u/awebr

Chapel St between College and York is now open to both directions of traffic

Inspired by this post a few months ago with an AI rendering: https://www.reddit.com/r/newhaven/s/UkE6XXyCKj

It seems like plans to attract a single large development to the site are not going well, and it’s well past time to do something productive with prime waterfront land. I had an idea to restore the residential neighborhood by creating individual parcels again instead of a superblock, and then provide some medium density along the water with some mixed-use development. No AI, I drew this myself in AutoCAD.

All the blue structures would be your typical 2-3 family houses, same scale as the rest of the neighborhood so it ties in nicely along the existing street. Red is small commercial storefronts along Kimberly to buffer the neighborhood from the main road and provide some opportunities for cafes/marts/small business. Orange is 3-4 story condos, set along a new street that also includes a wide waterfront promenade, similar to the one on the beach nearby. There’s some kind of bulkhead sticking out into the water so I made that an activity space/lawn, and used the other jut into the water for a lookout point and gazebo. Then threw a small cafe or snack shack in the middle to give people something to walk to.

The old huge development concepts just seem too pipe-dreamy, so maybe something scaled back with multiple smaller parcels like this is more attainable. A massive parking lot along the water just wouldn’t be the best use of the space. I would also give the first right of refusal to the new houses in this plan to all the families who had their homes taken by eminent domain for this boondoggle. I didn’t draw in any parking lots or driveways because those are boring but assume they’re in here.