Maya McFadden file photo
At Angela's Unique Creations ribbon cutting on Kimberly Ave. in February.
An online holiday party replete with ugly sweaters and good cheer brought into focus a vision for a bustling, business-friendly Kimberly Square .
That commercial stretch of the Hill was one of the topics of conversation Tuesday night during a joint, holiday-occasioned double meeting of the Hill North and Hill South community management teams.
Malachi Bridges.
Malachi Bridges — a New Haven native and first-year student at UConn Law School who started work this summer as one of the city’s economic development officers for special projects — was one of the event’s attendees.
With at least some of the 30 people present on the Zoom-only event wearing ugly sweaters (as recommended by the management team’s party invite) and all wishing each other good health and good cheer, Bridges got a warm welcome.
He also received an earful of the kinds of issues that economic development officers must attend to.
Bridges explained his first assignment is a focus on business development in Kimberly Square. As a first step, he’s overseeing the hiring of local small contractors to do regular clean-ups along Lamberton, Kimberly, and Greenwich streets in Hill South, and to deploy serious garbage receptacles there. Hill North CMT Co-chair Howard Boyd responded by pointing out chronic littering is also a problem in his part of the neighborhood.
“Check out all the littering all up and down Dagget,” Boyd said, “all the way [from Congress Avenue] to the library.”
Bridges said he was on it.
But as New Haven’s newest economic development officer he is also on to far more than that. With his master’s degree and a background in public policy and a slew of impressive internships served while he was in college working on businesses’ relationships with the city, Bridges‘s portfolio includes supervising one of the city’s newest aims, the revitalization of Kimberly Square.
That’s going to start, Bridges reported, with helping to develop an association of the business owners in the Kimberly Square area.
“While we’re working with an architect to visualize a revitalization of Kimberly Square, a first step is to do some business organization, because there is nothing like that,” he said.
At first, Bridges said, the idea was to develop a dues-paying business development or special services district of the kind that exists in other areas of the city like Downtown, Chapel West, Fair Haven, and Whalley Avenue.
“But they did not want to pay the fees,” Bridges said about Kimberly Square business owners he’s been in touch with. “So we’re looking into an association that doesn’t require fees. So first, the organizations of businesses, and second, we’ll be working on the plan” to revitalize Kimberly Square.
Hill South CMT Chair Sarah McIver invited Bridges to the next, after-holiday management team meeting to discuss the plan further. Bridges said he’ll be there.
“This is my first project and I’m excited,” he said about the Kimberly Square revitalization project.
“We’ll be happy to talk to you next month,” said McIver.
“Hill North, Hill South, it’s the same thing,” said Hill North CMT officer Jose DeJesus.
“It is one Hill,” chimed in Hill resident, and chair of the City Plan Commission, Leslie Radcliffe, who was listening in while also monitoring that evening’s Board of Zoning Appeals meeting.
“Be safe,” said McIver, as people signed off the holiday special meeting, “don’t get sick, and we’ll see you in the new year.”
