DOWNTOWN CROSSING COMMUNITY WORKSHOP SCHEDULED FOR JUNE 24

(6/21/2010) (NEW HAVEN)--On June 24th, the City of New Haven will hold a community workshop in the Main New Haven Free Public Library at 133 Elm Street from 6:00 - 8:00 PM on Downtown Crossing, a design and development framework for the future Route 34 between State Street and the Air Rights Garage. When the current Route 34 was built as a depressed highway in the 1950’s, it left hundreds of displaced families and razed buildings in its wake, erased an entire urban neighborhood, and physically divided the city’s downtown core.

The Downtown Crossing project proposal aims to reshape the highway’s off-ramps and concrete barriers into a new neighborhood with the potential to provide new economic opportunities and means of sustainable transportation that will better serve New Haven’s future. Through this new development, the city will be able to further take advantage of its strategic position as the economic hub of South Central Connecticut and the state’s top city for health and biotechnology research to draw residents and up to 4,000 jobs to newly-constructed retail, office, research and residential space.

Downtown Crossing will recreate Route 34 as a boulevard at an urban, pedestrian-friendly scale that will reunite neighborhoods at New Haven’s central crossroads. This community workshop will give New Haven residents and businesspeople the opportunity to interact with designers, engineers and city officials to comment on and respond to the project’s challenges and prospects.

Follow this link for more information.