Kacey Daley: "There's so much diversity with algae." Mayor Elicker (center right) and UNH Prez Jens Frederiksen join students and city officials to cut the ribbon on Wednesday. University of New Haven (UNH) senior Kacey Daly peered through a microscope at some red algae from the Long Island Sound — in a second-floor lab at a city-owned waterfront building that is newly occupied by marine biology students like her. Daly was one of more than a dozen UNH students to take a quick break from class Wednesday to participate in a press conference and ribbon cutting at the Canal Dock Boathouse at 475 Long Wharf Dr.That 30,000 square-foot, city-owned building was relocated, rebuilt, and reopened in 2018. Wednesday’s celebration commemorated UNH’s lease of around 7,500 square feet of space in a ground-floor boat bay-turned-lecture room and in a second-floor laboratory. The Board of Alders first approved UNH’s lease of part of the publicly owned building for the West Haven college’s marine and environmental sciences program back in March 2020 — right before the Covid-19 pandemic descended upon the city and country.According to Sarah Novarro, a UNH employee who serves as the lab manager and outreach coordinator for the university’s leased spaces at the Boathouse, three UNH courses — on marine botany, aquaculture, and intro to marine biology — are currently taught in part out of the Long Wharf building. The classes first moved in at the start of the current semester in August, and use the UNH-leased part of the building five days a week. “This is a long time coming,” Mayor Justin Elicker said during the ribbon cutting ceremony, and it heralds many more changes to come on Long Wharf, including a road closure, park improvements, and living shoreline installations.City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli and city arts director Adriane Jefferson, who also serves as the managing director for the Boathouse, said that UNH is just the latest tenant for the public waterfront building, along with Discovering Amistad and the Canal Dock Boathouse Inc.‘s rowing programs. That’s not to mention space that is leased out for special events, like weddings or the Arts Awards or The Playlist parties by The Breed Entertainment.“This is about opening our doors to the community,” Jefferson said, about UNH’s and others’ use of the building. ​“We are consistently trying to find ways to open the doors to access” for the Boathouse.Upstairs in the UNH lab space after the press conference, Daly gamely talked through the appeal of inspecting red algae under a microscope, and then drawing and labeling what she finds in her notebook.“There’s so much diversity with algae,” she said, talking through the three different kinds — green, brown, and now red — that she and her classmates have explored in their Boathouse-hosted lab class so far. They offer a window into the ecology of the Long Island Sound right next door to their classroom, and are a reminder of the great biodiversity of what’s just below the water’s surface.Frederiksen (right): UNH is "a private university with a public mission." City arts director Adriane Jefferson: "This is about opening our doors to the community." Science! As dutifully detailed by Daly. Move over, cyclists: UNH bus parks in bike lane for Boathouse presser.