The shoddy state of Quinnipiac Avenue is taking a toll on condo developer Fereshteh Bekhrad. Her potential tenants are walking away, telling her, “Your units are beautiful, but the street stinks.”
Bekhrad (pictured) was one of dozens of local residents who turned out to hear an update from city officials on the status of the Quinnipiac Avenue “re-do.” The road, along the east bank of the Quinnipiac River in Fair Haven, is on the brink of a makeover that has been nearly a decade in the making. Phase one of the project might begin as soon as this fall. It will focus on a stretch of Quinnipiac Avenue between Clifton and Ferry Streets.
Bekhrad’s properties will not benefit from the project, which ends just south of her condos. She was one of several at the meeting who called for more repaving of Quinnipiac Avenue, north and south of the stretch slated for overhaul.
The city’s plan features a number of traffic calming measures — including a roundabout, chicanes, and bumpouts — designed to discourage cars from flooring it on the straightaway. The project also includes reconstruction of the retaining wall and sidewalks along the avenue.
At the Monday evening meeting at the Pilgrim Church on East Grand Avenue, Mayor John DeStefano told neighbors that the funding for Phase One is now in place, thanks to the recently passed federal stimulus package. The first phase will cost $7 million, which will be funneled through the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments (COG). The bidding process will begin in August, if not sooner. Construction will begin in the fall or spring. See a previous story on the project’s phases here.
Dick Miller, the city’s head engineer, unveiled plans for construction detours. The detour route won’t be a change for Garrett Difazio, who lives on Qunnipiac Avenue. He said he’s been detouring already, going to Route 80 by way of Grand Avenue in an effort to avoid the potholes that are shaking his truck apart.
The $7 million for Phase One is still $1.5 million less than the $8.5 million of her own money that Bekhrad has spent developing a number of waterfront condos at 744 to 784 Quinnipiac Ave. — called Harbor Village — just north of Clifton Street.
Dismayed at the state of the avenue, and looking for a public partner for her private investment, Bekhrad went right to the top with a recent request to fix her road. Last month she sent President Obama a letter, asking for his cooperation and financial support on her project. She copied the letter to Mayor DeStefano.
Bekhrad hasn’t heard from Obama, who has been distracted by other pressing matters. So Behrad, wearing a floor-length fur coat and several gold necklaces, put her request to the mayor at Monday night’s meeting.
“Is there any other phase beyond this?” she asked. Bekhrad told the mayor that she’d like to see work done on the north section of Quinnipiac Avenue.
“We haven’t begun to think about the rest of the road,” the mayor replied.
“So it could be at least another eight to ten years?” Bekhrad asked.
The mayor agreed that yes, it could be as long eight or ten years, but promised to take up the matter. “Between now and whenever we next get together we’ll take a look at areas north and south of Phase One and Two,” he said.
Phase Two of the Quinnipiac Avenue project is a small section south of Ferry Street, to Judith Terrace.
Ian Christmann, who lives at 475 Quinnipiac Ave. in the middle of the Phase One section, said that paving the north end is more of a priority than attending to the south end. He told the mayor that the north part just needs a resurfacing, “not even a total redo.”
“Just pave it!” Ed Schwartz said under his breath. Schwartz (pictured) lives on the north end of Quinnipiac Avenue. He had been complaining about the state of his street before the meeting, saying that it “looks like a dump” and that he was pretty sure that he saw a Smart Car lodged in one of the potholes.
“We’ll take a look at it,” the mayor promised, writing himself a reminder to follow up on the repaving of the north end.
After the meeting Bekhrad said that there are big problems with water damage to Quinnipiac Avenue near her condos. The asphalt is broken, and there are streams going into the street, she said.
“It’s very difficult to attract people,” Bekhrad said. She’s trying to fill seven of her $800,000 condos. “People came today, they said, ‘Your units are beautiful, but the street stinks,’” Bekhrad said. She didn’t close the deal with the prospective tenants.
Bekhrad said she is going to keep trying to prod the city into action.
“We’re making progress,” Miller said after the meeting. “I recognize those are things we need to do.”
“There a tremendous amount of investment with properties up there,” Christmann said, referring to Bekhrad’s Harbor Village. “But the infrastructure is almost completely the opposite. It’s a mess… Those properties could be an asset.”
Christmann was encouraged by the meeting, and looks forward to a transformation of his street. “We have one of the most walkable areas in town,” he said, describing a local riverside walking route. “But we’re stuck with a stretch of Quinnipiac Avenue that is treacherous — four wheel drive treacherous.”
“I’m already detouring,” said Garrett Difazio, Christmann’s neighbor at 490 Quinnipiac Ave. Difazio said that his old four wheel drive truck was no match for the bumps on Quinnipiac Avenue. He gets to Route 80 via Grand Avenue.
The meeting ended with a gift to the mayor. Christmann (at right in photo) presented Mayor DeStefano with a a pair of commemorative desk ornaments in the shape of road signs, one of which says “Q Ave Redo.”
"People came today, they said, 'Your units are beautiful, but the street stinks."
Funny enough, that's what virtually everyone who visits New Haven says. Beautiful architecture, great town, incredible diversity, better culture and food than any other mid sized city in the United States -- but you may get yourself killed trying to cross State, Trumbull, Whalley, or Howard.
Once we have better street design, New Haven's real estate values will double, obesity will decline (currently, over 50% of New Haven children and adults, are obese or overweight, with higher obesity in inner-city neighborhoods where people do not feel comfortable walking, bicycling or playing on their streets), people will be much healthier, maternal stress (which is linked to every other social problem in the U.S.) will be reduced, and people will save enormous amounts of money not having to drive down the street every time they want to buy a banana.
The Mayor, Chris Donovan and other do-gooder liberals all need to take the lead of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation -- who is a Republican -- and commit far more substantial resources to the creation of livable communities within the state: <a href="http://fastlane.dot.gov/2009/03/livable-communities-the-hometowns-americans-deserve.html." rel="nofollow">http://fastlane.dot.gov/2009/03/livable-communities-the-hometowns-americans-deserve.html.</a> A small investment in this area will have huge returns for Connecticut.
Just paving a bit of Quinnipiac Avenue, and resurfacing two or three other streets a year, simply doesn't cut it for New Haven. Especially when it seems that for every sidewalk that New Haven is able to scrounge up a few pennies to rebuild, ConnDOT either widens Route 34 by another 20 feet, builds another billion dollar section of I-95 in order to increase our local asthma rates (which are already 3x the state level), or builds yet another a massive, $30 million new parking garage linked by overhead pedestrian bridges to SCSU.
These residents should be out protesting in force as their communities are destroyed from the pavement up. A roundabout is a nice start, but it's nowhere near enough to address the problem.
Every year, New Haven falls farther and farther behind more livable communities like Seattle, Greenwich, Cambridge, Boulder, and Portland, and anywhere in Europe, all of which have extensive traffic calming programs and more far progressive road design. This not only means a loss of jobs, taxes, people, and revenue -- it represents the epic, ongoing destruction of New Haven residents' health.