Year
2008-2012

Client
Edward Sheehy, First Selectman

The Yale Urban Design Workshop worked with the Woodbridge Economic Development Commission on a comprehensive plan for the Woodbridge Gateway District, an area of mixed-use organized around parallel state roads, Route 63 (Amity Road) and Route 69 (the Litchfield Turnpike), and Exit 59 off the Wilbur Cross Parkway (Route 15).  It is mainly a low-lying area along the West River and framed by surrounding hills, including the dramatic ridge of West Rock.  This area is immediately adjacent to the New Haven city line and has the only significant concentration of commercial uses in Woodbridge. 

Although it is effectively the downtown of Woodbridge from an economic point of view, this area has had a relatively weak identity with respect to Woodbridge’s more traditional town center with its civic buildings, and with respect to the Amity shopping area of New Haven.  Many of its uses and buildings have been auto-oriented, strip-style development, and there is little continuously connected pedestrian-oriented fabric.  

The YUDW study has focused on improving both the business and residential environment by promoting a village-scale, traditional town center model of development, through a coordinated program of streetscape improvements, traffic-calming, parking re-organization and management, pedestrian connections, landscape views, and encouragement of a greater density of mixed-use development through infill, and incremental redevelopment.  The goal is the integration of shopping, offices, and residential fabric in a walkable, lively small town center.