New London, Connecticut has always been a picture-postcard city with a population that understands celebrating life. Following its creative and proactive response to the economic pressures of COVID-19, this Connecticut landmark has reinvented itself as a sought-after tourist destination for visitors from around the world. With a new national museum set to open its doors soon, New London has been hard at work preparing for the surge of visitors who will add to the 300,000 tourists the city currently sees annually.
One aspect that counts in the city’s favor on this front is New London’s accessibility. Alongside its interstate ferry access to Fishers, Block, and Long Islands, the city has good public transportation via rail, as both Amtrak and Shore Line East are well-represented. New London is also connected to Interstate 95, and American Cruise Lines docks here, with around 10 cruise liners set to arrive during 2026.
Now focused on small business development, the city of New London has established itself as a leader in bringing together its diverse communities in fun and creative ways. Reinvigorating its local business scene, the city is upgrading everything from storefronts to social media presences, downtown apartments to the city’s overall appearance, as it welcomes growing numbers of visitors from around the world. In the process, the city even introduced a fantastic new application, Explore New London, to enhance visitors’ experience further.
Applying its share of the nearly $2 trillion in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding judiciously, the city has been supporting new construction, driving a vital surge in this sector not seen since the 1950s. Its downtown area perhaps benefits in the biggest ways, with significant restoration work and improvements, mainly along Meridian Street, allowing the city to offer leasing space to a growing number of new businesses in the area.
“I think it was very helpful to get those buildings ready for tenants. Many of our buildings were not ready—nowhere close to white-box standards and certainly not even grey-box,” says Elizabeth Nocera, Economic Development Coordinator. “We’re very grateful for that.”
Following the upgrades ARPA funding afforded New London, the city has transformed a previously bleak picture into growing communities, contributing to the city’s overall well-being in more meaningful ways than previously possible.
The anticipated grand opening of New London’s National Coast Guard Museum in 2027 is one of the much-welcomed economic drivers behind the current bustle. The new facility, positioned in the city’s historic area between Union Train Station and the Thames River, will provide visitors with glass-enclosed waterfront views across 80,000 square feet of public space offering well over 500 artifacts and 4,500 images. Beyond immersive and interactive exhibits and leadership training, participants will also benefit from educational programs in science, technology, and mathematics. “Currently, the Coast Guard is the only [division] of the National Defense Force that does not have a museum, so it’s going to be very exciting when that opens,” Nocera shares.
The influx of new visitors means that the city is also attracting new economic possibilities, making this a truly exciting time for New Londoners. In the process, the city has undertaken a thorough, two-year-long wayfinding initiative that has seen a number of new projects come to life. One of these is creating a range of maps and guides on navigating New London’s amenities and public spaces, helping visitors to easily find parking and other important landmarks. “We want people to not only visit the museum but to stay,” emphasizes Nocera. “Stay and have lunch. Stay and have dinner. Visit our small shops.”
With a proud existing arts and culture tradition, the city’s artists also benefited from ARPA funding, securing New London the designation of third cultural district of the State of Connecticut. And as a result of the reinvigoration of its cultural, historical, and arts scenes, the city’s downtown area is blossoming in exciting new ways with a refreshed sense of vibrancy adding life and vigor to the atmosphere.
New London is also home to one of the state’s largest theatres. As it happens, the Garde Arts Center celebrates its centenary this year, as visitors come from across the region to enjoy premium cultural events and performances in the beautiful 1500-seat grande dame of local arts. As a beneficiary of a Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) grant, this star amenity can now afford to revamp its premises, breathing new life into the beloved landmark, complete with a new community area and an improved loading dock. The new dock provides access to semi-trailers at the back of the premises, enabling larger productions.
Another of New London’s current missions is overhauling its traffic infrastructure to accommodate growth, with a specific focus on enhancing traffic flow with the help of more funding from the DECD. Its goal is to ensure that all transportation providers enjoy improved access to and from destinations, making the city as easy to get around in as possible.
“We are currently working on new signalization and moving forward after some additional traffic study to change one of our current one-way streets to a two-way street to improve egress and ingress,” Nocera says of the city’s efforts to re-align a surge in rush-hour traffic.
Following the city’s greater traffic study, its ferry dock, a high-traffic zone linked to the interstate highway, recently completed environmental studies in support of its bulkhead improvements aimed at enhancing docking and on- and off-boarding. Its parking zone, giving access to the railways and ferries, will also soon be expanded thanks to another federal grant. “It is a wonderful problem to have parking issues,” Nocera laughs. “It is an indicator that we are now a national tourist hub.”
In another development, one of the city’s legacy businesses, The Day newspaper, exchanged its original central-downtown footprint for a new printing and distribution premises on State Street, and its earlier premises are set to become a hotel, complete with a public park and greenway right next to the Water Street Parking Garage, in partnership with High Tide Capital. By softening the mainly concrete-and-asphalt landscape of this area, New Londoners will soon be able to enjoy the pleasures of fresh, green soft-scaping in this popular part of their city.
“It’s been a wonderful partnership with High Tide Capital,” Nocera says of the projects, which have seen the addition of a significant number of affordable new apartments at both at The Day’s old and new premises. The result of this, together with the city administration’s economic revitalization work, is a wonderful blending of residential, small retail, and restaurant spaces, lending an air of relaxation and easy living to the area. With restaurants like The Lion House, The Blue Duck, and others, the city’s culinary scene is growing a life of its own in the best possible way.
As old mall spaces are now being converted into offices, even more businesses are returning to the downtown area, following the great commercial exodus of the 1980s when malls became the be-all and end-all of economic development in every city and town across the land. The city is now engaged in a strategic partnership with Connecticut Main Street Center to revitalize the area as well as the rest of its commercial centers, while considering the wishes of residents and other stakeholders with regard to what new additions would please them most in the development of a lively downtown.
New London also established a new community recreational center where local teams can practice regularly. “The Mayor, Michael Passero, and his administration, really pushed for it and made it a very high priority,” Nocera says. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful facility. We’re very, very proud of our new community recreational center that just opened in July.”
The city’s largest employer—and a considerable landowner—General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB or EB for short) is a submarine fabricator with a significant presence here and in the neighboring town of Graton. Providing the area’s young professionals with a steady supply of gainful employment, the company has also helped to stimulate the city’s housing development.
Another large contributor to New London’s prosperity is Connecticut State’s Pier Terminal, home to the city’s turbine assembly and wind marshaling operations since 2023. The city is also home to Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, the original patent holder for toothpaste invented by Doctor Sheffield in 1850, which has been in operation for around a century. In addition, there is Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, which employs a large number of healthcare professionals and is partnered with Yale University.
And Yale isn’t the only tertiary education institution with a presence here. The U.S. Coast Guard has its academy in New London, as do Connecticut and Mitchell Colleges. To ensure that students develop community awareness, the city makes a conscious effort to connect with them in various ways, and Connecticut College has supported the drive with its occupation of a building in the downtown area for student housing, adding to the diversity and liveliness of the district.
With a few more brownfield projects underway, there is certainly no shortage of affordable housing here, and with GDEB set to employ around 3,000 new people over the next few years, housing availability is set to remain a priority. Moving ahead, however, another priority is the development of brownfield sites on Howard Street as well as Garfield Mills on Garfield Street, which is earmarked for housing following site remediation. The next five years will also see the development of the historic Fort Trumbull peninsula, an area that has been slated for housing and other development for over a decade and is seeing movement toward that vision now. The city is also partnering with Eastern Connecticut Housing Opportunities (ECHO) in another exciting effort to establish yet more affordable housing, this time on Bayonet Street, where a local church steeple collapsed a few years ago, leading to the demolition of the building.
“ECHO has been a terrific partner. This project is now in phase three,” Nocera says.
With further plans underway and extensive upgrades to infrastructure and accessibility driving ongoing improvement across the city, New London is being primed for a new lease on life, one which promises to see its historic and commercial districts blossom into a new era of economic prosperity over the next decade.
