News release:
The city is seeking public feedback on its Comprehensive Waterfront Plan at a neighborhood meeting Thursday Aug. 11, 6 pm-7:30 pm. The meeting will take place at the East Side’s Luis Muñoz Marin School, 479 Helen St., in the cafeteria.
The City of Bridgeport and the project team are holding neighborhood-specific public meetings to present draft ideas for revitalizing the waterfront and to get further feedback from residents. At the Thursday meeting, East Side residents in particular are invited to give their input on this plan and how to make them happen.
Activities for kids and pizza will be provided, so families are welcome! Spanish translation will also be available.
For more information about the Waterfront Plan, including slides from previous meetings, please visit www.courbanize.com/waterfrontBPT. You can also share input and ideas on that site.
Or contact Dean Mack, City of Bridgeport Office of Planning and Economic Development, at (203) 576-7086 or Dean.Mack@Bridgeportct.gov
How about getting a developer with a plan and present it to the community that is affected by it? Activities for kids, pizza; are you kidding??? No offense, get busy finding developers and stop wasting people’s time. Being held at Luis Marin? They are near the waterfront? How about the North End and Black Rock where Waterfront Development may actually alleviate the taxes. This fluff is bullshit and an embarrassment. Seems to me there was a similar meeting a few weeks ago. WTF=WHAT THE FUCK. Just sharing how I really feel and sharing with the community my feelings. Find a developer other than those put in place by the previous administration. Who is Dean Mack anyway? Is he a new appointment under Gill?
Steve, meetings are taking place throughout the city. This is one of several in neighborhoods to receive residential input. What’s wrong with that? Many parents in the city are unable to attend meetings unless accompanied by their children.
Len, Pleeeze! There have been many situations that have occurred the last eight months that warranted your most coveted input. I mean no disrespect to the citizens living in the Luis Marin area, but may I ask if these residents were gathered to attend meetings that involved other concerns, for instance quality of life? LUV!!!
Steve, until my illness struck I attended these meetings. The public participation process has followed a published game plan that integrates with stages in the planning process. It’s a well-designed process, (To be sure, it had one hiccup: not enough reachout to state legislators. That’s been noted and, I hope, addressed.)
The meetings have been spread around the neighborhoods involved. Luis Marin School is located between two bodies of water included in the study: the Peqonnock River and Yellow Mill Channel. Considerable thought is going into plans for this region. It’s been presented in earlier meetings.
I’ve learned through these briefings that Bridgeport has 24 miles of salt-water shoreline when you add in Ash Creek, Black Rock Harbor, Cedar Creek, Bridgeport Harbor, Peqonnock River, Yellow Mill Channel, Johnson Creek, Lewis Gut, and the actual Long Island Sound shoreline, Seaside Park, Pleasure Beach, etc. We have more miles of shoreline than any other Connecticut city or town. Not only are we the most populous city, we are the city with the longest relationship with the Sound and its tributaries. Improving that relationship is the goal of the study. Lord knows we need it.
I recommend you attend the meeting. You’ll discover a highly professional consulting team at work and some interesting visions for all that waterfront. It’s a serious public involvement process.
Now you’re talking, Steve!
I will answer both Lennie and Doug.
First, Doug. Development in this city has been my passion for as long as I can remember. There is not one corner of this city including the waterfront I am not aware of. I have seen and heard of more plans that never made it off the drawing board than currently in the pipeline. I have been supportive of nearly every plan that generated housing and entertainment as well as the waterfront and Steelpointe. I have patronized nearly every single venue available in the city because I hope they all succeed and most times do not. I am no longer interested in listening to neighborhood inputs that will never be recognized when a developer comes forward. I can watch many programs on TV or visit countless urban areas to see what real development looks like. I have traveled to over 25 countries in good times and have always tried to share my visions with people in the know. I do know when sharing is a waste of my time. As for time, I haven’t the luxury these days to waste my time.
As for Lennie, there really isn’t anything wrong with a positive fluff event to make people feel they are part of the process. I have seen development from all sides. I’ve listened to bullshit developers for hours and I’ve seen worthwhile projects fall by the wayside. When a developer with money and a proposal comes to town and the city wants to share with the neighborhood to garner support, I will be there and I will support any project that enhances our city and improves the quality of life for its residents. I do apologize to Mr. Mack. These days I am too busy. It’s time for a new generation of cheerleaders, perhaps Dean Mack is what the city needs. What the city really needs is a strong marketing specialist who can bring potential developers to this city and entertain them and share the vision of the city. Remember the Jacob Ukeles study. What was implemented?
Doug,
I have seen far too many of these “dog & pony” shows to really believe the city gives a rat’s ass about community input.
At best it is an effort to engage a disillusioned public in a process already predetermined.
At worst it is an effort to encourage the public to support a proposal that once the onion is peeled the public will realize political friends will be the major beneficiaries.
Go ask Dean Mack from the Office of Planning and Development about O&G’s plans to move their poison pile from Seaview Ave waterfront to Howard Ave/West End/waterfront and you get NO ANSWER AND A BLANK STARE. It’s as if they don’t even what’s going on. With that huge disconnect, it’s hard to see the various meetings that have been held concerning Bridgeport’s waterfront attended by OPED as being nothing more than a PR smokescreen. The Bridgeport waterfront has huge potential and we must move away from the old industrial use (past history, never will come back) to a forward-looking use. This will take more than a couple of years. Some things will not change. The Resci plant will not go anywhere anytime soon. The Sikorsky plant at Seaside Park is rather tenuous. The Sikorsky site could be torn down and made into waterfront residential. But we have to do better than allowing O&G to keep their poison pile on Bridgeport’s waterfront.
I have heard about the Bridgeport waterfront my whole adult life. It is a bunch of bullshit, this meeting is bullshit and the waterfront will stay unchanged.
What the city ought to do is review all the tax abatements handed out over the past 50 years or so.
Did you know the Port Authority (PA) for the City of Bridgeport had a meeting this past Thursday evening at 4:00 PM in the Morton Governance Center? I was aware of it because I have been looking for financial answers to questions I have been asking about the $910,000 payoff of a PA debt from Capital funds from the Office of Planning and Economic Development in the last days of the Finch administration with no alert or approval by the City Council. The Council has shown no interest in doing any public follow-up on the matter. I prepared and distributed a memo with certain bullet points I felt important for the PA to answer as they essentially transferred waterfront property without public notice, for values that may not be soundly determined, after eight years of being co-opted by the Office of Policy Management and the City Administrator’s office and with no available fiscal record of that time period. Federal and State funds have supported PA work but laxity in the extreme by both Finch and Ganim administrations have left decision making in the hands of three people (two vacancies), two of whom have less than six months of experience on current issues and are also City employees as well. And PA has no outside counsel but uses City Attorney although it is very likely the specific interests of the City and the PA may differ in major ways at times. Take a look for yourself at:
bridgeportwatchdogs.com/index.php
If we do not understand what is going on today, can we weep and wring our crying towels down the road? Time will tell.
The City Attorney’s office is currently looking into the Port Authority-Gate as of last week.
Thanks for all these replies.–DTD
Doug, get well soon!
I hope residents attending these meetings are made aware the Port Authority ordinance (Chap 2.28) adopted in 1992 after years of studies and resident input is a major guideline for use of much of Bridgeport’s waterfront.
Here is a small portion of the ordinance’s intent:
“develop and promote port facilities with the district in order to create jobs, increase the city’s tax base and provide special revenues to the city; to work with the government of the city to maximize the usefulness of available public funding by consolidating and coordinating private efforts to assist the city’s waterfront and industrial development program.”
The intent, which was in part the reason for the ordinance, was to focus on waterborne activities for much of Bridgeport’s developable shoreline. Perhaps the ordinance should be repealed and removed from code given the direction the City is going.
The intent of the PA was to expand the city’s bonding capacity while avoiding General Obligation bonds. Go ask Ganim and Stafstrom.
It worked until the PA realized it had no revenue stream to justify the bonds as TIF.
Which Stafstrom?
The one who recused himself or the one who profits from the bonds?
Hey! They both profit from the bonds!