For Union Station garage, why not better and bigger?

Its time for bold leadership in New Haven’s desire to make a much needed additional parking garage at the Union Station train depot. This month, the city of New Haven formalized a request to have an urban center containing transportation, civic and retail amenities facilitated by this new garage — a $60 million state investment. New Haven is looking to buy the station for $1 million, and control the design of this creation.

“The city and Park New Haven are prepared to make Union Station fulfill its potential as both a gateway to the state and an iconic hub of a developing mixed-use neighborhood … [a] major entry point for visitors, students and business leaders,” Mayor Toni Harp has said.

The city’s pitch is based on a 2013-14 study by Goody Clancy, Boston-based architects and planners — a vision spurred on by increased ridership on Metro-North, especially in light of the expanded New Haven-toSpringfield rail plans now being considered. But it’s also pitched on the 1910 pre-car urban design by Cass Gilbert for George Seymour and the New Haven Civic Commission.

The need for this new plan is also based on the beauty and power of a 1985 restoration of historic Union Station and its subsequent building of a parking garage to its east, both designed by Herbert Newman Associates, architects. Let me help. Why not take the existing garage design and simply mirror it on the other side of the easterly gateway? This simple flip makes a grand central piazza between the two garages by simply mirroring the garage. It builds a great receiving space for both those coming to New Haven, leaving it and addressing the new development of Church Street South by Northland Investment Corp.

The new building fits the footprint of the Goody Clancy proposal and by book-ending the old garage with a new reproduction of the existing building and spontaneously creates an urban center.

If the train station’s success has left it undersized for cars, commerce and other transportation, why not make a good thing better? And bigger?