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22 Doing Business in Connecticut | 2015 On the east side, construction is expected to wrap in November on the 100 College Street Medical Lab, a $140 million, 14-story building located near Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale School of Medicine. e facility, offering more than 425,000 square feet of medical and laboratory space as well as ground floor retail, will be home to Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which has announced plans to move its world headquarters from Cheshire. Alexion will lease roughly 300,000 square feet and possibly more, since it hopes to add 300 new jobs in its new location by 2017. 100 College Street is just the first phase of the larger Downtown Crossing project, in which streets, sidewalks and buildings are being built on platforms above the existing highway. e city hopes that transformation of the unsightly highway stubs and ramps to pedestrian and bike-friendly boulevards will also help to lure new housing, retail and medi- cal facilities, and begin the process of recon- necting the Hill neighborhood to downtown. Downtown Crossing will create 10 acres of new property that will be available for development and, in turn, increase the tax rolls for the city. Nemerson said the development will include "very dense, Cambridge-style lab buildings. We want to fill in the urban core with a lot of jobs and a lot of high tech." He said Alexion's move will bring hundreds of new employees downtown, along with "lots of visitors and researchers. at will spawn many more buildings like that." Not all of the city's development is com- mercial. East and slightly north of Down- town Crossing, "we have four major housing projects going on — three are new." College & Crown, located in the business and main retail district, will offer 160 apartments, along with a fitness center, two rooop courtyards, a fitness center and clubhouse, bike storage, un- derground parking, and some 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. e $50 mil- lion project is slated to open in August 2015. Another 150- to 200-unit project, at the Yale-New Haven edge of the medical district, will also open this summer. Nemerson said oth- er housing projects underway include a "beauti- ful, 20-story Georgian architectural masterpiece from the late '20s or early '30s that's being converted into apartments on Church Street. And then we have another incredible project in East Rock — an old factory site, where there will be about 250 units with underground park- ing. ese buildings will have all sorts of lovely amenities, and you can walk to restaurants, stores or the train station — or walk to your job at a bank or at Yale. It's all about changing the perception of living in New Haven." e numerous developments underway, he said, will collectively bring thousands of brand new housing units to the downtown, potentially boosting its population and feet on the street. For younger or older people look- ing for a lively place to settle in New England, "we're actually pretty affordable and very at- tractive to people who might find Brooklyn a little too pricy or Boston a little too congested. When you look at what we're good at, word is getting around. We have great restaurateurs, an amazing arts community and some very creative developers who are making an edu- cated guess that as New Haven becomes more and more attractive and competitive, their investments will be even more valuable." Bridgeport "We have five big initiatives downtown, which is an area undergoing major revital- ization," said David Kooris, director of the office of planning and economic develop- ment for the City of Bridgeport. e first is a major uptick in housing. "ere are over 1,000 housing units downtown currently, up from a few hundred 10 years ago. And we have another 750 units or so in the pipeline, a couple of hundred of which are cur- rently under construction," he said. One of the downtown's signature transit- oriented development projects is the remake of the long-vacant Mechanics & Farmers Bank building at 930 Main Street, and an adjacent office building, by Forstone Capital of Darien. Dubbed "e Landmark," the project includes 30 residential units on its upper floors, with commercial space below. Fletcher ompson, a prestigious, century- old architectural firm that moved to Shelton many years ago, has returned downtown to become e Landmark's commercial anchor. Kooris said this is just one of many housing and commercial projects underway, and "every project is some form of a public- private partnership." A second major initiative is the Eco- Technology Park in the west end, where the city has "constructed the world's second largest fuel cell power plant, capable of pro- ducing the equivalent of the energy needed to power 15,000 homes." In addition to the $65 million, 14.9-megawatt plant, the green energy park is home to "the largest urban solar array in New England." Kooris said the city is also in the permit- ting stage for an anaerobic digester, which will convert food waste and sludge into elec- tricity and capture the waste heat from the park's trash-to-energy facility and fuel cells. "is will [eventually] heat and cool much of our downtown," he said. "ese investments — by simultaneously creating local heat and electricity renewable sources as well as rebranding the city to one that is green and prosperous and progressive — have resulted in the growth or attraction or creation of quite a few green industrial en- INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT › Construction & Real Estate URL Stamford will bring 672 apartments to the city, along with a one-acre outdoor oasis with a pool, urban farm- ing and activity areas. URL is the acronym for Urban Ready Living and represents a new concept in apartment design and city living. > Continued from page 21 PHOTO/MINNO & WASKO ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS