Image courtesy of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners

Leaders in the two neighborhoods abutting New Haven’s long-vacant Coliseum site are calling for delays in the project’s development in an effort to get better design and more transparency from developer Spinnaker Real Estate Partners.

According to The New Haven Independent, members of the Hill and Downtown-Wooster Square neighborhood management teams say they are dissatisfied with the amount of communication from Spinnaker about the company’s multiphase development plans. The sketch plans Spinnaker has so far presented publicly show 50,750 square feet of retail space, 44,440 square feet of public open space, 700 residential units – 20 percent of which will be designated affordable per Spinnaker’s seven-year-old development agreement with the city – and 199,950 square feet of commercial space.

Spinnaker has yet to file a development application with the city.

Neighborhood leaders say they will formally ask Spinnaker to delay submitting its application in order to gather more feedback from community members. Some have raised concerns that the buildings on the 4.3-acre site, which sits at the main highway offramp into downtown, will not be distinctive. Others are concerned that the project will not hire enough local workers, provisions that were not written into the development agreement between the city and Spinnaker but have been included in some subsequent agreements. Spinnaker is, however, required to sponsor job fairs to connect the development’s commercial tenants with locals.