When Erik Johnson Heard That Factory Whistle Blow

Erik Johnson looked at the barbed wire. He heard the lonesome factory whistle blow. He thought: This doesn’t make sense.

And he thought: When I grow up, I’m going to make decisions about how neighborhoods work and how people live there.

Johnson did grow up to make decisions about how neighborhoods develop and operate. His latest stint in a decades-long career has brought him to serve as economic development director of the Town of Hamden.

He told the story about the barbed wire during an appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” program.

Johnson grew up in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood. Before he was born, tens of thousands of people worked at the neighborhood’s main employer, the Winchester Arms plant. By the early 1980s, that plant had closed. (A smaller version reopened for awhile, but then closed again.)

A main neighborhood thoroughfare, Winchester Avenue, runs through the Winchester complex. After the plant closed, the street was closed off at either end of the complex, choking an artery on which neighbors depended for travel. Barbed wire protected the blocks from people entering.

Even though the plant had long ceased 24-hour operation, the whistle still blew three times a day to mark the beginning of phantom shifts.

“I didn’t understand why the place was vacant,” Johnson recalled. ​“I didn’t understand why there was barbed wire. I didn’t understand why the whistle blew.”

It felt, he recalled, like living in a ​“military zone.” He resolved to be in on decisions like these when he grew older.

The city eventually reopened the street partly at the urging of a neighborhood alder. And a new high-tech development called Science Park reoccupied the old factory buildings and new ones that replaced them.

Johnson, meanwhile, went on to study at Trinity College. A summer internship with New Haven consultant Jim Farnam opened his eyes to the possibilities of a career in government planning and development. Johnson headed next to grad school at Morgan State University, and began a career that took him to development and neighborhood planning jobs in New Haven, Hartford, and California. As head of New Haven’s Livable City Initiative, Johnson helped rescue a failing housing cooperative on Edgewood Avenue and, with then-city development chief Kelly Murphy, launch a revival of a largely undeveloped district destroyed by urban renewal, restitching downtown, the train station area, and the Hill into a new multi-use neighborhood.

In his new post in Hamden, Johnson is looking to help local businesses launch or grow through a $600,000 Neighborhood Improvement Program focused on facade improvements and demolition of blighted properties.

He spoke also of how communities like Hamden should seek to seize the ​“infrastructure” moment, with money flowing from Washington for structural improvements like transportation upgrades, fiber-optic internet systems, and new sewer systems like the one northern Hamden needs. The money is flowing through the newly passed infrastructure law that Congress passed.

Johnson argued that communities need to think more regionally to compete for those dollars: For instance, it would make sense for New Haven and Hamden to team up on seeking money to upgrade Dixwell Avenue.

Police Chief John Sullivan appeared with Johnson on the ​“Dateline Hamden” episode, also charting his road to public service. The two ascended to their current positions over the past year, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He decided as Hamden High student that he wanted to pursue a policing career, he said. He saw it as a way ​“to help people.”

He pursued a double major in criminal justice and political science at University of Connecticut, then returned home to work for the Hamden PD. He has been with the force ever since, for 25 years.

Over that time Sullivan has worked in pretty much all aspects of the department. He returned to Hamden High — as the first ​“school resource officer,” a position now at the center of debates over student safety. He worked in patrol, in narcotics, as night-shift supervisor. 

The assignment that may have best prepared him for his current job, Sullivan said, was in the ethics and integrity unit — aka, internal affairs. The job where you sometimes have to get your friends in trouble if they mess up. ​“You deal with a lot of personnel issues” as chief, he said.

Over the past year he has been working on a community policing effort based on a model developed by Camden, N.J., and bringing cops together with developmentally disabled youth, among other initiatives. ​“We want to engage with the community” to find ways other than arrests to solve problems, he said.

Click on the play arrow to hear the watch the full episode of WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline Hamden” with development chief Erik Johnson and Police Chief John Sullivan.