nothin Yale High Street Deal: How Is This Different… | New Haven Independent

Yale High Street Deal: How Is This Different From Selling A Street?

Thomas Breen photos

Looking down High Street from Elm. Will this some day look like…

… this? Looking east on the Yale-owned section of Wall Street.

The city has agreed to close off a portion of High Street to car traffic, and to allow Yale to fund, design, and maintain a new publicly-owned walkway in its place.

Raising the question: How exactly is this different from selling a city street?

Mayor Justin Elicker and Yale University President Peter Salovey were asked that question Wednesday afternoon during a virtual press conference about a new four-part, six-year deal between the city and Yale.

The Zoom-assisted presser followed an hourlong in-person announcement on the second floor of City Hall where city and Yale officials detailed Yale’s planned increased voluntary payments to the city, its commitment to paying some taxes for a limited period of time on properties newly off the tax rolls, and its planned creation of a new Center for Inclusive Growth to be helmed by the dean of Yale’s business school.

Click here for a full story on the agreement, which now heads to the Board of Alders for review.

Google Map image

High Street between Chapel and Elm (in blue).

Also included in that newly announced deal is the city’s agreement to close off High Street between Chapel and Elm Streets to car traffic.

This stretch of High Street will remain a City thoroughfare open to pedestrians and cyclists but will no longer allow vehicular traffic, other than emergency vehicles,” a press release on the deal states.

Yale will lead the development of the design, subject to the approval of the City Plan Commission and the New Haven Traffic Authority. After design approval, Yale will fund and manage the establishment and maintenance of the public space. The partners’ goal is to create a beautiful public space that will welcome students, New Haven residents, and people from around the world.”

Elicker noted during the City Hall press conference that in the past the city has sold public assets to the university.” Namely, in 2013, when the city sold High Street between Elm and Grove Streets and Wall Street between College and York Streets to Yale for $3 million. Yale has subsequently converted those former downtown city blocks into landscaped paths closed to car traffic and open only to pedestrians and cyclists.

The mayor stressed on Wednesday that this new deal keeps High Street between Chapel and Elm Streets in the public domain.” He said it also sets the right tone: That Yale is part of our community.”

Mayor Elicker at Wednesday’s City Hall presser.

During Wednesday’s virtual press conference, Yale Daily News reporter Philip Mousavizadeh pressed Elicker and Salovey on the future of this section of High Street. What does it mean that the block will still be owned by the city, but essentially controlled by Yale?

Elicker said there are two key reasons it’s important that this High Street block remain under city ownership.

One is that it is a public asset,” he said. And once the city gives up a public asset, we never have the opportunity again to reacquire it, unless whoever that property owner is agrees to sell it back to us.”

Second, he said, is that the city’s continued ownership of the High Street block means that the soon-to-be-car-free walkway will remain open to the public, unlike some sections of Yale’s downtown campus. It can be used not only by Yale constituents, but by many, many people in New Haven.”

By maintaining the site as a public asset, it allows people to utilize it and not only walk on it and ride their bikes on it, but use it as an access way to get around town.”

He said that the newly struck deal with the university calls on Yale to submit to the city a design proposal for that High Street block. That proposal must be approved by the City Plan Commission and the city traffic authority before it can go into effect.

Yale President Salovey.

Salovey said that, when Yale bought parts of Wall Street and High Street from the city in 2013, the city and the university agreed on a property assessor to assess the value” of the blocks. Essentially, we paid that amount of money to the City of New Haven, and bought the property.

Here, the city is still the owner. We don’t pay a fixed amount of money for the asset, for the street. We submit a development plan, and the city approves it.”

When all is said and done,” Salovey added, the stretch of High Street in question will probably look a bit like Wall Street down now, and be closed to traffic from the part we already use from Grove to Wall, and then from Elm to Chapel.”

Looking west on the Yale-owned section of Wall Street, from College Street.

New Haven Biz reporter Liese Klein also asked about the planned High Street block closure during Wednesday’s in-person press conference at City Hall.

Is the university also considering opening up Old Campus and its various courtyards to the public? she asked.

We haven’t thought about that yet,” Salovey replied.

As a general rule, we want the public to enjoy our campus,” he said. That’s the principle here.”

He said that the university doesn’t have any plans to rope off from the public” the newly landscaped Wall Street blocks. It’s a beautiful walkway now,” he said.

As for High Street between Chapel and Elm, this will be city-owned, but similarly landscaped” to the Wall Street walkway. So you can traverse the campus from north to south, from east to west,” by foot and by bike.

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