Students and Alumni Team up to Tackle Regional Economic Development

Once a civic hub and now a disused building, New Haven’s historic Goffe Street Armory is looking for a new lease on life. This spring, an innovative Yale SOM course allowed Hannah Roth ’25 and Yale School of the Environment student Tanner Burgdorf to join the campaign to map out the landmark’s future.

The students were among nine exploring solutions to regional development issues in Professor Kate Cooney’s Inclusive Economic Development Lab (IEDL). On May 6, in an SOM classroom full of city leaders and community stakeholders, students presented their projects and recommendations.

Roth and Burgdorf described the unique opportunities and challenges that characterize the 155,000-square foot armory. Once home to various Connecticut-based military regiments, the armory was abandoned in 2009 and is now city-owned. New Haven has received a $250,000 planning grant to revive the building.

“We’ve spent the semester coming up with a list of processes to guide various ideas for the armory,” Roth said. Options included repurposing the building as a mixed-use housing, retail, recreational, and community meeting space. Students also drafted inclusivity principles to guide development.

“Now we’re in the next stage,” Burgdorf said. “How do we move from ideation to implementation?”

Students in IEDL, a hands-on elective, tackle real-world development issues, partnering with community members and drafting possible solutions. This year, students had some new mentors. Thanks to the recently launched IEDL Alumni Fellowship Practitioner Program, five economic development experts—including four Yale alumni—provided guidance and feedback in the lab.

“We were thrilled to have IEDL fellows in the lab for the second time this year,” says Cooney, a senior lecturer in social enterprise and management. “Their experiences enriched our project team discussions greatly, and they gave students real-world insights into issues that so many communities are struggling with.”

Liam Grace-Flood ’22, a senior consultant at Wellspring Consulting and former IEDL student and teaching assistant, says he was “delighted” to serve as a fellow.

“Somehow Kate [Cooney] makes the course better each year, whether by choosing the perfect topic, updating how students work with partner organizations, or launching this fellow program,” Grace-Flood says. “As a huge fan of New Haven currently living in the Bay Area, it was nice to have an excuse to stay plugged into local projects.”

Grace-Flood teamed up with Wellspring principal Asia Brown, a graduate of Yale College, the Yale School of Public Health, and Yale Divinity School, to support all the student teams in project assessment and management and provide general guidance on running purpose-driven, client-facing projects.

Consulting projects can be difficult for students, given the limited time they have for engagement, Brown says. “I was eager to leverage my experience in nonprofit consulting to ensure that students’ time and efforts would be the most useful to their clients.”

The armory team’s attitude impressed Brown. “The posture of humility that was embodied by the students was really inspiring,” she says. “They did a great job determining what would be useful for their clients and listening to the expertise of stakeholders. They accomplished a lot in a short period of time.”

IEDL focuses on a different theme each year. This year’s was “place-based economic development,” with students working within the lab’s action research framework to co-develop regional economic analyses and insight that are actionable for all stakeholders. In addition to planning a possible armory revival, students conducted research with the public-private technology hub QuantumCT to determine how quantum technologies can foster equitable development in Connecticut and studied the effectiveness of city-led development in Atlanta, Georgia.

Christophe Combemale, an engineering and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University, worked with students on the QuantumCT project. Combemale provided invaluable guidance, particularly given the student team’s limited knowledge of quantum technology, says Ash Duong ’25.

“In our recommendations, we highlighted QuantumCT's commitment to bridging regional skill gaps through specific training, reskilling, and educational initiatives,” Duong says. “Christophe helped us articulate our points and reassured us that our work, even without clear-cut solutions, would provide valuable insights for QuantumCT's strategic planning.”

Fellow Miles Mercer ’05, a business development manager for the Minneapolis Department of Community Planning and Economic Development, applauds the lab’s focus on inclusive economic development projects.

“It’s great to see the support and resources that SOM provides to the course and to this field,” Mercer says. “And I was pleased to see students tackling the same economic development issues that practitioners grapple with every day.”

Margaret Berger Bradley ’93, vice president of strategic initiatives at Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, signed on as a fellow after speaking at last year’s Impact Investing conference, where she was energized by the high level of student interest.

“When Professor Cooney offered another way to engage with students, it was a no-brainer,” Bradley says. “What a treat to come to campus, feel the mission-driven spark, and get a chance, perhaps, to help someone else carve her path. This course is a focused exploration of inclusive economic development and the kind of public-private ventures that can make a difference.”

Listen to the CitySCOPE podcast, produced by Kate Cooney and her students in the Inclusive Economic Development Lab.