Thomas Breen photo
Work Thursday on the trail section behind Whitney and Audubon.
DEAN SAKAMOTO ARCHITECTS
A rendering of Farmington Canal Phase IV.
An old fence has come down, stray tree stumps have been pulled up, and an excavator is busy moving dirt and debris about, as construction work began at long last on New Haven’s unfinished final stretch of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail.
That was the scene midday on Thursday in a parking lot-turned-staging area tucked behind the east side of Whitney Avenue between Audubon Street and Grove Street.
A half-dozen yellow-vested and hard-hatted construction workers from CJ Fucci Inc. were at the scene for the first week of construction on a project that has been in the works for a decade.
Thomas Breen photo
That project is Farmington Canal Phase IV: The planned extension of the 80-mile, Northampton-to-New Haven rail trail from its current terminus at Temple Street.
When completed, this section of the bicycle and pedestrian trail will go from Temple Street through the remaining downtown below-grade sections past Whitney Avenue near Audubon Street and down to Grove Street. It will then rise up to at-street level on Grove Street, continue on to Olive Street, then to Water Street, and to Brewery Street, and over to Long Wharf Drive.
Construction superintendent Chris Kane.
“Today, on Day One, we’re breaking ground and prepping the area for construction,” said CJ Fucci Superintendent Chris Kane. “Right now would be demolition.”
That involves taking down an old fence, pulling tree stumps, and “really just getting ready to stage up here. Then we’ll go down into the trail and start removing the old debris, buildup, junk, and overgrowth.”
The most intensive construction work will take place between Grove Street and Temple Street.
The trail’s current Temple Street terminus…
… and the built-out trail heading northwest from Temple.
That’s where the current end of the canal on Temple will be connected to a newly opened and cleared bicycle-and-pedestrian path that will extend beneath street level over to Grove.
The overgrown trail stretch near Grove Street.
The construction workers will then put in a new ramp that slopes down from Grove Street to allow for users of the path to connect from the below-grade section to the at-street section that will “snake its way” over to Olive Street.
How long will Phase IV take to build out, particularly the Temple-to-Grove Street section?
“This section here, at least a few months,” Kane said. He said the construction crew plans to work through the fall and winter if necessary.
Bye bye, debris: As viewed from Whitney Avenue.
Click here , here, here, and here for previous stories about Phase IV and its many delays.
Earlier this year, city staffers told the Independent that Fucci’s bid for the project —which proved to be the lowest bid — came in at around $7,261,000. The designer’s initial estimate for the project was around $4,967,000.
Thomas Breen file photo
Aaron Goode (pictured at right), who leads the New Haven Friends of the Farmington Canal Greenway group, welcomed the construction news.
“Hallelujah!” he told the Independent in an email comment. “We finally made it — at least to the back stretch, if not (quite) the finish line. I’m pleased, and relieved, that two of New Haven’s most significant bike-ped infrastructure projects — the Edgewood cycle-track and Farmington Canal Phase IV — both long delayed, have finally begun construction within a few weeks of each other.
“These projects will bring safety, convenience, and joy to our residents — and a more sustainable network for active transportation to our city. The completion of Phase IV could not come at a more timely moment as we continue to add new apartment homes on Audubon and lower Olive Street, whose residents will benefit enormously from having one of the region’s premier greenway systems right outside their front door.”
The four-decade-old trail still has gaps that need to be filled in Southington and Plainville, he continued. And “there may be future, better iterations” for the downtown-to-harbor connection, after Phase IV is complete.
“But for now we celebrate what we have accomplished,” he concluded, “turning the dream of a greenway on our historic canal — across multiple mayoral administrations, multiple levels of government cooperation, and multiple decades of tough advocacy — into a joyous reality that I cannot wait to try out on two wheels.”
Wow- finally! What a decades-long teaser-at-times wait! Congratulations! .... Next, can we have a City Hall update on the effort for a new Bike-Share provider??? I know with the pandemic there are supply issues everywhere. But there must be an operator that can open in New Haven with at least 300 Bike-Share bikes last the last one had tried to start? With hints at a possible Spring-time opening for this the downtown part of Farmington Canal Trail, and 1000s of new downtown residents arriving at Audobon, the Wooster, the Olive street apartments, etc, etc, the demand for Bike-Share will be significant. Right now, New Haven's three amazing downtown bike shops/ co-ops do not seem to have a supply for bike rentals, so we need the Bike-Share.