Envisioning Downtown Crossing: A Community Conversation and Workshop, July 30-31

Mark your calendars!

Envisioning Downtown Crossing: A Community Conversation and Workshop
July 30 -31, 9AM - 5PM, at the Bourse, 839 Chapel Street

Who's invited?

Anyone who works in New Haven.
Anyone who lives in New Haven.
Anyone who works for New Haven.
Anyone who loves New Haven.

What will be discussed?

Neighborhoods, Downtown, Green space, Urban Design, Transportation & Traffic, Safe Streets, Bicycling, Air Quality, Housing, & Economic Development and Opportunity

The Downtown Crossing project presents profound opportunities to reshape the city and revitalize its economy. Its potential impact makes it the largest and most important project in the City in a generation. The opportunity to use $60 million in public funds to repair the damage done to the core of the city by an idealistic but misguided highway to nowhere has generated intense public interest and many proposals for its design. The project has also generated an vibrant community discussion about the direction of the current plan,* with many groups and individuals expressing strong interest in holding a community-based workshop to explore solutions to some of the issues that have been raised.

Here is your chance!

The New Haven Urban Design League, working with neighborhood groups, and members of the Yale Traffic Safety Group, the Downtown Wooster Square Management Team, the Environmental Justice Network, Elm City Cycling, the Congress for the New Urbanism, and others, is planning to hold a two-day discuss/design/sketch workshop on Downtown Crossing, which will be open to the public. The goal is to give a visual form to many of the ideas that have arisen during the City's public meetings to present their Downtown Crossing plans, and also to additional ideas that emerge from participants during the two-day workshop. We will also help the public visualize the effect of different ideas for Downtown Crossing on future downtown development, the surrounding neighborhoods, the planned development of Route 34 West, and connectivity to Union Station.

A nationally acclaimed team of urban planners, architects and transportation engineers -many of them living in, or near New Haven - are volunteering their time to work with all the Downtown Crossing stakeholders to explore ideas and create specific plans to strengthen the project's design, safety, environmental, and economic performance.

Your participation is essential.

By creating plans and ideas through an open, professionally-facilitated, consensus-driven process, the Workshop will produce insightful, serious and feasible concepts for the project, and increase the likelihood of a popular and successful project being built.

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Louis Mangini, of Representative Rosa DeLauro's office, has kindly offered to give opening remarks at the workshop. We have had good discussions with him about ways to improve not only the plan, but also the planning process through design charrettes. This workshop will help us refresh our thinking on the city's future development, broaden our understanding of its possibilities, create new strategic partnerships, and enrich our civic structure.

Contact person:

Anstress Farwell, President
New Haven Urban Design League
129 Church Street Suite 419
New Haven, CT 06510