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Oak Street Connector
Nearly half a century after the state planned a superhighway to cut through downtown New Haven, there's a new plan
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Business New Haven
3/17/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Enter: New Haven, Connecticut 1958.
The state's Department of Transportation has just wrapped up construction of the new Oak Street Connector, also known as the Richard E. Lee highway, connecting I-95 to York Street. The next part of the plan is securing $20 million to complete a section from the existing connector to the Boulevard.
Fast forward to 1966: The state begins clearing way for a new highway that will extend the Oak Street Connector to Route 34 at Ella T. Grasso Boulevard. The state begins seizing properties along Legion Avenue to make way for the 16-lane roadway. The project was later reduced to 12 lanes, and work was expected to begin in 1975.
Almost a decade later, in 1984, the state finally admits defeat, blamed on lack of funds (sound familiar?) but doesn't surrender all hope. The project is just being "pushed up," the state says, to the late 1990s.
Through 2001, the state reportedly still planned for the Route 34 expansion, though New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. says that plan has been dead for years.
"The plan to extend the highway to the Boulevard was abandoned years ago," DeStefano says. "The only near-term, past decade plan was to extend the highway just under the [Air Rights] garage to come up at Dwight Street.
"In the past decade, the plan was never to extend Route 34 beyond continuing it underneath the Air Rights Garage and surfacing up at Dwight Street," the mayor explains. "It would have expanded the width of North Frontage Road to carry both east and west traffic. Currently it only carries western traffic with Legion Avenue becoming a local road."
Last month Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, announced plans to construct a new 60,000-square-foot inpatient clinical trial center in partnership with Yale University and the city of New Haven.
The center would be used for Phase I clinical drug trials, the first stage of government-mandated tests that must be performed before a drug can be marketed commercially. Clinical trial centers help facilitate testing for medicines approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for human clinical trial. The new clinical trial center in New Haven might have as many as 50 beds and accommodate 24-hour subject surveillance.
Pfizer reportedly considered a number of possible sites in Connecticut and elsewhere, but favored locating near Yale because of the school's excellent reputation in medical imaging technology.
The proposed center would focus to a large extent on experimental drugs for the brain and central nervous system, where close visual monitoring is critical.
Pfizer may also consider New Haven attractive because of its proximity to the company's research and development headquarters in nearby Groton, with a satellite campus across the Connecticut River in New London. Pfizer currently employs some 6,000 workers between its two Connecticut facilities.
The state sold a plot of land, formerly slated for the superhighway, between Howe Street and Park Street to Pfizer for $1 and is expected to sign over the remaining 22 acres to the city of New Haven.
There was once a vision of biotechnology firms along Legion Avenue, but that has apparently changed. "The extent of the vision now is to get title to the land," DeStefano says.
"We have not articulated a plan of development, nor will we until we talk to adjacent property-owners, neighborhoods and business interests about what to do," DeStefano says. "We think it has some commercial viability, but the character of the adjacent properties at the western end is very different than the eastern end. Our large first goal to get accomplished is to get title."
He says the idea of a bioscience "cluster" in that neighborhood is one that dates back to the 1980s. It was a the keystone of a "Science Park South" that would complement the existing Science Park. "I don't know that I would still agree with that at this point," says DeStefano.
Morton Brown, 69, grew up on Legion Avenue and went to New Haven's Scranton School, now the Scranton Medical Building. He is member of the Oak Street Committee, co-chairman of the Old Legion Avenue Reunion Committee and vice president of George J. Smith & Son Realtors in Milford.
"I think it's long overdue that something is happening to that area," Brown says.
"I think the 22 acres should be utilized correctly and there should be a study before they start a new renaissance or redevelopment," he adds. "It's crazy - they've had so many years of studies."
Adequate parking is a must, asserts Brown. Pfizer plans to open the site with 50 employees and grow over time.
"There is such congestion at the [Yale] medical center. There should be careful planning with concern of removing traffic from Frontage Road north and south. It's a long and narrow parcel, so it could easily create another bottleneck with snarls of traffic."
"From a practical standpoint, you've got the excess land that has to be utilized with the thought of transportation and parking in mind. If you don't have both of those items in tandem, you're not going to have a successful situation."
He and DeStefano seem to be on the same page, though Brown may have more vested emotionally in the neighborhood.
Brown says he grew up in a neighborhood that was basically destroyed. It's clearly about more than just roads and highways. Brown, honored by the Oak Street Committee as its "Man of the Year" last year, helps to organize annual reunions and fund raisers to support what's left of the old community.
"Our friendships have continued and we have people flying in from Florida, California, Texas, all over. They all come in and we have a good time with bocce and horseshoe games," Brown explains.
"We have fun, reminiscing with old photos and renewing friendships. And then we meet during the year to discuss how any funds we've received from contributions will be distributed. We try to give it back into the community."
The committee is currently developing a scholarship program for the new Career High School that was built on Frontage Road.
"We try to reinvest the dollars in the old neighborhood," says Brown. "We can't rebuild it, but we try to support the peripheral community.
"Legion Avenue was the focal point of commerce, especially on Sundays. We had a lot of fun in the old neighborhood," Brown reminisces.
"It was a safe area at the time, and the predominant activity was the school and the old Jewish center at Dwight and Legion Avenue, then we had all the ethnic stores on Legion Avenue. We had St. John's Church, the Hebrew Day School, so it was an ethnically mixed community. There were some beautiful stores, then the neighborhoods became islands or just disappeared. It was a close-knit neighborhood."
The highway that never materialized was supposed to make the ride to I-95 from areas like Orange and neighboring Derby more tolerable. Orange First Selectman Mitchell Goldblatt felt the highway would have been a positive thing for Orange.
"I don't think Orange has ever taken a view on the Route 34 highway idea, but even to go on Route 34 to the highway (I-95), you still have about 30 traffic lights, no matter how you look at it," Goldblatt says.
"For the connector to be extended would have cut out a lot of that and certainly would make it easier for people to travel from Route 34 to I-95 and into downtown New Haven," adds Goldblatt. "That would certainly be a positive thing for Orange."
"You want to have as easy an access to the hospitals and to downtown New Haven and to I-95 as possible. If there was any way it, or something similar, could go forward, I see it as a positive thing for Orange as much as the entire region. I think it would be very helpful if this were still able to happen. Even the section that takes you from where Yale-New Haven Hospital is to the Boulevard, is a relatively newer experience, but loaded with traffic lights."
The road system is perfectly adequate, according to DeStefano, since in any downtown area there will be peak periods of traffic and congestion.
"With regard to parking, we'll have significant parking problems in the area, but they're related to the failure of Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale Medical School to build structured parking and their over-reliance on surface parking," DeStefano says.
"The city is currently in discussion with both the hospital and the medical school after the need for them to develop structured parking."
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