by Laura Glesby The New Haven independent
City of New Haven Preliminary design for a Green makeover.
The city is $4 million closer to an overhaul of the New Haven Green, with traffic calming measures and a bus route reconfiguration on the horizon — after the Board of Alders unanimously approved accepting a state grant on Tuesday evening.
At the alders’ first full board meeting of September in the Aldermanic Chamber on the second floor of City Hall, local legislators unanimously allowed the city to accept a $4 million grant appropriated by the federal government and distributed by the State Department of Transportation.
The grant is slated to fund part of the city’s redesign of the New Haven Green, where the Elicker administration has proposed a cafe, restroom, and multiple new plazas.
The resolution that alders passed on Tuesday broadly enables the city to use the grant funds to implement “safety improvements around the New Haven Green” and to sign any agreements “that the Mayor deems desirable or necessary.”
City Engineer Giovanni Zinn outlined specific intentions for the $4 million in a cover letter to alders. He wrote that the grant will fund raised intersections and raised crosswalks at eight locations around the perimeter of the Green, as well as a transformation of the stretch of Temple Street that crosses the Green into a pedestrian-friendly walkway that will still be able to accommodate cars.
Specifically, the city has outlined plans for that portion of Temple to become a “woonerf” — a street that can accommodate pedestrians alongside cars and cyclists, with traffic calming measures such as narrower or curved lanes for vehicles (akin to part of Audubon Street).
“The material of the roadway,” Zinn wrote of the Temple Street block, “will be distinct and in-character for the Green to denote its distinction from other roadways and the presence of pedestrians on the shared space.”
East Rock Alder Anna Festa, who chairs the Board of Alders City Services and Environmental Policy Committee, advocated for her colleagues to approve the grant.
“This is all for safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists, equally,” she said.
“There’s been a lot of outreach” to community members, said Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin, who highlighted the Green’s role in the city as a hub for everything from “festivals” to “protests.”
That block of Temple Street is currently a three-lane road that serves as a hub for southbound bus routes in the city. The city intends to convert both Elm and Church to two-way streets so that the buses that currently stop on Temple Street can be rerouted to Church Street. These changes are all slated to accommodate a proposed Bus Rapid Transit system that will add expedited bus routes to some of the city’s main thoroughfares, such as Whalley and Grand.
Downtown/East Rock Alder Eli Sabin, who represents a portion of the Green as alder of Ward 7, advocates for the grant.
In the audience on Tuesday sat a medley of preservationists and unhoused activists, over half a dozen in total. Several of the people present, including representatives of Center Church on the Green, have expressed skepticism about the city’s plans to redesign its central square.
Historic preservation advocate Anstress Farwell and unhoused rights activist Sun Queen — the two of whom said they are regular bus riders — both argued that the city should have conducted more public outreach before moving forward with the grant.
“I don’t think there was a lot of outreach with community at the table,” said Queen.
Queen, part of the Unhoused Activist Community Team (U‑ACT) advocacy group that has called for a permanent bathroom on the Green, argued that the city should prioritize infrastructure enabling the people who currently sleep on the Green to do so with more dignity — by providing a 24-hour public bathroom, for instance, as well as a source of drinking water.
She expressed reservations about the resolution’s language of “safety improvements,” wondering if they implied deterring unsheltered people from sleeping in the public park. “I’m interested in knowing, what does safety look like?” she asked. “Being able to use a bathroom, that’s safety.”
Farwell, who relies on the bus system to get around the city, expressed particular concern about the proposed bus route relocation. She said she’s concerned that a future two-way Church Street would not have enough room to accommodate the volume of buses that currently run through the center of the city, particularly given the wide turn radius that those buses require.
She also expressed concern that parking spaces along Church Street, which are often used by visitors to City Hall, could be reduced or removed entirely. She wondered about how the city plans to mitigate flooding on the Green. And she disputed the city’s characterization of the redesign of Temple Street as more historically accurate to previous iterations of the Green.
In response to Queen and Farwell’s critiques, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Rebecca Bombero said that the redesign of the Green was based on many years of public outreach dating back to 2012.
While the city held a public meeting about the Green’s redesign in December, Farwell said she did not feel that residents’ concerns had been addressed at that meeting. She said she hoped the city would commit to “an open, public process,” with more public forums for questions like hers to be raised.