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The New Haven Green has received a million-dollar grant for “infrastructure upgrades” from the cash-strapped state (to which the city’s adding another $500,000).
First response: Yahoo!
The second response, after letting the news sink in a little: that’s a relatively small amount of money considering what could be done with the space.
Originally, there was talk from the city of adding better access to power and a better stage, as so many public events take place there throughout the year. In the summer, concerts and the Festival of Arts & Ideas entertain thousands. New beginning-of-autumn celebrations like the New Haven Grand Prix transform the space into a hub of organized chaos.
That isn’t a universally shared want, though. Those who use the Green most frequently are begging for more lighting, better bus distribution and other aspects more closely related to safety than festivities.
And indeed, the use of money for fun on the Green is fraught with potential misfires. There have been more people hustling for drug sales and using the churches as toilets, suggesting that clean, safe public bathrooms might be an important investment. There’s also a general sense of lessened safety, which points to the need for increased lighting.
At a meeting with the city, several local stakeholders — Trinity Church patrons like myself, business owners, those who live next door, and several Arts & Ideas devotees — aired all of those concerns, looking at the Green’s many personalities: park, piazza, place of worship, place of crime.
Money makes for clarity: the city will tell us where they come down on some basic needs: Greater safety? Greater Support of the Arts? Greater Care for our Historic Center of the Nine Squares.
To listen to a full commentary on the topic, from WNHH radio’s “Design Czar” series, click on or download the audio above.
Is there a point of any of this unless the place is clean, drug and alcohol free and safe?? Why support arts even more if the place is filthy, laden with addicts and drunks and bus riders who can't stay in one place for very long without being accosted?? Not to mention nowhere to sit because ALL of the benches are full of addicts, drunks, drug peddlers and those just waiting for the library to open up so they can sleep it off in there!