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2015 | Doing Business in Connecticut 21 Construction & Real Estate Cities on the Rise Six years after the recession, Connecticut's top urban centers are rebounding By Carol Latter T en years ago, Connecticut's largest cities were hopping, with major private and public developments under con- struction or recently opened, and new residents flocking to fill freshly minted urban apartments and condos. e housing crash and subsequent recession brought much of that to a screeching halt, as companies closed their doors, can- celed or postponed projects, downsized staff, or simply pulled back on space requirements to cut costs, boosting commercial vacancy rates. Fast-forward a decade, and things look very different. Connecticut's urban centers are once again brimming with projects, with their downtown cores showing concrete proof of renewed confidence in the economy. New Haven "One of the interesting things about New Haven is that when the recession hit, we were affected in different ways than many other Connecticut towns and cities," says Matthew Nemerson, economic development administrator for the City of New Haven. In addition to the disappearance of financing for "a couple of 15- or 20-story buildings that were part of a big wave of development during the mid-2000s," Yale University's endowment funding dropped by 25 percent, resulting in the scaling back of its aggressive building and rebuilding schedule. at's not the case today. "Yale took the time to do fundraising, so now the endowment is back up. at has such a huge impact — there are cranes rising over the downtown and that's exciting for peo- ple. at will mean a lot more jobs and a lot more students coming in." Among Yale's capital initiatives are two new residential colleges, a new biology building, and renovations to several existing buildings. e City of New Haven has cranes at work as well. One of its pivotal projects involves Route 34, which Nemerson describes as "the whole spine of the city, a half-built and half-unbuilt highway from the '50s." For the past 10 years, the city has been working on a plan to ameliorate adjacent blight, and reintroduce housing, neighborhood- based retail and smaller scale development to the area. Collaboration with private developers on 16 acres of development west of the highway — including a deli/bakery, a medical building, and a three-story, $11 million headquarters for mental health agency Con- tinuum of Care — is currently underway, he said. e 30,000-square- foot Continuum building anchors a two-phase, $50 million construc- tion proposal by developer Robert A. Landino, CEO of Middletown's Centerplan Companies. Alexion Pharmaceuticals will move its headquar- ters to the 100 College Street Medical Lab, a $140 million, 14-story building now under con- struction near Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale School of Medicine. Alexion will initially lease roughly 300,000 square feet in the facility, which offers more than 425,000 square feet of medical and laboratory space as well as ground floor retail. PHOTO/ELKUS | MANFREDI ARCHITECTS Continued on page 22 >