Hamden Community Center Pitch Takes Shape

The possibility of a federally funded community center for Southern Hamden is starting to take shape, as town officials sketch out budgets and begin the process of reaping resident input.

During a Tuesday night Legislative Council meeting, council and community members heard more about a preliminary proposal to relocate a host of town resources onto a blighted Newhall Street property and weighed in on the project’s potential. (Read more on that project’s background here.)

Hamden mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Grace presented details on a long-term plan to support development in Southern Hamden. He pitched that idea as part of a broader presentation concerning how Hamden should spend $18 million in federal money granted through the federal pandemic-relief American Rescue Plan Act. The Legislative Council has yet to vote yes or no on okaying the concept.

The plan to bring a gymnasium, health center, library, senior center, kitchen, and classrooms to 560 Newhall St., the site of the town’s abandoned middle school which has been decaying for years, has been estimated to cost around $15.4 million. On Tuesday night, Town Engineer Stephen provided a line-by-line budget for the project, showcasing the estimated costs of each component of the project from a $137,000 lobby to a $1,500,000 library. Read through that here.

That Tuesday presentation included some suggestions from the town administration concerning a few less expensive uses for the remaining dollars — like funding town-wide summer jobs for Hamden youth, expanding a digital education program at the Miller Memorial library, and purchasing self-contained breathing apparatuses for firefighters. Those three projects would collectively cost less than $1 million; read through a slide deck detailing the ideas here.

Tuesday was the first time public comment was heard regarding a much larger concept: To build a full community campus, which would be constructed as a planned development district.

While some speakers questioned the cost of such a project, the larger conversation revolved around how to make the most out of a singular opportunity.

Bob Mordecai, a retired firefighter who told the council he’s ​“from the north end of town,” wondered whether it wouldn’t be more appropriate to build a community center that was centrally located within town. Many echoed his thoughts.

“We’re six miles wide and 13 miles long,” he said of Hamden. Building a community site ​“in the center of town where more people would be able to use it would be more appropriate for all the taxpayers,” he said, than doing so ​“within a mile of the New Haven line.”

Grace said the point was build a community center on town-owned property that’s been otherwise abandoned and underutilized while ushering resources into a historically disenfranchised area of town. Over time, he added, the administration hopes to also grow public transit and smaller community resources across town.

“We are trying to make it so inclusive that every single neighbor in this town and indeed neighboring towns will have reason to go visit this center,” he said.

Others suggested expanding the community center beyond its current scope. For example, Paula Irvin asked whether the town had considered budgeting for a community pool to be built as part of the campus.

When Town Engineer Stephen White responded that his staff had determined a pool to be too cost prohibitive, other council members pitched in to support some lap lanes.

“A leading cause of death in children is drowning,” noted Councilwoman Katie Kiely, who is also a teacher at Ridge Hill Elementary. She said that free swim lessons should be a town service to protect kids who otherwise may not have a pathway to learn about water safety.

“It would be nice to have the numbers for that,” she requested.

What about the operating costs of such a project? others inquired, asking whether a full community center would be sustainable after using up federal dollars.

“The plan is to move facilities there, not to expand,” Grace said. ​“So we’re not anticipating a big increase in operating costs — in fact, we might seem some savings.” For example, he said, the administration would like to catalyze a conversation about the possibility of closing down the town’s library branches in order to build one larger library on Newhall Street.

The town has also applied for $8.5 from the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development to improve Newhall’s drainage system and plans to request an additional $7.2 million in financial assistance from that same department in hopes of establishing an ​“arts district” that would include a performance space and visual arts gallery. Those projects are not included in White’s capital budget for the community campus itself.

That will be hashed out during the next step in the project’s development, Grace said, which will be hybrid meeting hosted on Oct. 12 to hear additional thoughts and proposals from the larger community.

Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.