Downtown New Haven Recognized by PPS

http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/Mayor/ReadMore.asp?ID=%7BD4F8586C-C8A4-4490-BCDD-D54B3C28E238%7D

In the past, Project for Public Spaces has also recognized the New Haven Green.

Connecticut again nation's richest state -- with lead growing

"Connecticut is still the nation's richest state, and in fact it has widened its lead. Total per capita income in Connecticut rose to $54,117 in 2007 from $50,762 in 2006, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Commerce.The new figure, highest in the nation, is 40 percent more than the national average for per capita income of $38,611."

New Jersey is #2, at $49,194. Reporting today on the latest 2006-2007 Census figures, at http://www.courant.com/business/hc-ctincome0327.artmar27,0,4499109.story and other sites. Population data shows that New Haven metropolitan area continued to grow last year at a slightly faster rate than both the New York City-Northern NJ and Bridgeport-Stamford (Fairfield County) metropolitan areas.

Millionaires now represent 2.4% of the Connecticut population - twice the national rate. In the face of a major budget crunch, will calls for a "millionaire tax" be renewed this year?

Another reason to take the bus...

The Arts Council is sponsoring a series of performances to take place on Sunday, April 13 - on the New Haven City buses! Events on four different city buses will include poetry, theater, music and more. Cost: $1.25 for one bus ticket. See http://www.newhavenarts.org/news/upcoming.html for more information.

Hartford Courant profiles new antique store on Chapel Street

http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-antique.artmar24,0,6248194.story

Prevention Magazine: New Haven ranks high for walkability

New Haven ranks #19 out of 500 cities nationwide -- above Portland, Burlington and Seattle -- for its walkability. The score was based on urban planning reviews, crime rates, % of residents who walk to work, availability of neighborhood parks, and other factors. Providence comes in at #105 and Hartford at #107.
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/upload/2008/03/walk%20ability.pdf

A University in a Small City

Great photos and commentary from:

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9840

Irons in the Fire

Reporting by Business New Haven on new commercial developments in and around Downtown.
http://www.conntact.com/article_page.lasso?id=41804

This blog just started... post your info and events here!

Please send items you would like to see posted or discussed to downtownnewhaven [at] gmail.com. Also, if you have an upcoming public event related to Downtown New Haven, please send information. We will be happy to help promote your event free of charge.

Posts can be anonymous or credited, depending on your preference.

Union Station as reimagined by the City...

Reporting by the New Haven Independent: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2008/03/read_union_stat.php

See the full study here: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/upload/2008/03/JLL020708.pdf

Some are apparently concerned that the plan does not do enough for pedestrians and bicyclists. A discussion on Elm City Cycling's listserv has begun: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/elmcitycycling/message/6270

City's Future Framework Plan for Downtown New Haven and Route 34

From CityofNewHaven.com

http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/Government/pdfs/Future%20Framework%202008v9.pdf

No Finer Arts Around Than At These College Museums

Boston Globe article picked up here by the Yale Arts Library blog:
http://artslibrary.wordpress.com/2008/03/18/no-finer-arts-around-than-at-these-college-museums/

Route 34 study presented to public at City Hall (2007)

The Route 34 Study authors gave a public presentation in June 2007. New Haven City Plan and its consultants brought up that the reconfiguration of Route 34 would make the city more walkable. Concerns were raised about how bicycle-friendly the new development would be, and whether or not traffic would be calmed to an appropriate extent. See coverage by the New Haven Independent here: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2007/06/what_will_happe.php

About Downtown New Haven

Downtown New Haven is the neighborhood located in the heart of the city of New Haven, Connecticut. It is comprised of the original nine squares laid out in 1638 to form New Haven, including the New Haven Green, and the immediate surrounding central business district, as well as a significant portion of the Yale University campus. The area includes many restaurants, cafes, theaters and stores. Downtown is bordered by Wooster Square to the east, Long Wharf to the southeast, the Hill neighborhood to the south, the Dwight neighborhood to the west, the Dixwell neighborhood to the northwest, the Prospect Hill area to the north, and East Rock to the northeast.

Downtown New Haven is one of the most residential downtown areas in the United States, with nearly 7,000 inhabitants.[1] The expansion of housing options in recent years has helped support downtown businesses and has brought about a surge in economic activity.[2] Secondary streets and areas at the periphery of the neighborhood that once contained vacant storefronts are now almost entirely leased to restaurants and retailers, and the office vacancy rate has seen a drastic improvement as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_New_Haven

City begins study on reestablishing streetcar service to Downtown

"We’ve got buses, cars, bikes and even a trolley. Now the city is considering bringing back streetcars, which rolled through New Haven from 1860 to 1948."

http://www.nhregister.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/BigDaily?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.content=%2FMAIN_REP%2FArticle%2F2008%2F03%2F13%2F1736838

http://www.nhregister.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/BigDaily?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.content=%2FMAIN_REP%2FArticle%2F2008%2F03%2F04%2F1683870

808 Chapel Street sold

Horvath and Mancinone of Marcus & Millichap sell 3 New Haven buildings for $1.71m

"The third property, 808 Chapel St., is a well positioned mixed use property located in downtown New Haven. The building is located on the corner of Orange St. and Chapel St. directly in the center of the downtown revitalization and adjacent to the soon to be developed Shartenberg site."

http://nerej.com/19614

Spokes People

What used to be a loose group of city cyclists has become a letter-writing,
phone call-making, community meeting-attending machine, and they're making a
difference.

New Haven Advocate's cover story this week: http://www.newhavenadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=6125

Mayor's plan for Route 34 presented at Edgewood School

The Mayor presented to a group of about 40 neighborhood residents in New Haven. Questions included how to improve urban connectivity and how to make New Haven more bicycle-friendly. See this article for New Haven Independent coverage: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2008/02/highways_r_us.php

Downtown hotels going upscale

HOTELS GOING UPSCALE: WITH YALE AS A DRAW, DEVELOPERS LOOK TO FILL NEED FOR ROOMS IN NEW HAVEN

Hartford Courant, Eric Gershon, Dec 4, 2007

As Paul McGowan attempts to transform a bygone motor inn at 1157 Chapel St. into a glassy boutique hotel, he's got countless details to fret about, from the pace of construction to the brand of shampoo he'll leave on the bathroom sink. One thing he doesn't worry about is the location: It's square in the heart of Yale University, the city's main magnet for out-of-town visitors.

Yale refers visitors to several local hotels and licenses or lends its name to a few of them, including the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, a 306-room full-service hotel near the green that is generally regarded as the city's top hotel. But the Omni is often full and that has made it a prime target for emerging rivals.

"We'll be competing mainly with the Omni," said McGowan, a former Starwood Hotels and Resorts executive whose development and consulting firm, Hospitality 3, bought the no-frills Colony Inn a year ago for nearly $7 million, then closed it for a multimillion-dollar overhaul that will add two stories and put a sleek new face on the street.

The five-story, circa-1963 building sits directly across from the Yale School of Art and just west of the School of Architecture. The Yale Repertory Theater and the university's two major art museums are one block east. A slow walker could reach some of the city's most popular restaurants in five minutes or less, as well as several cafes and bookstores, a news shop and a haberdasher.

"That is a good starting point," said McGowan, who has hired KPMB Architects of Toronto to design the hotel. The firm handled renovations of Yale's Sprague Memorial Hall in 2003. The reinvention of 1157 Chapel is the most ambitious hotel project in New Haven in a decade and one sorely needed to meet demand, estimated to be at least 200 to 300 rooms above the 1,310 rooms now in the city, according to local real estate experts.

But McGowan's project, which will add 39 rooms to the 86 the Colony already had, for 125 in all, isn't even the biggest hotel project on the horizon.

Four blocks away, on College Street, Centerplan Development of Hartford plans to build a 19-story structure where it envisions a 250-room "four or five-star" hotel, 124 luxury condominiums and ground-floor retail. Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale's architecture school, has been hired as the designer. The project is expected to break ground next year and open in 2011.

Meanwhile, city officials are preparing to seek bids for redevelopment of the site occupied, until last January, by the demolished New Haven Coliseum. The city has studied the feasibility of a conference center and hotel complex for the site and officials anticipate some bidders to propose lodgings, although a conference center is now considered unlikely. Elsewhere downtown, at least one major hotel has sought approval to add nearly 50 rooms.

All the activity is really no wonder: "'Can you help me get some rooms?'" is a question Anthony Rescigno, president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, says he hears often. And it's not uncommon that he makes referrals to hotels in the suburbs, where most of New Haven County's hotel development has happened in the last 10 to 15 years.

Finally, he said, "The pressure is starting to hit the boiling point where I think we're going to start to see some new hotels" in the city.

Developers' interest in downtown New Haven as a place for hotels coincides with their interest in building new apartment and condominium projects there, some on a grand scale. Fairfield developer Bruce Becker is planning to break ground this winter on a 29-story apartment project at Chapel and State Streets intended to include 485 units, for example. When finished, it will be one of the city's tallest buildings. Smaller residential projects have already been built. Others are in progress.

Like the residential developments, the hotel projects are inspired by New Haven's renaissance, marked by its lively night life and restaurant scene. Unflagging demand from Yale-related visitors encourages hotel construction in particular.

"We may not have the corporate community that some other towns do, but the academic community also puts a lot of stock in face-to-face meetings," said Karyn Gilvarg, executive director of New Haven's City Plan Department.

Yale and affiliated institutions, such as Yale-New Haven Hospital, generate the largest share of hotel room stays, municipal and tourism officials said, though no one could say how many room-nights that equals in a year. Bruce Alexander, Yale's vice president for New Haven and State Affairs and Campus Development, said the school does not centralize record-keeping of this information.

Nonetheless, Alexander, who has met with developers to discuss the city's hotel market, predicts that a "200-300 room hotel would do very well in New Haven."

While the 1157 Chapel and Centerplan projects stand to remake the hotel scene in New Haven by expanding the number and variety of high-end accommodations, some less ambitious but welcome improvements have been made already. Several hotels have changed hands in the last couple of years; the Whalley Avenue Holiday Inn became a Marriott, an upgrade Yale appreciated enough to bestow its name on the operator. The hotel is called the Courtyard New Haven at Yale, and it is preparing to add rooms.

So far, local upgrades have added precious few rooms to the net hotel stock and no large hotel has challenged the Omni as the lodging of choice for consumers not preoccupied with price. (The Omni's standard corporate rate is $209 per night, before taxes, though promotional rates are sometimes available. Suites typically cost $399. By contrast, the average hotel room in greater New Haven costs between $90 and $100, according to tourism agency figures.)

Located on Temple Street, just off the New Haven Green, the Omni opened in late 1997, after a roughly $30 million renovation of the former Park Plaza Hotel. Since then, the Omni has been regarded as the city's premier hotel. But rooms can't always be found there, especially on the two dozen or so nights a year when New Haven is flooded with visitors, often for Yale-related events, such as graduation, reunions and the Yale-Harvard football game.

So McGowan, a Woodbury resident who was deeply involved in the creation and expansion of the W Hotels brand while with Starwood, saw an opening: "You've got a highly intellectual, pretty affluent community here, in terms of alumni and families of students and graduates of the university, visiting professors, dignitaries, friends. I think the need for upscale lodging is pretty evident."

Thomas Sullivan, the Omni's general manager, said he welcomes other hotels to New Haven.

"It means the city's growing and that benefits everybody," he said. "We don't look at new competition as a threat. What it does is it gives us a new opportunity to be sure that we're also on our game."

By the time McGowan's as-yet-unnamed hotel opens next summer, it should have two extra stories, 125 guest rooms, 100,000 total square feet, a penthouse lounge with views of Yale's spires and courtyards, a ground-floor restaurant, a coffee kiosk, meeting spaces, new elevators - and a glass exterior embedded with small pieces of amber, blue and green.

McGowan declined to discuss the cost of the "top-to-bottom" overhaul, and has not yet announced room rates. The developer, who is simultaneously working on a W Hotel in Hoboken and a residential development in Woodbury, envisions his future New Haven patrons as "highly intellectual but not necessarily pretentious." The interior and furnishings will be tailored to meet the approval of their needs and tastes, he said.

The main lobby will have floors of walnut and granite and will evoke a "modern-day library," with pockets of seating to invite lingering, for example. Rooms will be decorated in "warm" tones and outfitted with wide desks facing the windows, ergonomic desk chairs and leather reading chairs with ottomans.

"We want this hotel to have soul," said McGowan. "We want people to feel something different when they stay with us. We're trying to create a place."

Contact Eric Gershon at egershon@courant.com.