Grad Housing Conversion Gets Alder OK

The conversion of Yale University’s Hall of Graduate Studies dorms into academic space can move forward now that alders have given the go-ahead for an overall parking plan for the Central/Science Campus.

Alders unanimously voted to to give that at City Hall during their regular bi-monthly meeting Monday with no debate and no objections from the alder who last month held up an attempt to speed up the vote on the matter.

Wooster Square Alder Aaron Greenberg refused to support unanimous consent for the parking plan last month, which would have fast-tracked the plans for the conversion of the hall from housing to academic space and allowed Yale to move forward with a site plan review in front of the City Plan Commission.

Yale graduate students will have new housing starting in the fall of 2018 in the form of a six-story building that boasts 41 two-bedroom units, currently under construction at 272 Elm St., leading to the plan to convert the Hall of Graduate Studies (HGS) on York into a center for humanities featuring a 300-seat lecture hall and a 100-seat film screening room/classroom.

Greenberg, who also heads Yale’s new graduate student union, said he held up the plan two weeks ago so that Yale could address concerns over what the conversion might do to parking.

Greenberg said Monday night that after submitting questions to university officials about the impact to parking, specifically whether there would be a net loss of 100 spaces, he was satisfied with the responses. The alders’ OK clears the way for Yale’s site plan to go before the City Plan Commission on Tuesday.

In two emailed responses dated Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, Lauren Zucker, associate vice president for New Haven affairs and university properties, indicated that grad students currently living in the building park in Yale garages on Howe Street or Pierson Sage. She said that faculty and staff relocating to 320 York St. are already accounted for in the overall parking plan and can continue to walk from where they park or take the Yale shuttle.

“The 320 York project does not eliminate or add parking spaces, and there is no added faculty or staff, therefore there is no impact on the OPP,” Zucker wrote on Sept. 5.

On Sept. 12 she wrote that 170 grad students currently live at HGS, which has 175 offices; post renovation there will be about 300 offices, reducing the number of rooms that currently exist.

“These offices are of a less intensive use than student housing as they are not occupied on a 24/7 basis,” she wrote.

Greenberg said he was satisfied that there would not be a net loss of 100 parking spaces.

“The university has made a really good case,” he said. ​“I feel very happy with that.”