The University’s plan to transform a recently acquired building into the new Yale Child Study Center received approval from the New Haven Board of Alders on Tuesday evening, but another of Yale’s projects was stalled, according to a New Haven Independent report.
With the BOA’s approval, Yale will pitch a project to the City Plan Commission next week that would consolidate the Yale Child Study Center, which currently occupies three different buildings, into a single space — the former Frontier Communications call center at 350 George St., which Yale purchased for $16.5 million last year. But the timeline for Yale to convert the Hall of Graduate Studies into a humanities center now faces more uncertainty after Ward 8 Alder Aaron Greenberg GRD ’18 voted down the unanimous consent request for the project.
Greenberg said that since the humanities center would contain a high-capacity screening room and lecture hall that could host visitors, he and his colleagues need more information about the center’s impact on vehicular traffic, the Independent reported.
But for some New Haven residents, the no vote represents continued politicking between Yale and UNITE HERE, the umbrella organization that represents Yale’s worker unions and includes Local 33, the graduate student union that Greenberg also leads. The delay on the humanities center parallels that of the Gibbs Laboratory replacement project, where UNITE HERE-affiliated alders succeeded in requesting a stay on the project until the University completed its campuswide parking plan.
Failing to garner unanimous consent, the humanities center project will now head to a BOA committee, where it could be approved and sent back to the full board for another vote.