run the street across both, since the blocks that are bordered by Whalley/Sperry/Goffe and Dixwell/Goffe/Webster are both way too large to be considered walkable and should be cut up.

Doing this would free up a ton of land for tax-paying development. For example, a building the size of 360 State Street would easily fit where the parking lots and gas stations are now.

This is one of those things that might cost a few million dollars for the new street, but could yield enormous positive benefits to the city's tax base. If we want to hire back all those library, school, and parks positions that were cut, we need to be looking at changes like this that don't cost much but could yield big tax revenues.

Furthermore, why are there still regs on the book that without a variance or special exception would otherwise require 37 off-street parking spaces (!) and 17-foot rear-yard for this small site? Parking and setbacks aren't typically a requirement in functional, economically vibrant downtowns and urban areas - in fact those things often have a dampening affect.

@anonymous,

Yeah, you make some good points. I like the idea that you had specifically made about Goffe Street. My own idea that I had about Goffe Street was to extend Dwight Street to Dixwell, and then extend Lake Place to Whalley just so that there would be more of a real street grid in place. Then Goffe Street would end either where Dwight or Lake Place would be extended, and maybe even Bristol Street could also be extended to Goffe as well.

I agree that this would free up a lot of developable land and quite honestly I think that it's needed for the simple fact that New Haven would look better and would benefit greatly from this type of project.

The past few times I've gone in to spend too much money on a gift for my dad, the employees look annoyed a customer walked in their store. Their name, location, and tradition will keep them open, but they need get a grip. Best of luck?

I'm actually interested in how they're planning to run that fourth floor cafe. There's the top floor cafe at the Omni, and I've dined at a boutique kind of top floor restaurant over retail in Dallas. I think this could actually turn out nice, although I pity the employees who will be carting the restaurant supplies through the formalwear.

I genuinely applaud the variances that are allowing this project to proceed. But can we go ahead and just end parking minimums for that neighborhood rather than granting a variance to each project individually?