New Haven Union Station. (Photo Courtesy JJBers / CC BY-SA 4.0)

A group of New Haven residents who want a mixed-use development to rise on a parking lot next to the city’s Union Station instead of a 7-story garage aren’t giving up in their efforts to derail the plans.

The New Haven Urban Design League made its pitch to neighborhood leaders to ditch the state’s planned garage Tuesday night, according to the New Haven Independent.

State Department of Transportation officials want the 1,000-space garage to help draw more commuters from New Haven’s suburbs onto Metro North and the Hartford Line trains that run out of the station. The residents say a mixed commercial-residential development project would help connect the train station to the burgeoning neighborhood taking shape in place of the parking lots that once cut it off from downtown and the city’s Hill neighborhood.