A Groundbreaking Ten Years in the Making

Fair Haven Heights residents waited a decade for the city to fix up Quinnipiac Avenue. They applauded when city officials finally broke ground on a multimillion dollar street redevelopment project.

While community activists were concerned that historic district-approved fencing would be left out of the plan, a city official pledged to replace the chain-link fencing that lines the street.

A handful of residents gathered Wednesday afternoon on a field across from the Hill Central Music Academy to show their support for the groundbreaking. Mayor John DeStefano, City Engineer Dick Miller, Lou Mangini of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office, and Heights Alderman Alexander Rhodeen all spoke about the importance of the $7.3 million project.

Wednesday kicked off Phase One of the project, which will redevelop the section of Quinnipiac Avenue between Ferry and Clifton Streets, at a cost of $6 million. Phase Two will repave a small section south of Ferry Street. Empire Paving was selected to manage the construction.

DeStefano called the project ​“essential and meaningful to quality of life” issues in the neighborhood. He said that collaboration between the city and neighborhood groups has been ​“outstanding” and that this new plan will compliment the neighborhood’ s historic architecture. Alderman Rhodeen also thanked Fair Haven Heights neighbors who ​“fought so hard” to get the project off the ground.

Speckled with potholes and interrupted by sizable humps (pictured below) that force cars to swerve into the opposite lane, Quinnipiac Avenue has long frustrated neighbors whose redevelopment plans have been stifled by delays and obstacles over the years. The new Quinnipiac Avenue will feature traffic-calming measures and wider sidewalks to make it more pedestrian and biker friendly. Click here to read the details of the plan.

“These communities have waited far too long for these safety and liability improvements to this very busy thoroughfare,” Mangini read from a statement by DeLauro. Mangini thanked the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the federal ​“Stimulus Package”) for providing the funding for the plan. He credited ​“dumb luck” but also ​“preparation” at the neighborhood level for the project’s success in securing the federal money from the South Central Connecticut Regional Council of Governments.

Neighbor Ian Christmann, a leader in the community effort to redevelop the street, said that he looks forward to the mile long walking loop that will include both the Grand Avenue and Ferry Street Bridges, as well as the in-between blocks of Quinnipiac Avenue, once the project is done.

Yet there was one aspect of the project that he was nervous about: the fencing. On Tuesday Christmann sent the mayor a letter reminding him that ​“Chain link fencing is not historically appropriate, nor community-friendly, and it is not permitted in historic districts” like the Quinnipiac Avenue area.

The expansive riverfront property of the shipping company Gateway Terminal is bounded by eight-foot-high chain-link fencing on either side of Quinnipiac Avenue. According to Christmann, the ​“prison” fences ​“went up illegally.” Christmann says that the company doesn’t ​“talk to the community” but defers their requests to its lawyers.

Christmann wrote that the community was shocked and disappointed when it found out that the fencing would not be torn down, at a meeting in March.

After the groundbreaking, City Engineer Miller told Christmann that the city will address the fencing problem. He said that he would arrange a sit-down with Gateway. Fencing on other private property will have to be dealt with as well.