CREW CT 2025 Blue Ribbon Brochure

101 College Street

New Haven, CT

In the heart of downtown New Haven, Connecticut, 101 College Street is an important component of the City’s Downtown Crossing economic development initiative, which has sought to leverage the removal of Route 34 and convert the right-of way into an economic engine generating future growth. The 101 College Street development is a state-of-the-art bioscience building, which is 10 stories, 525,000 SF, anchored by Yale University and occupied by Alexion Pharmaceuticals creating hundreds of new jobs in the region. The building also includes a 52,000 SF world-class incubator space to foster life sciences start-up companies in Connecticut, including the tenant Biolabs, lab-classroom space for the New Haven Public Schools, and public open green space. The building is located above a service road that provides access to Yale New Haven Hospital’s loading dock, 100 College Street, and the public parking garage. The removal of the old Route 34 corridor has improved the civic realm by creating vital pedestrian connections within the City’s urban grid and delivering a spacious and heavily planted public plaza above a new parking garage. The building features a variety of street-level amenities including a lobby, an internal mass timber promenade with a 440-seat conference center, and a café. The 20,000 SF public plaza is constructed on top the of the parking garage, creating an urban oasis of respite for the public and building tenants. The plaza is densely planted with large deciduous trees providing an urban canopy with a multitude of health benefits including shade and cooling in the summer months. The building is designed as LEED Silver certification equivalency and includes a high-performance building envelope, energy-efficient mechanical systems, and a large stormwater retention system under the parking podium. Project design began in late 2019, with Elkus Manfredi Architects as project designers and Fuss & O’Neill providing multidisciplinary suite of technical services including civil engineering, land survey, environmental remediation, traffic engineering, and landscape architecture. During the design phase, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the team to quickly adapt, causing teams to go remote, using virtual meetings to communicate and ultimately permit the project through virtual presentations and meetings. As the design progressed and transitioned into construction, maintaining traffic through the downtown site while the project team constructed the building below, around, and above the roads, proved to be a significant challenge. Crews continued to work, finding creative ways to maintain traffic through and around the site without disrupting either the construction progress or daily commutes. 101 College Street is a cornerstone of this busy New Haven neighborhood, which supports the City’s economic development initiative known as Downtown Crossing. By converting an exposed 4 lane highway into a walkable, bikeable cluster of low-speed urban boulevards Downtown New Haven is now linked to surrounding neighborhoods with work, entertainment, food, and residential and transit options. Over time, the district has emerged as a world class destination for life science research and development.

Owner — Winstanley Enterprises

Project Size — 525,000 square feet 10 Stories

Project Team — Fuss & O’Neill and Elkus Manfredi Architects

Rendering Credit — By Elkus Manfredi Architects

10 Blue Ribbon Awards 2025