Architects, Engineers Reimagine The Train Station

Union Stations entrance, normally snarled with personal vehicles and taxis, could become an open plaza with fountains and caf seating, across Union Avenue from a demolished or rebuilt Church Street South housing complex.

That vision emerged at a charette, or brainstorming design session, about how to improve the train station, New Havens gateway to much of the outside world.

Participants envisioned car traffic minimized by lower speed limits, and taxis lining up behind the station rather than out on the street.

As they dreamed up a new vision at the session, which took place Friday, engineers and architects invoked the names of early 20th century urban planners Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and Cass Gilbert, and the comprehensive plan they drew up in 1910 for the city, which would have connected the station with downtown. (Click here for a story on that plan.) They spoke of restoring he grandeur that Olmstead and Gilbert had envisioned for the city.

David Panagore, executive director of Park New Haven (pictured), said Fridays workshop was a visioning process, including ideas New Haven might want to pursue before the state builds a promised second parking garage.

Were not headed from here to construction, he said. It is important to start feeding ideas now.

Divided into three teams, the architects and engineers were tasked with ways to better organize Union Avenue, enhance the visitor experience to the station, and promote transit, walking and cycling.

Architect Howard Hebel of Newman Architects (pictured) and his group tackled the design of Union Avenue and providing elbow room for all the current forms of transit at the train station as well as increased numbers of people walking and biking to the station. Their plan called for keeping the drop/off and arrivals out front and having the taxi line at a different end of the station. Instead of valet parking out front, they would relegate it to one of the parking garages. A potential traffic-calming idea would be to create an island much like the one in the Broadway district for Union Avenue. The group envisioned the front of the station connecting to the future Union Square envisioned for the Hill-to-Downtown project.

Before tackling the visitors experience outside Union Station, architect Patrick Pinnells group could not resist addressing the inside, which he described a big space that is not coherent. The group would start with an information kiosk with a person inside to help people get their bearings and information.

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Architects, Engineers Reimagine The Train Station