A New Day Celebrated At Goffe St. Park

Napoleon Jenkins jumped from the gleaming bars of the jungle gym, his feet landing on the spongy surface of the Goffe Street Park playground with a soft thud.

“It’s pretty good,” said the 8‑year-old, grinning, testing out the new surface, one of a host of improvements at the park.

The occasion Sunday was billed as a ribbon-cutting for the park’s new splash pad. With gusts blowing down painted scarecrows and scattering leaves in the air, it was, it turned out, ​“more of a harvest festival,” as neighborhood Alder Jill Marks put it, marking a range of new amenities in the park.

“This is to celebrate the completion, the bounty, of a four-year effort to make our park a place of pride in this community, a safe place of family cookouts and birthday parties and fun and enjoyment for our kids and families,” she said, as volunteers handed out free apples and pumpkins.

“The playground has new tarp and paint,” she told a crowd of roughly 125 that included neighbors, elected officials, vendors and service providers, as well as a veritable army of people clad in tan T‑shirts bearing the acronym FOGSP, for the park advocacy and stewardship group Friends of Goffe Street Park.

“There are four new picnic tables and grills for families to have cookouts. There’s the new splash pad. There’s the new grass coming up, and the two trees the city is planting to give kids shade. And that’s all thanks to all of you,” Marks said. Playground equipment was repaired as well.

Marks called Pastor Donald Morris ​“an advocate for restoration,” leading an effort for park amenities, playground equipment, and the construction of an outdoor amphitheater with a stage and pavilion, after a period of decline.

Marks said a meeting with Mary Brown early in her tenure inspired her to continue his work.

“She lives directly across the street. She’s been here for over 60 years. There were little kids sitting on the ground eating lunch, and Mary Brown said, ​‘We’ve got to do something about this. We’ve got to do better,’” Marks said.

By June 2017, the newly formed FOGSP was clearing sidewalks of leaves, sweeping debris from the basketball court, and picking up litter. There were neighborhood festivals, Christmas tree lightings, holiday coat drives. There was the clang of iron from spirited games in the horseshoe pit, kids perfecting their jump shot on the basketball courts and spiraling a football on the playing fields.

Then came a $217,595 grant from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to fund outdoor upgrades. Work would start soon.

And then came the pandemic.

“Covid brought a lot of uncertainty about how to go forward with construction in a safe way,” said city Chief Landscape Architect Katherine Jacobs. ​“We’ve had national labor shortages and global supply chain issues that made it hard for us to advance construction on the schedule we wanted to bring to the community.”

Mayor Justin Elicker pronounced the park a triumph of collaboration and persistence.

“Things are always a little more complicated than any of us would like them to be, and they take a little longer, but it takes organization, it takes community members working together,” he said. (He was obliquely referring to a last-minute protest by some users of the park over some of the plans. Click here to read about that.)

“The work that this team has done to advocate for the neighborhood, for the park, to take ownership over the challenges, and that’s everything from trash cleanup to making sure neighbors are heard on what they want in their park, that’s all helping this city move in the right direction,” Elicker said.

He praised city landscape architect Jacobs as an ​“unsung hero,” likening her efforts to the quietly outsize impact of her predecessor Dave Moser, as well as outgoing Alder Marks.

“She may be retiring, but she ain’t going nowhere,” he said.

New Haven State Rep. Toni Walker sounded a similar refrain.

“We need to have family activities, places for families to enjoy each other, have picnics, come out, talk to each other and get to know their neighbors, and just have fellowship. That’s what community is, so thank you, Jill Marks, for recognizing that,” she said.

Soon the crowd was migrating to the splash pad for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“Long story short, this lady started with me, and never stopped, so we are grateful for her,” Marks said of Mary Brown, who stood beside her.

“My kids used to play in the park til 11 pm or midnight,” Brown said, the aroma of roasting chicken from Eat Up Catering wafting through the air. ​“Now we have that back. Now children can come and have a safe place and they don’t have to sit on the ground anymore, and mothers can bring their kids and not have to go to another park and not have to worry about their kids being safe.”

Shahma Talton was helping paint a festive Goffe Street Park banner by a chain-link fence bordering Country Street.

“This park used to be dirty, people smoking and drinking here,” he recalled, as strains of Millie Grenough and the Peace Singers filled the cool autumn afternoon. ​“Now it feels family-oriented, community-oriented. It feels welcoming.”

Back over at the playground, Napoleon Jenkins was looking longingly at the splash pad.

“I can’t wait til summer,” he said. ​“But I’m still going to play here whenever I can.”