Where cars once zoomed into town, two new culverts and mounds of dirt appeared Wednesday.
They appeared on a stretch of the old Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere that the city closed down to make way for a new 13-story biomedical office tower and a broader project called Downtown Crossing.
Two crews worked on separate parts of that effort Wednesday.
Paul Bass Photo
The C.J. Fucci construction company erected the culverts as part of $32 million in federal- and state-funded roadwork made possible by closing Exit 3 of the Connector this past March and, this coming November, Exit 2. Crews have already dismantled half of the bridge. The culverts allow drivers to pull into the garage or the Yale-New Haven loading docks. Once the rest of the bridge comes down, the land will be filled with dirt, with a new road on top. Meanwhile, the two travel lanes along Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard/North Frontage Road will be expanded to three lanes, along with a new bike lane and wider pedestrian sidewalks. The work should all be done by next summer, according to DeStefano.
Working alongside Fucci is a crew from John Moriarty & Associates construction. That crew was moving mounds of earth Wednesday to begin laying the foundation for 100 College St., the 500,000-square-foot, 13-story office tower that developer Carter Winstanley is building for the Alexion pharmaceutical company, or whatever it will be called upon the building’s completion. (The building is officially being described as having 12 stories plus a lobby; here’s why.) That building is scheduled for completion by the summer of 2015.
Mayor John DeStefano (pictured) visited the third deck of the Air Rights Garage to look upon the latest progress. Click on the video at the top of the story to hear him describe the work below.
Click here and here for previous coverage of Downtown Crossing.
The widening of surface streets in this area is unacceptable, and Mayor DeStefano will bear a heavy responsibility for the future deaths and lackluster job growth that will result.
Just like with the widening of Whalley Avenue into a highway two years ago, the people who could have done something (DeStefano, Looney, Harp, and others) failed to stand up for what city residents need. DOT said Whalley would have a 25 mile per hour speeds, but everyone knew at the time that people from the suburbs would be traveling at 50 miles per hour through there, and they do. Downtown New Haven will be the same, thanks to the shortsightedness of these politicians.