Laura Glesby photo
Fair Haven neighbors respond to a proposed roundabout at Grand and Ferry.
When Ana Juárez imagines a planned new pedestrian plaza at Grand Avenue and Poplar Street, she sees rustling trees, singing birds, and a safe place for kids to eat ice cream.
When fellow Fair Havener Kimberly A. imagines that same place, she wants to see fresh fruit and jumbo-sized board games — but worries that parking and unwelcoming loitering could overtake the area instead.
Juárez and Kimberly offered that mix of hope and skepticism at a public meeting about a pedestrian-oriented overhaul to Fair Haven’s main commercial corridor.
The infrastructure changes will see the creation of a new public plaza at Grand and Poplar, as well as a new traffic roundabout at Grand and Ferry.
Both Juárez and Kimberly know Grand Avenue well, having lived nearby for most if not all of their lives.
The pair joined over 40 other Fair Haven community members at FAME Academy’s cafeteria Tuesday night, where city officials presented updates on plans to revamp infrastructure on Grand Avenue and on Ferry Street.
The proposed changes include:
• Transforming the parking lot at Poplar and Grand into “a central square for Fair Haven,” as City Engineer Giovanni Zinn put it — a place that “looks different every day” and “provides a space for all the things that make Fair Haven Fair Haven.”
• Adding a roundabout at the intersection of Grand and Ferry.
• Creating a climate-resilient seawall and outdoor activity hub at Quinnipiac River Park by the Grand Avenue bridge.
• Building speed tables and raised intersections along Ferry Street, while widening sidewalks near intersections to prevent unsafe parking and shorten pedestrian crosswalks.
• Bolstering lighting, trees, signage, and road paint along the avenue.
The Grand Avenue project will be funded by $6.5 million from the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development as well as $1.5 million from the city’s capital budget. The Ferry Street project, meanwhile, will be funded with $2.8 million from the state’s Local Transportation Capital Improvement Program.
Ana Juárez: “I really do like what they’re doing.”
On Tuesday at FAME school, community members had an opportunity to examine maps and proposed renderings across a variety of tables, leaving post-it notes with feedback.
Ana Juárez offered feedback for the city officials that boiled down to: “Keep going!”
“I really do like what they’re doing,” Juárez said, adding that she hopes the projects will come to fruition soon.
“I grew up walking these streets,” said Juárez, who has lived in Fair Haven for “a few decades.” She hasn’t seen a major infrastructure-level change to Grand Avenue in all those years.
She particularly liked the idea of the plaza at Grand and Poplar. “Culturally, they have a lot of them in Mexico,” where her family is from, she said. “That does add an element of home.”
In Juárez’s imagination, the future Grand-Poplar plaza is a park with plenty of trees and a bird sanctuary.
“It would be a pleasant spot,” she said. “We could go down and get ice cream.”
Juárez also felt enthusiastic about the proposed roundabout for Grand and Ferry. She recalled her former routine driving through Westville’s peanut-shaped roundabout in order to drop off her younger sister at Edgewood School. “It really doesn’t give people another choice other than to slow down,” she observed.
She said she does hope the city puts a barrier of some kind — “I love the tree idea” — in the middle in order to prevent drivers from simply ignoring paint and signage.
Juárez’ younger sister is now in high school. “She takes the bus,” Juárez said. “That’s a constant concern of ours, her being on the street.” These days, Juárez said, “I avoid Ferry Street if I can.” She particularly worries about reckless drivers at that intersection.
I really like the roundabout, she wrote on a yellow post-it. Better than traffic lights and double to slow traffic.
Post-it feedback from Juárez, Kimberly, and others.
When Kimberly A. looked at the rendering of the Grand and Ferry roundabout, meanwhile, she found herself skeptical.
“I’m not opposed to traffic circles,” she said, but “with the driving culture that exists on Grand Avenue, I don’t know if it’s going to work” — especially if “it depends on people to follow a yield.”
She said she could easily imagine responsible drivers slowing down at a roundabout — but reckless drivers might use it to create more chaos.
The one on Quinnipiac does not slow most people down, she wrote on a pink post-it.
Kimberly posited that raised crosswalks and well-timed traffic lights — with left-turn options — would be a better solution for that intersection.
Having lived in Fair Haven for most of her life, Kimberly also had mixed feelings about the proposed pedestrian plaza on Grand and Poplar. “I’m hesitant about it, not against it,” she said.
“It’s already a busy area that doesn’t have enough parking,” she argued, expressing concern about the possibility of removing parking spaces from the neighborhood.
Another concern Kimberly raised was the potential for “safety issues” at that plaza, wondering in particular if it would simply become a site of open substance use.
She wasn’t alone in raising this worry. Several others at Tuesday’s meeting spoke of seeing used needles or even people passed out on the street. “Everybody’s kids deserve a safe space to live,” Kimberly said.
Though Kimberly had doubts, she also had a few ideas for what she’d like to see in an ideal-world version of the Grand Avenue plaza.
She sketched out a vision for the park that wasn’t so different from Juárez’s.
“It could be fun to include an activity,” she said, like “a big Connect Four board.”
The plaza could include “sensory experiences for differently abled people,” she added. And “functional, edible landscaping,” like fruit trees, for neighbors to pick in the summer.