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New Haven Mayor John DeStefano's announced plans to build a mall at Long Wharf generated excitement throughout the region. At that time, the city had signed a letter of intent with Newton, Massachusetts-based New England Development (NED) and Fusco Corporation of New Haven to develop and build the project. That was September 1996. Now. more than two years later, the timetable for the mall remains uncertain.
The original plan was for a two story, one-million-square-foot, $1 million retail "Marketplace at Long Wharf" that would include four anchor stores and about 150 smaller, upscale retailers. It would be built where the U.S. Postal Service. Pirelli Armstrong Tire Corporation and several other businesses currently stand on Long Wharf, Brewery Street, Water Street and Sargent Drive. Construction was originally scheduled to begin in the late summer of 1998 and be completed by December 2000.
At the time of the announcement, DeStefano said the mall would generate nearly 900 construction jobs, more than 2,000 permanent, full-time positions and as much as $7 million in annual tax revenues for both New Haven and the state.
The plan for he mall was also supposed to be part of a larger project that would extend Church Street South to the harbor and reconfigure a stretch of I-95 at Long Wharf to provide easier access to the city. It would include the long overdue reconfiguration of...