Pamela Kelley photo
A proposed new welcome sign for the Hill North neighborhood.
The new leaders of the Hill North management team is proud of their neighborhood. And with a rush of new development in the neighborhood in the works, they want visitors and residents alike to know exactly when and where they are stepping foot in the Hill.
That was the motivation behind the management team leadership’s pitch to the Parks Commission on Wednesday night to get permission to erect two new “Welcome to the Hill North” signs at various city-owned entry points to the neighborhood: at Defender’s Park at the intersection of Congress Avenue, Columbus Avenue, and Davenport Avenue, and at Sherman Triangle at the corner of Legion Avenue and Winthrop Avenue.
The commissioners, during their regular monthly meeting at the city Parks Department’s headquarters at 720 Edgewood Ave., voted to table the proposal until next month, because the item was presented as new business and had not been properly noticed as a voting item on the agenda 24 hours before the meeting took place.
“Now that we’re in a development stage in the Hill section,” said Howard Boyd, who was elected chair of the team in June, “what we’re doing now is trying to beautify our community.”
Hill North management team chair Howard Boyd.
He said that Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Yale School of Medicine continue to bring workers and visitors to the neighborhood every day. More people will be coming through in the near future thanks to new and planned developments at the old Church Street South and the old Route 34 mini-highway, and Randy Salvatore’s Hill to Downtown projects.
To welcome those coming to the neighborhood, Boyd and management team assistant chair Pamela Kelley said they want to erect two signs that read “Welcome to The Hill North of New Haven” with Mayor Toni Harp’s name underneath.
Each sign would be 36 inches by 48 inches, single-faced with blue vinyl lettering against a quarter-inch white aluminum composite panel background. Each would be mounted on two four-by-four-foot posts with white vinyl post covers and finishing.
Hill North assistant chair Pamela Kelley.
Boyd and Kelley said they would like to erect the two signs on two city-owns parcels of park land: at Defender’s Park, near the West Haven border at the intersection of Columbus, Davenport, and Congress; and at Sherman Park, at the southwestern corner of the intersection of Winthrop and Legion.
“I was born in the Hill,” Kelley said. “I was raised in the Hill. I went to school in the Hill. I serve God in the Hill. The Hill is our place.”
She and Boyd said that they will pay for the signs out of funds left over from last fiscal year’s management team budget.
The commissioners voted to table the item until next month, when they will vote on whether or not to give the team official permission to use the city-owned park land for the purposes of erecting the signs. At least one commissioner signaled her tentative support for the project before Boyd, Kelley, and management team secretary Maxine Harris left the meeting.
“The other sections of the city have signs,” said parks commissioner Georgia Miller. “I don’t see why the Hill shouldn’t have their own sign.”
I was under the impression that "Hill North" and "Hill South" were designations created in the mid-1990s along with the Community Policing Substations and Districts. I thought the "Upper Hill" was the name for the community west of Howard Avenue between Legion Avenue and Washington Avenue?