Paul Bass Photo
Sullivan, Reim, and builder Lynn Fusco at Thursday’s announcement.
The $400 million development planned for the old New Haven Coliseum site doesn’t yet have a name, but it does now have a first-phase architect: New Haven’s Herb Newman.
Newman Architects
Rendering of project’s first phase.
Newman joined a group of city and state officials and developer Max Reim Thursday afternoon to announce his role and a few other milestones for the project. The project aims eventually to bring 1,000 mixed-income apartments, 30 – 40 new businesses, a four-and-a-half-star hotel with 160 – 190 rooms, 30,000 square feet of stores, and a public square to the property bounded by Orange, George, State streets and MLK Bouelvard. The announcement took place by the alley behind Toad’s and Broadway, inside Newman’s exposed-brick open-space office filled with cubicles and cardboard models of other projects the firm has designed, such as New Haven’s City Hall and Union Station renovations.
Reim, of a Montreal firm called LiveWorkLearnPlay, has reached agreements with the city and state to construct his project a block away from that George and Orange building, on land where the New Haven Coliseum used to tower.
Newman noted that the project doesn’t have a name yet. He suggested “Tenth Square” or “The Place.” Choose your own name in the above “True Vote” or in the comments section at the bottom of the story.
In addition to the Newman announcement, state deputy economic development commissioner Tim Sullivan disclosed that the Malloy administration has now signed a contract authorizing the release of a promised $21.5 million to the city to reconfigure the intersection of Orange and MLK as part of a broader removal of the Route 34 Connector. Sullivan said some of the money will be released immediately to start design work, the bulk of it when Reim has his financing all in place and construction starts. Reim said he expects to submit site plans for phase one of the project to the city this coming spring and to break ground in the summer.
City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said another crucial step has been completed this week on the project — an agreement by all parties that utilities can be relocated from the intersection. That means Reim can now present a configuration of the streetscape to potential hotel operators. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy had made inclusion of the hotel in the project’s first phase a precondition of the state’s $21.5 million contribution for the roadwork (which comes on top of $12 million from the city). Reim has not yet signed a deal with a hotel operator.
The project will “reconnect a city that has been artificially separated” for decades, Mayor Toni Harp remarked at Thursday’s announcement. Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker (at right in photo with Harp) called the deal “a model for how the city and a developer and the residents can work together on a good project.”
I am seriously surprised that we are only this far along with this project.