Construction Disruption, Then A Restitched Center City

Two years of construction and lane closures and vehicle re-routing at the southern end of Orange Street downtown will eventually give birth to a new at-grade, multi-use intersection designed to restitch neighborhoods and restore downtown’s street grid.

Acting Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli sketched that vision Thursday night at a public information meeting about Phase 2 of Downtown Crossing, a years-in-the-making reconfiguration of the Oak Street Connector and long-sundered connections between the Hill and Downtown.

Two dozen neighbors turned out for the meeting on the second floor of the Canal Dock Boathouse on Long Wharf to learn about the imminent start of construction for the project’s second phase, which will result in the construction of an at-grade pedestrian, bicycle, and vehicle intersection connecting Orange Street and South Orange Street in lieu of the current mess of semi-highways at MLK Boulevard, Rt. 34, and South Frontage Road.

“What this project is really about is reconnections,” Piscitelli said. ​“There’s an opportunity here to create a more normalized street grid” and bring back together the Hill, Downtown, the medical district, and Union Station after decades of separation thanks to the Urban Renewal demolition of the old Oak Street neighborhood and the creation of the Rt. 34 mini-highway to nowhere. 

Over the past few years, the city has secured over $50 million in federal, state, and local funding for three phases of the Downtown Crossing project. The first phase saw the construction of a pedestrian and road crossing at College Street, and the third will focus on a pedestrian and road crossing connecting Temple Street and Congress Avenue.

Click here to download Piscitelli’s full presentation slide deck.

Unlike at this March’s Development Commission meeting, at which Piscitelli, City Plan Director Aïcha Woods, and City Plan Senior Project Planner Donna Hall gave a broad outline of the Phase 2’s planned bicycle and pedestrian improvements, landscaping design, stormwater management strategies, and public art components, Thursday’s presentation focused primarily on the short-term implications for drivers coming on and off the highway downtown over the course of the two-year construction project.

Piscitelli explained that construction should begin in June, and should conclude by the early summer of 2021.

Construction will play out over nine different stages, with the most intensive work starting in the spring of 2020. (Download the full presentation above to review all nine stages, four of which are show below. The green lines represent inbound traffic, the blue lines outbound traffic, and the red lines the construction zones.)

The Air Rights Garage Service Drive will go from two lanes to one. The inbound service drive between Orange and just past Church will then close permanently, with a new ramp being built between MLK Boulevard and the service drive by the Temple Medical Center.

There will be local access only by the Coliseum site for much of late 2020. And the Orange Street intersection should be complete somewhere between May and July of 2021. ​“The intersection will open,” Piscitelli said, ​“and we’ll have a big party to celebrate.”

Local architect Jonathan Hopkins asked if Piscitelli is aware of any other examples in the country of an at-grade pedestrian and bicycle intersection that crosses nine lanes of traffic at the dead end of a highway. ​“Has this been done before?” he asked.

There are precedents out there for very large intersections like the proposed Orange Street crossing, Piscitelli replied. And the final design for the intersection will include specific protections for pedestrians and cyclists. The ultimate goal for this phase as with all three phases of Downtown Crossing, he said, is to make sure that New Haveners traveling by multiple modes of transit can easily get back and forth between downtown, the Hill, the train station, the medical district, and the many new residential and office buildings sprouting up in between.

“If we fly over” the planned Orange Street intersection with a bridge, Piscitelli asked, ​“are we really creating an urban condition that works for us?”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Thursday night’s full public information meeting.