By
Mark Abraham via Design New Haven.
Great coverage in today's
New Haven Independent on the city's official groundbreaking ceremony for the
360 State development.
Shovels have been in the ground for over a month, so the ceremony was
largely ceremonial, but the importance of the event was not
understated:
The
symbolic shovelers heralded a future vision for downtown. It’s a
downtown populated by medical and university-connected renters who rely
on their feet and mass transit rather than cars, buy organic groceries
downstairs from their $1,000-to-$5,000-a-month apartments, and help
save the planet by living in a green building. “People are paying that
in today’s market,” Becker said. “There’s no vacancy at all for the
better buildings here downtown,” such as the Eli on Church Street.
The Hartford Courant recently published an opinion piece about the development by the Senior Editor of New Urban News,
criticizing its impact
on the neighborhood, its massing and pedestrian-friendliness. The
importance of walkable, bikeable, and transit friendly streets has been
growing nationally, as
travel mode undergoes a dramatic shift away from private automobiles. New media sites such as
streetsblog.net, a large national blog network created to dovetail with the work of the
Transportation for America Campaign, give a sense of this phenomenon.
Although
DNH believes that the urbanistic impact of decisions such as where the
building's use/program, massing, windows, stair towers and entrances
were placed may take years to fully assess (and are combined with the
positive stimulus of 1,000 new residents in a pedestrian-rich city
core), downtown designers are generally hopeful that the apparent
pedestrian safety problems can be alleviated well in advance of the
project. For example, the impact of the three major curb cuts at State
Street can be reduced through attractive paving, improved sightlines
and intensive traffic calming, including bollards if necessary.
Also,
the 360 State development promises ample indoor bicycle parking for
every apartment - a huge step in the right direction. Yet there are no
bicycle lanes or bike boulevards in the area, despite the fact that the
streets on all four sides of the new tower are heavily-used crosstown
bicycle routes, and even identified by the City of New Haven as such on
its
official bicycle map.
How will the doctors streaming out of 360 State on their bicycles get
to the medical district? A greater attention to this form of
transportation is needed if the community wishes to provide realistic
low-cost transportation alternatives to its citizens, which should be a
no-brainer in a town where the vast majority of daily trips are a
couple miles or less and where almost half of residents already walk,
carpool, bike or take mass transit to work.
Click here for the developer's new website,
360statestreet.com, where they are already beginning a leasing list. Here's the developer's description:
Something
is happening in New Haven, and you can see it on the sidewalks. There’s
a new vitality. The suburban exodus is over; Connecticut residents are
answering the call of the city. Today, people don’t want to depend on
their cars. They want to walk to a show, to wander out and find a new
favorite restaurant, maybe even to walk to work. There’s a new
appreciatiosn of city life—and New Haven is leading the renaissance.
The city is a destination, and the dynamic downtown lives up to its
motto: “It All Happens Here.”
It’s
happening at 360 State. The eco-friendly residence, two blocks from
Yale and the New Haven Green, will house a diverse rental community
from graduate students, to professionals, to empty nesters. New Haven
is home to a cultural smorgasbord of museums, theaters, galleries,
shops, and clubs; all within walking distance of forty Zagat-rated
restaurants. Nestled in an academic mecca, 360 State abuts historic
Ninth Square, a thriving arts district, home to studios, architecture
and design firms.
The
city is well along in a plan to downscale the highway and turn it into
an urban boulevard. This will allow the city to reconnect the street
grid that predated the highway. This will make about 12 acres available
for development, doubling the size of downtown, DeStefano said in an
interview last week. By replacing the highway, once known as the Oak
Street Connector, now the Richard C. Lee Connector, officials will get
space for walkable residential and commercial development and will
connect downtown to the Yale Medical School, the railroad station and
eventually the Long Wharf commercial area. It will improve connections
with the Hill neighborhood, as well..... Doubling
the size of downtown just makes sense. As it would in Hartford. The
disastrous placement of I-84 through the city orphaned the northern
part of downtown; it now looks like an archaeological site.
I have to say that having a kind of economy, we have to look after at apartments that are affordable. This is a good news for most of those who wanted to own their own place to live. There are a lot of affordable apartments that will surely suits your budget. Thanks a lot for this info. More power.
Posted by: curtis johnson realty | February 01, 2011 at 03:27 AM