Planners OK bioscience building and garage at former Coliseum site
IMAGE | CONTRIBUTED
Ancora Partners' proposed lab building and garage at the former New Haven Coliseum site, with the Knights of Columbus building in the background.
Once host to musical acts like Funkadelic, the former New Haven Coliseum site hosted nothing but surface parking lots for more than a decade.
“Those were meant to be placeholders for future development,” said Frank Caico, a vice president at Spinnaker Real Estate Partners. “As they say, the future is now.”
Caico spoke to the New Haven City Plan Commission Wednesday night about the next set of buildings proposed for the site, at Orange Street and Frontage Road.
Planners heard a detailed presentation about a new bioscience building and parking garage and approved the site plans for both after a public hearing.
“We're really excited to be here tonight, to be presenting and to be talking about the next phases of development,” Caico said.
Construction is currently underway for the first phase of the project, an apartment complex with 200 housing units, 16,000 square feet of retail space and 25,000 square feet of public open space.
Spinnaker partnered with North Carolina-based Ancora a year and a half ago with a vision to extend the city's bioscience corridor to the new site, dubbed Square 10. The site plan approved on Wednesday envisions an 11-story, 200,000-square-foot structure to house medical labs in partnership with Yale and city bioscience companies.
Architect Fred Clarke of New Haven’s Pelli Clarke & Partners described the new bioscience building as a structure “that becomes a beautiful glowing lantern” after dark and serves as a gateway to downtown.
“It represents the future of science and the future of technology in New Haven,” Clarke said.
The planning body also approved a new parking garage with 650 spots, meant to serve all the structures on the property in addition to visitors to the area. Ancora’s new bioscience building will get 300 permits for the garage, the developer’s attorney told the commissioners.
The only member of the public who spoke on the project, restaurateur Miguel Pittman, spoke of the Coliseum’s importance to the community.
“I remember when I went to my first concert, and I went to see Funkadelic,” Pittman said. “Now, we have a different stage now… When people come to our city, they see the new development. I’m excited and I'm looking forward to the finished product.”
Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.
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