The urban renewal movement of the 1950s and 1960s left its mark on cities across Connecticut, but perhaps one of the most painful was in New Haven. Construction of Route 34 got underway only after the Oak Street neighborhood was demolished, forcing the relocation of 880 families and 350 businesses. Then, the highway — intended
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NEW HAVEN — With one dropout, the state had only approved three “First Five” projects before the announcement today of financial help for Alexion Pharmeceuticals, which will be the main tenant at Carter Winstanley’s biotech building at the heart of the ambitious reclamation of Route 34 downtown. For more on this story, visit: Alexion Pharmeceuticals
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After nearly a month-long delay, Downtown Crossing, the city’s largest redevelopment effort in a generation, is back on track for a vote by the full full Board of Aldermen. At a public hearing Thursday night held by the joint finance and legislation committee, aldermen heard opinions from community members on the zoning changes and the
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Downtown Crossing, the city’s $135 million project to remake downtown that stalled in the Board of Aldermen last month, is nearly back on track. The City Plan Commission voted on Wednesday vote to approve a zoning change that would convert 15.8 acres of land from New Haven’s central business district into a new mixed-use district
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It was a little bit of deja vu for the City Plan Commission Wednesday night, which once again put its stamp of approval on the zoning map and text change for the new BD-3 district after a “redo” public hearing. The vote at the special meeting puts the complex Downtown Crossing project back on track
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When it came to his first vote on a major development project, Adam Marchand hadn’t read the 200-page plan before him. He voted yes anyway. Why? Because, Marchand said, he made up for it with a close reading of the executive summary. He put nearly an hour of questions to city officials and to the
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It fills in a failed urban renewal highway. Does that make it “new urbanism”?

After months of public debate and criticism, plans to start filling in the Route 34 Connector with new development sailed through the City Plan Commission Wednesday night.

Carter Winstanley will have to make “art objects” a part of his big new development project. Pictures of New Haven, too. His tenants can sell wine—but no beer. Dollar stores? “Adult” establishments? Forget it.

With funds from the Obama Administration’s TIGER program and other sources, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. intends to replace the short Rt. 34 expressway with two wide streets—a circulation network that would do more to accommodate heavy flows of vehicular traffic than to make an environment conducive to walking and neighborhood life. Click on this environmental headline for more on this story.

The state Department of Transportation has approved all 50 modifications requested for the first phase of the Route 34 conversion to urban boulevards that were changed to make them more pedestrian and cyclist friendly. The New Haven Register reports.

Downtown Crossing was awarded a $23 million U.S Department of Transportation TIGER grant, one of the largest issued from Washington, to do the job. Yet the plan’s current design does not align itself with the stated intent of the project. The Hartford Courant reports.

Some traffic, pedestrian safety concerns addressed, more work left for future. A turning point in the debate about the redesign of Route 34 from Union Avenue to the Air Rights Garage was reached when Alderman Justin Elicker pulled out a measuring tape at a September hearing.The tape seemed to stretch out forever as the alderman
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They support changes worked out between the city and the Board of Aldermen that make crosswalks along Route 34 where it intersects with Church, College and York streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists, but they feel the city can do more. A $30 million plan to replace Route 34 with two urban boulevards and reclaim
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As afternoon traffic on Route 34 streamed by Thursday, a group of Yale students urged the city to push for public transportation options to help cut pollution as New Haven embarks on major changes along the heavily traveled roadway. Click on this environmental headline for more on this story.

Signers of the August proposal—including 11 aldermen, one former alderman turned state rep, and an alderman-elect—called on the city to make the project more amenable to walkers and cyclists and less focused on the needs of motorists.

Contentious public hearings on the proposal ensued, as well as behind-the-scenes negotiations, resulting in a new design agreed to last week.

Thanks to community support, last month, the Route 34 Resolution passed the Board of Aldermen’s Community Development Committee by a vote of 4-3. Please thank Alderpersons Bitsie Clark, Claudette Robinson-Thorpe, Dolores Colon, and Greg Morehead for voting in favor of the resolution, which you can view if you click on this environmental headline for more information.

Apocryphal or not, the story offers little solace to current city residents. In cities across the country, highway-placement decisions of yesterday continue to impact life today. The ghosts of the interstate era still linger in New Haven’s Route 34 Connector, for instance, which has bifurcated the downtown district for more than half a century. For
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While there is widespread approval for an evolving plan to link downtown New Haven to surrounding neighborhoods, turning the Route 34 corridor into “urban boulevards” and connecting streets, critics say the city’s plan is too committed to wide roads that carry vehicles, causing serious safety concerns for cyclists and pedestrians.

As maverick architect Robert Orr received an “urban angel” award he spoke of a devil in the details—of the city’s plan to remake the Route 34 Connector into a project called Downtown Crossing.