At Wednesday’s online-only City Plan Commission meeting. The back of the new building will contain a “research greenhouse.” The City Plan Commission voted on Wednesday to approve Hopkins School’s plan to construct a new 35,000 square-foot “innovation center” on its Upper Westville campus — after neighbors raised concerns about truck traffic, noise, and the lack of sidewalk on the nearby Knollwood Drive. Local land-use commissioners issued that approval during their latest monthly online-only meeting. They voted unanimously in support of the site plan and Class C Soil Erosion and Sediment Control (SESC) plan for Hopkins School’s bid to construct a 35,137 square foot academic center at 986 Forest Road. The proposal comes after the telecoms billionaire John Malone donated $50 million to the 7-12th grade private school in January for the construction of a new academic building, to be called the Gibbs Center for Innovation. As attorney Meaghan Miles and Hopkins Chief Financial Officer David Baxter explained at Wednesday’s meeting, the new building will include a robotics studio, computer science classrooms, a digital media production studio, a domed “immersive theater” for 360-degree visualizations for science and humanities courses, 2,500 square feet for the Hopkins Authentic Research Program in Science (HARPS), and flexible classrooms and breakout rooms and a two-story student commons and exhibition hall, among other features. “This is being constructed to meet an existing need” for the 724 students who currently attend Hopkins, Miles said. “This is not a project that is intended to increase the population” of students at the school. “This is not about growing our student body,” Baxter emphasized. “It is about better serving the amazing student body that we already have.” Miles said that the project area will cover 2.7 acres of the 100-acre campus. Architect Steve Ansel of the firm SLAM said that the new building’s design is in line with that of some of the campus’s oldest buildings, which date back to 1920. The project will also see the drilling of 27 geothermal wells to provide an environmentally friendly way of heating and cooling the development. Miles and Baxter said that truck traffic for the new-construction project should be limited to between 8:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. Architect Tim Applebee said that there should be roughly 1,496 truck trips over the course of the project, translating to a maximum truck count of around 4.5 per hour during that 8:30-3 window. All of the truck traffic will be directed to the Forest Road side of the campus. White also said that the project’s stormwater-management improvements “will not exacerbate any downstream flooding” from Hopkins’ campus, and will actually “improve the stormwater from its existing condition.” During the public comment portion of the meeting, speaker after speaker raised concerns about the project’s impact on the surrounding neighborhood. Forest Road resident David Darsch worried that construction trucks will only make Forest Road more dangerous. He called for the installation of a convex mirror on the Hopkins side of Forest Road, “temporary flaggers,” and other “efforts to slow construction traffic.” He also raised concerns about potential “vibration impacts” from the drilling of 27, 800-foot-deep geothermal wells. Upper Westville Alder Amy Marx, whose Ward 26 district includes Hopkins’ campus, expressed disappointment that no one from the school had reached out to her to discuss the project or to give her a heads up about Wednesday’s meeting. She too noted that Forest Road has “serious, serious problems” with high-speed traffic. And she said that “noise carries quite strongly in the neighborhood.” Marx also said “we have some problems with Hopkins parents being good neighbors.” Her street, Knollwood Drive, “gets treated like a speedway. The rate at which people drive is rather extraordinary.” She called on Hopkins to work with the city to help install sidewalks on the currently sidewalk-less Knollwood Drive, which is directly to the west of Hopkins’ campus. Eden Gerson seconded that request for Hopkins funding a sidewalk on Knollwood. “There really is no good safe way to walk outside of my house,” she said. “Constructing this new center will make Knollwood more dangerous.” Sidewalks on Knollwood Drive “would be a great help in this neighborhood,” fellow Knollwood resident (and former Newhallville alder) Delphine Clyburn said. “I am grateful for what you’re doing with your students there at this school, but it would be good if you could also give to the neighborhood as well. Give to us, showing that you are a great neighbor.” In response to neighbors’ concerns, Miles said that her office sent out 270 letters to neighbors notifying them of Wednesday’s hearing, above and beyond that required by the city’s noticing requirements. She said the project has had a dedicated website for months. “Hopkins’ interest in the timing of the trucks and the volume of the trucks is aligned with the neighborhood because high volume of trucks impacts the student body,” she said. She stressed that there will be no use of Knollwood Drive in connection with this project, and that all construction access will be from Forest Road. She also described requests for the construction of a sidewalk on Knollwood as “unrelated to this project,” and inappropriate for the commission to consider when deciding whether or not to approve the site plan and the soil erosion and sediment control plan. “Hopkins has received the message that the neighborhood is interested in this,” she said about a sidewalk on Knollwood. She said the school will “continue dialogue” on the matter. Westville Alder and City Plan Commission member Adam Marchand, whose Ward 25 district abuts Hopkins’ campus to the east, said that “a sidewalk would be great” on Knollwood. “I recognize that’s not part of this project, but I encourage the applicant to being open to that going forward.” He also said that “it’s rather astonishing that nobody” from Hopkins contacted Marx as the neighborhood’s alder about this project and about Wednesday’s hearing. While that may not have been technically required by the city’s notification ordinance, “it’s just a courtesy that should be extended to the alder of the ward.” Marchand then asked City Engineer Giovanni Zinn about the noise impact of drilling geothermal wells. Given that “there are big geothermal projects happening in New Haven,” including on Science Hill and by Union Station, “do we know anything about the noise that comes from this drilling?” Zinn said that “there is some noise of a running engine” when the well is being drilled. “I’m not aware of any noise complaints coming out of the geothermal work done in other parts of the city,” he said. “I think it’s a very exciting project,” Marchand continued during the commission’s deliberations on the matter. He said his key concern with the project “was the hydrology” — that is, would it exacerbate flooding given how Hopkins’ campus sits on a hill. He said he regularly hears concerns from residents on both sides of the hill about water flowing down. “I’ve been satisfied with the report” that this project will actually improve, as opposed to make worse, stormwater management on the site. With that, the commissioners voted unanimously to approve the various applications associated with the project. The post Hopkins “Innovation Center” Dev Approved appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less