Welcome
About The Project
Planning Documents
Project News & Updates
Public Input
|
About The Gateway Downtown Development Project
On June 3, 2004, the State of Connecticut and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. jointly announced the historic Gateway Downtown Development Project. The project includes $240 million in state bond funding to relocate Gateway Community College and the Long Wharf Theatre to brand new facilities in the New Haven downtown and includes new housing, retail, offices, and commercial space components. When the Board of Aldermen approved the amendment to the Downtown Municipal Development Plan for this Gateway Downtown Development Project, they approved a concept plan that includes Gateway Community College, Long Wharf Theatre, commercial and residential uses, a hotel, open space for public use, parking facilities, and infrastructure improvements within the project area.
  
Gateway Community College. Gateway Community College – one of the fastest-growing community colleges in the State with more than 11,000 students and 400 faculty and staff members – is currently housed in two facilities. One facility is located on Long Wharf and the second is in North Haven. Through this development project, the College will be consolidated and relocated to downtown New Haven. The new college will be built on the former Macy’s and Malley’s department store sites, otherwise known as 2 Church Street and 20 Church Street. The facility is planned to have approximately 350,000 square feet of space, with publicly accessible uses on the first-floor street level including the culinary arts program, an early learning center, gallery space, and the bookstore. The project also includes an on-site parking garage with approximately 600 cars for College use. Before the College could move downtown, the former Macy’s building needed to undergo significant environmental cleanup to remove the asbestos and hazardous materials inside the building and demolition of the exterior structure. Environmental remediation was completed in August 2007, and the bulk of the demolition was recently completed in October 2007. The City and the State of Connecticut are completing the land transfer so the College can begin its first phase of construction. The new college is estimated to cost more than $200 million. Architects Perkins + Will are working on the schematic design. Construction of the parking structure is scheduled to begin in 2009. The new facility is scheduled to open in the Fall of 2012.
 
Coliseum Demolition. As part of the Gateway Project, the City funded the demolition of the former New Haven Veterans’ Memorial Coliseum. The former Coliseum was built in 1972 and housed many music, entertainment, and sporting events that  attracted visitors from all over Connecticut and beyond. High operating costs, unsustainable net operating deficits, and increasing competition throughout the Connecticut area caused the facility to struggle financially and ultimately close its doors in 2002. With a structure that was beyond repair, the Gateway Downtown Development Project called for the demolition of the former Coliseum and redevelopment of this parcel to meet the project goals. The site has been turned over to Propark, Inc., who is operating a temporary parking lot as an interim use, which provides revenue to the City while the City seeks long-term development of the site.
  Long Wharf Theatre. As part of this project, the State has agreed to provide $30 million to relocate Long Wharf Theatre from its current location in the Food Terminal on Sargent Drive to a portion of the site that is currently occupied by the Coliseum. The Theatre is currently in the midst of a capital campaign to raise the remaining funding needed for the relocation as well as to create an endowment fund. Long Wharf Theatre currently has an audience of 100,000 during a season, and attendance is expected to spike to 120,000 with its downtown move.
Redevelopment of the former Coliseum site. Following the completion of the demolition of the Coliseum in 2007, the City conducted an RFQ (request for qualifications) to select a preferred developer to redevelop the Coliseum site with a mix of uses on the site. Northland Investment Corporation was selected as the preferred developer. The City, Northland, and Long Wharf Theatre are currently negotiating to determine the mix of uses, development components, and shared amenities that can be maximized throughout the site. In addition to the Theatre, the site is expected to include a significant residential component, a commercial component (including perhaps a hotel), as well as street-level retail that lines the first floor street-level of the parcel to encourage pedestrian activity and to provide resident amenities in this development parcel. The site will also include parking.
Parking. New Haven has approximately 13,500 parking spaces in the general downtown area. The Gateway Downtown Development Project acknowledges that additional parking will be required for its project components, especially the parking required for the students and faculty of Gateway Community College and new users of the former Coliseum site. Parking for the College will be handled in the new garage that is being built on-site by the College and by existing spaces in the Temple Street Garage. The City expects that additional parking will be needed for the uses on the former Coliseum site, and that opportunities for shared parking may exist amongst the different uses that are part of this mixed-use development project.
Infrastructure. As part of this project, the City is embarking on specific infrastructure improvement projects that will help the investment being made by each of these new developments succeed. The State has given the City a grant of $10 million to defray the costs of the demolition of the Macy’s building and additional infrastructure improvements.
|
