Ex-Sports Haven Building To Be Demolished

By Thomas Breen, New Haven Independent

NEW HAVEN, CT — Dozens of chairs were piled high outside of the fenced-off former Sports Haven site Thursday — as crews cleared out the shuttered off-track-betting venue in advance of the building’s coming demolition.

That proposed teardown 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.

”Although an iconic part of the City’s skyline, we have understood the need to prepare for the future of the Maritime District and are continuing to work toward implementation of the plan set forth in the Long Wharf Responsible Growth Plan,” city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli told the Independent in a statement Thursday. “The site is well-suited for a number of housing and commercial formats, but Criterion has not yet shared more firm plans for the site.”

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.”

The New Haven Independent is a not-for-profit public-interest daily news site founded in 2005.