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Child Development Center Opens Along Route 34 in New Haven

The City of New Haven is hoping to revitalize the area along the Route 34 connector.

The section between the Hill neighborhood and downtown went underdeveloped for decades while the Oak Street connector project was never finished.

The piece of land used to be a parking lot, but now a new child care facility has opened and city officials said there are plans for more development along the connector.

Shital Patel and her husband are co-owners of The Learning Experience location in Cromwell.

"I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a second location. One is enough, but when we came to the area, I saw the center and I saw the location. I knew this was for us," Patel said.

Patel said the child care center is focused on preparing children for kindergarten.

"Our curriculum starts in our infant room, goes all the way up to preschool," she said.

And there's a need in New Haven, according to Mayor Toni Harp, for more early education programs.

"There are about 5,000 children in our city who don't have access to child daycare and to high quality care and so this is really filling a void," Mayor Harp said.

Located on the Route 34 connector, The Learning Experience is easily accessible for parents needing to drop off their children on the way to work in the city.

"Now we're really a medical city as much as anything so much of the growth is at the hospital and this is right in between the two campuses, the St. Raphael's campus and the Yale-New Haven campus," said Matthew Nemerson, the Economic Development Administrator.

Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson said the city would like for new housing to be built down to the Boulevard and that's not all...

"We hope to have a hotel. We hope to have some medical offices and at some point, we hope to have a parking garage," he said.

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