The ex-Sports Haven building: Getting ready for the wrecking ball. Dozens of chairs were piled high outside of the fenced-off former Sports Haven site Thursday — as crews clear out the shuttered off-track-betting venue in advance of the building’s coming demolition. That proposed tear down is detailed in notices currently posted around the closed 600 Long Wharf Dr. building. The property’s owner, an affiliate of the New York City-based Criterion Group, submitted to the City Plan Department on Feb. 4 a “Notice of Intent to Demolish” the building. Because the oil drum-shaped, Herbert Newman-designed building — constructed in 1979 — is listed on the New Haven Historic Resources Inventory, city law requires a 90-day delay of demolition. “The Demolition is due to plans for Future Development,” according to the property’s demolition notice. A representative from the Criterion Group did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article as to what that future development might be. The building itself has been vacant since late last year, when Winners — the leaseholder of the gigantic off-track betting hall — left and downsized to a smaller space in East Haven. Meanwhile, the city’s Historic District Commission (HDC) on Wednesday discussed the proposed demolition of the ex-Sports Haven building during its latest monthly meeting at City Hall. A City Plan Department staffer at the meeting said that the 90-day delay of demolition for this Long Wharf building expires on May 27. During Wednesday’s discussion, New Haven Preservation Trust (NHPT) advisor John Herzan expressed his support for HDC Chair Katherine Leonard’s proposal that the property’s owner document some of the building’s history and architecture before tearing it down. Herzan pointed out that the NHPT has a New Haven Modern Architecture website which “documents this period of the city’s development.” “While this may not be of a certain high caliber,” he said of the Sports Haven building’s design, “it’s part of the vernacular of the period.” “I’m not commenting on its quality one way or another,” he continued. “I’m more concerned that it be recorded, even perfunctorily,” to preserve some formal record of its the structure. New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell, who was also in attendance at Wednesday’s HDC meeting, agreed. Documenting this building will help shed some light on “this important moment in time when the city believed in something like this” to boost the city’s tax base, and as “a certain type of fun that people thought was important.” See below for a documentary about Sports Haven that Westville filmmaker Travis Carbonella made for the Independent to mark the venue’s closure in December 2025. At 600 Long Wharf on Thursday. The post Ex-Sports Haven Building To Be Demolished appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less