Can the city help bring this vision to life?
Oh, that's an alameda. Cool!
Imagine an alameda — a long shady tree-lined walkway — running down the middle of Blatchley Avenue all the way from Grand Avenue to the Quinnipiac River.
And how about building up underused lots into lots more housing on East Street and on Wolcott?
Those were a few of the neighborhood-changing ideas that emerged Monday night at 162 James St., CitySeed’s new building, where city economic development officials convened a second public meeting for citizen input to envision a now-and-future identity for the Mill River District.
The city is drafting new policy and development goals for the neighborhood, an industrial stretch of New Haven connecting Wooster Square, Upper State Street, and Fair Haven.
The planning process is funded by a $5 million state grant that can also be used for property acquisitions. This funding coincides with an infusion of state funding for improvements to Grand Avenue as a business corridor.
Click here for a previous article on that first meeting held back in April.
Long-time area activist Chris Ozyck at Monday's meetup.
Monday night’s gathering, led by economic development staffers Carlos Eyzaguirre and Malachi Bridges, City Engineer Giovanni Zinn, and consultants from Colliers Engineering and Design, was billed to focus on the style or “typology” of potential new affordable housing in the district.
Officials also showed a kind of map or list of the current un-or-under-developed sites — at, for example, Chapel and East streets, where city-supported new affordable housing might pop up with the help of some of the $5 million.
Click here for the full PowerPoint presentation of what Colliers staffer Debbie Lawlor called a “palette of mixes to get the character of Mill River.”
With the proviso that everything is in very early stages of “envisioning,” Bridges presented a whole range of options of what he termed NDDs, or Neighborhood-scale Density Developments.
A development at Chapel and East, for example, might have 39 units in a traditional building of three stories, whereas 261 Wolcott St. might feature a townhouse style offering more opportunities for home ownership and a shared courtyard area among the units.
Would the materials be newer or echo some of what’s in the district already? For example, the impressive bricks in the ongoing re-development, by the Housing Authority of New Haven, of the old Clock Factory on Hamilton Street?
All TBD, officials said, as the city negotiates sales of some of these locations with current owners. Ezyaguirre clarified that the $5 million the city has scored is bonded money and some of it is by law earmarked for acquisitions.
Some of it, he added, will be used to hire a new employee to coordinate and to nurse along the evolving plans and property acquisition and development.
English Station: "The Elephant In The Room"
Abigal Storch and Armando Ghinaglia, of Perkins Street, think the Mill River green spaces can be as beautiful as Q River Park; and they'd like a dog park too.
Mill River Trail mover and shaker J.R. Logan and Paul Nadziejko
Many of the locations deemed possible sites for new affordable housing surround or are near English Station, where a $30 million court-mandated clean-up by United Illuminating and that utility’s Spanish parent company Iberdola, have failed, said longtime neighborhood activist Christ Ozyck; they’ve failed to produce any serious remediation of the river.
Nearby sites on the list include 347 Chapel St. That’s the old gasworks, said Ozyck, where salt piles for decades have been pressing down to accelerate spillage of oil into the Mill River, he added.
That’s why Ozyck raised his hand and offered a radical idea: That none of the smaller plans for development can really proceed with confidence without addressing what he termed “the elephant in the room:” English Station.
Ozyck proposed to amalgamate all the properties around English Station into a single “superfund” site.
That would make the area surrounding English Station as a whole potentially eligible, he said, for EPA and other federal dollars, the serious millions required “to clean it properly” after all these years of partial measures and neglect.
Currently, state Attorney General William Tong is suing United Illuminating to enforce the $30 million remediation order.
“How long have we been waiting and nothing has happened,” said Ozyck.
“What you’re proposing is fantastic,” he added to the city officials present on Monday, “but English Station has to get back to public control or we’ll continue to struggle.”
In tandem with that, Ozyck suggested filling the already heavily contaminated west side of the Mill River with gravel. That might lead to the creation of marsh land and what he termed a healthy ecosystem that could protect the switching station on Grand Avenue and other infrastructure from rising sea levels — another ongoing concern of city officials.
“He’s a trusted partner,” Eyzaguirre responded to Ozyck’s ideas, “and he’s in touch with the zeitgeist,” that is, neighbors’ thinking on these matters, “so I’m open to hearing more.”
Enter The Alameda
By far the most excitement of the evening’s presentations (at least for this reporter) was City Engineer Giovanni Zinn’s appreciation of Blatchley Avenue’s potential.
“The waterfront is such an asset and Blatchley is one of the widest streets in New Haven.”
There’s a lot of extra pavement there, he went on. The city could just mill and repave it, as part of the overall evolving Mill River District plan.
“However, there’s a real opportunity to do something different – an alameda. A 24- or 25-foot-wide area in the middle, with walking paths, trees, lights,” leading all the length down from Grand Avenue.
There, on Grand, new crosswalks and other streetscape improvements are being planned as part of a separate $7 million improvement of the full length of that avenue. These features could help direct neighbors and visitors down toward the alameda.
Where the alameda meets River Street a kind of waterfront promenade might unfold.
That, so goes the vision, would be part of a kind of charm bracelet of linking green spaces, amid rebuilt bulkheads and trails, enabling Mill Riverites and Fair Haveners to walk from Criscuolo Park to Quinnipiac River Park without setting foot on a city street.
The general murmur of excitement was punctuated by Paul Nadziejko, in the Q & A portion of the evening as the meeting wound down.
Nadziejko lives on Front Street across from Quinnipiac River Park. “You wait months to get a light bulb replaced [in the park], and the walking paths are a trip hazard, so who,” he asked, “is going to take care of the new parks, the alameda? Who’s responsible for maintenance? Because now it’s piss-poor.”
“We haven’t figured that out yet,” replied Zinn. “Likely Public Works or Parks. But, yes, there can always be more maintenance, and one of the things we can do is building for easier maintenance. It is on our mind.”
Grand Avenue Special Services District Manager Erick Gonzalez, who received compliments for how clean Grand Avenue has been looking lately, said about the alameda, “It is a great opportunity to get people involved.”
The next meeting, with more detailed planning and updates about Mill River District development, will be convened in the first quarter of 2025, said Eyzaguirre.