Hill Pushes Back On Greenwich Plaza Plan

Energized by the summer solstice sunshine on the longest day of the year, Hill neighbors brought a bit of good-natured heat and opposition to a preliminary city proposal to close off a section of Greenwich Avenue to make a little plaza or ​“public realm” — as part of a broader street-scape redo of Kimberly Square.

That was the topic up for debate Wednesday night as the Hill North and Hill South community management teams gathered for their annual joint meeting and dinner celebration before the July/August break. 

As about 40 people met up in the Parish House near the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School on Kimberly Avenue, city Economic Development Officer Malachi Bridges described the plans — just an early design concept, really — to help revitalize the Kimberly Square commercial district, which runs roughly between the highway underpass to the south and the Kimberly Square triangle near Howard Avenue.

While it would involve a whole array of new crosswalks, plantings, and lighting, a centerpiece of that plan would be a closure of a small section of Greenwich Avenue where it meets Kimberly, making possible a kind of community plaza with benches, tables, and a park.

The plans may have been preliminary, but the reaction was not, and it was hot.

“Absolutely do not close Greenwich Avenue between Kimberly and Lamberton,” said Angela Hatley, Hill South’s communications director. 

“That’ll only exacerbate a traffic problem that already exists. The city has been trying to do this for years. Malachi, please let the people at the city know that the people who opposed this plan then have not died out yet!”

Bridges patiently explained that the closure was just one feature of a general streetscape redesign, that the design consultants have not yet even been hired — although that is quite near — and the city hasn’t yet applied for the state/federal grants to fund the work; the purpose of his visit was merely a community heads-up.

Yet the neighbors weren’t buying. 

Several cited a recent history of other housing developments and street re-designs where preliminary peeks had become ​“set in stone” without further and more substantive community consultation.

When Bridges said that the city has clocked 435 traffic accidents since 2015, between the highway underpass and the square, and that traffic calming was desperately needed, along with revitalization, Jose DeJesus, a Hill North resident and a director of community engagement at the Yale School of Medicine, said, ​“There are 20 other [traffic] calming devices that could be used.”

“Kimberly is a place where people speed,” Bridges replied.

He said the surface in front of the proposed plaza area by Greenwich would not be a bump but a speed table. ​“The beauty of the plan is that we’re trying to do a full park, streetscape [re-do] with multiple [new] intersections.”

But nobody in the gathering appeared to be mollified. ​“Why not do that [first] at Columbus and the [Ella Grasso] Boulevard” intersection, also a deadly crossroads nearby.

Hill North Chair Howard Boyd pointed out that he has been pushing the city to work on the Columbus/Boulevard intersection, but that Ella Grasso Boulevard is a state road, so changes there are more complex, everything subject to state DOT approval, and less in direct immediate control of the city.

Bridges reminded the group that he is the city economic development officer in charge of keeping tabs on and helping to revitalize no fewer than 17 of the city’s commercial areas. 

It wasn’t as if he was suggesting, in effect, if you’re all ungrateful then I can go deploy my efforts elsewhere. Just saying.

Hill Alder Kampton Singh tried to draw the group back to the purpose of the changes Bridges was proposing: ​“The city wants to economically develop the area.”

Bridges said that a design team will be in evidence this summer around the streets of the square, certainly by August, to make further assessments and surveys and when they have designs more concrete to show, they will indeed do that and before this body, the management teams, in a public meeting.

There was some palpable anxiety that the design team will be out in the community precisely during July and August when the management teams take a break from their meetings.

“We want input before it’s set in stone,” Hatley book-ended the lively discussion. 

She averred that she and other Hill residents, for example, had not been sufficiently consulted on the major planned $12.1 million re-design of Long Wharf Park, which, using the phrase of the evening, she said is already set in stone. ​“We live here. Our needs need to be listened to.”

“This is just the beginning,” Bridges tried to reassure his listeners. With the little park or public realm and the traffic calming measures that are part of it, they will, together, ​“drive more investment,” he added, in Kimberly Square.

Hill South Chair Sarah McIver, who had been listening patiently, echoed Hatley, and offered the final word of the body: ​“We need a public meeting before it’s set in stone.”

“There are assessments and surveys [to be done], for several months, then the design work until they have something to show. It won’t be final before the next meeting [with you],” said Bridges.

With that settled, at least for now, the group heard a range of announcements — including the availability courtesy of the NHPD of free locks for any city residents owning the lately frequently stolen Kias and Hondas, as well as a new Neighborhood Equity Opportunity Challenge (NEOC) set of grants worth between $5,000 and $100,0000 – and then neighbors adjourned for a tasty supper, and summer vacation.