The three enclosed regional malls in New Haven Metro are Connecticut Post Mall in Milford, Brass Mill Center in Waterbury and Westfield Meriden in Meriden. The area surrounding the Brass Mill Center and Westfield Meriden is not heavily supported by additional retail due to its proximity to the urban core of the City of Waterbury and the City of Meriden respectively.

There is a tremendous amount of big box and other supportive retail located along the Route 1 corridor where the Connecticut Post Mall is located. The route 1 retail corridor extends from the Connecticut Post Mall at the intersection of Route 1 and I-95 approximately 5 miles to the north through the towns of Milford, Orange and West Haven.

The second largest concentration of regional big box retail in New Haven Metro is located along Universal Drive in North Haven, north of the City of New Haven, with excellent regional access via exit 9 of I-91. A secondary regional corridor exists along Route 5 in Wallingford at the exit to the Wilbur Cross Parkway in the northern portion of the metro area.  Strong community retail corridors exist east of New Haven along Route 1 on the shoreline in Branford and Guilford, north of New Haven along Route 10 at the exit to the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Hamden, in Waterbury along both Walcott Street as well as Chase Avenue, along Route 8 in Ansonia & Derby, and in Southbury at exits 14 & 15 of I-84. Strong urban street retail exists in New Haven adjacent to Yale University’s main campus in the buildings surrounding the historic New Haven Green in downtown New Haven and along Broadway in what is known as The Shops at Yale.

Major grocers operating in New Haven County include Stop & Shop, Shop Rite, Big Y, Price Chopper, The Fresh Market, Walmart Supercenter, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Save-A-Lot and Price Rite.

The New Haven Metro area is best known for being the home of Yale University, but that is only part of the story. With a long history of manufacturing, metro area employers have kept pace with modern advanced manufacturing technologies by utilizing the New Haven area’s  highly trained and specialized workforce to meet the needs of the areas diverse manufacturing base. From chemical manufactures like Chemtura, Cytec & MacDermid, to adhesives and mortar products from Laticrete, to locking systems and hardware from Sargent, to candy products from Pez, to razor blades from Schick, the diversity of products manufactured is a testimony to a skilled workforce both at the plant level as well as in engineering and technology.

As the area continues to grow this proud history of manufacturing, it also looks to build on the strong knowledge based economy that has been fostered by Yale University and other nearby colleges and universities by focusing on attracting companies that are associated with the bioscience sector. While this focus on the biosciences is now prevalent in many areas of Connecticut, it was New Haven in the late 1990’s that lead the way and still does today. In 1992, Congress enacted legislation empowering colleges and universities to leverage their research, patents and other intellectual property in the business ventures. Yale University, which had medical and technology professors who for years had pursued solo commercialization of their research, quickly seized on the opportunity to coordinate and facilitate those startup efforts with Yale. By the early 2000’s the result was seven fledgling bioscience firms, who through good science, good timing and generous financial backing from the state of Connecticut, established New Haven as a budding hub of bioscience innovation and entrepreneurism. These seven  companies were referred to as the “seven sisters” in peer circles. Of the seven – Achillon, Alexion, CuraGen, Genaissance, Neurogen, Rib-X and Vion – all but two (Neurogen and Vion) still exist today in one form or another.

The real legacy left behind by these original “seven sisters” is the critical mass of scientific and entrepreneurial talent, plus a notable track record of public and private funding to further grow and sustain the areas bioscience ambitions. Most bioscience startups have trouble securing traditional loans because technology requires years of investments and resulting operating losses before product can be brought to market. Recognizing this problem, the Connecticut State Legislature passed legislation that, beginning in 2000, allowed startups in bioscience to convert their operating losses into tax credits that could be converted to cash to fund their operations. This was a crucial step in support of the bioscience cluster and is still in effect today.

The tax credit program prompted Yale to ramp up its commercialization efforts. In the last 20 years, Yale has launched some 60 biotechnology companies that have raised more than 1 billion in private venture capital. All of these seeds have given rise to a critical mass of bioscience companies that are able to attract scientific talent from around the country. This has resulted in a strong infrastructure for the growth of the bioscience cluster from “start ups” to mature companies and everything in between. This infrastructure includes a venture capital market that investors find attractive due to its history of success, world class research facilities, a strong existing talent pool to draw from as well as the ability to attract new talent, and a state government that has shown a consistent willingness to invest in this cluster. Add to this the strong lifestyle factor that New Haven Metro provides compared to its more expensive and congested competitors in more well-known bioscience markets like Boston – Cambridge, Northern New Jersey or California, and bioscience in New Haven Metro looks as if it will be able to continue its positive job growth in the future.

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university, originally founded in 1701. The school officially became Yale College in 1718, when it was renamed in honor of Welsh merchant Elihu Yale, who had donated the proceeds from the sale of nine bales of goods together with 417 books and a portrait of King George I. To this day Yale students are still called by the nickname “Elis” after the school’s namesake.  It is the third oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale alumni include five U.S. Presidents (George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, William Howard Taft) and 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Yale is divided into fourteen constituent schools. The undergraduate school which is officially known as Yale College, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences along with 12 professional schools. These 12 are the Schools of Law, Medicine, Management, Architecture, Engineering & Applied Science, Art, Divinity, Drama, Forestry & Environmental Studies, Music, Nursing,  and Public Health. Yale has an annual research budget in excess of $500 million.

Yale New Haven Hospital is the 4^th largest hospital in the country with over 1,500 beds, 12,000 employees, over 80,000 annual inpatient discharges, outpatient visits exceeding 1,300,000 patients annually and includes the 168 bed Smilow Cancer Hospital, the 201 bed Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital and the 76 bed Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital. It is the primary teaching hospital for the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Nursing.

The school is currently in the middle of a $2 billion capital improvement program for its’ campus. Yale’s is an urban campus and so the school meshes completely into the downtown core and the iconic New Haven Green. As New Haven’s largest property owner Yale has been careful and deliberate to utilize their real estate to bring in retailers and restaurants that make both Yale and New Haven a unique place to live and work.  Many of the retail and restaurant offerings that are found around the campus and downtown core would never choose to be in New Haven except for the presence of Yale.  Whether from a physical, economic or social perspective, it is impossible to understate the positive impact that Yale University has on the city of New Haven and the region as a whole.