Policy wonk Jeff Kohut, 2011 petitioning candidate for mayor, shares an environmental storm warning for the Seaview Avenue Corridor Plan. From Kohut:
All of the citizens of Bridgeport (and neighborhoods adjacent to Bridgeport in Trumbull and Stratford) should be aware of the dire environmental and public-safety threat taking form in Hartford and Bridgeport City Hall as we speak. This threat could very well be the environmental coup de grace for much of Bridgeport, Stratford, and Trumbull.
The threat has an official name and designation–The Seaview Avenue Corridor Plan–and also has a huge price tag of perhaps $500 million dollars when all is said and done.
The Seaview Avenue Corridor Project is part of the state’s grand regional plan “One Coast, One Future,” which will establish Bridgeport as the region’s “housing hub” (translation: servants’ quarters for Stamford/The Gold Coast/Fairfield County suburbs). In this regard, we have been targeted by Hartford for “transit-oriented development” whereby housing needed for the workforce required to maintain and expand the tax based/lifestyle of Stamford, et al., will be constructed around new and existing transportation facilities in Bridgeport (e.g., the planned train station and complementary low-income housing on the East Side (Seaview Avenue, Remington Arms site).
This is where the Seaview Avenue Corridor Project (in the works for almost as long as Steel Point) comes into play: This highway connector, purportedly being constructed solely to allow development of Remington Woods, will in reality take the form of the Route 25-8 Connector and will ultimately link I-95 and Routes 8 and 25 to that highway. It will be constructed along the present route of Bridgeport’s Seaview Avenue, following that route as a four-lane highway, punching through the GE property on Boston Avenue, past the new Harding High School, and on through the Remington Woods and Broaddbridge Avenue neighborhood of Stratford and Beardsley Park (Trumbull border) to the 25-8 Connector.
This new highway will then be able to accommodate feeder-barge freight from Bridgeport Harbor, which will be picked up by tractor trailers at the planned Bridgeport feeder-barge port adjacent to Steel Point. This will allow truck traffic to be diverted off of I-95 between Bridgeport and Stamford and will additionally provide access for Stamford-bound commuters from the new Bridgeport train station on the Seaview Avenue Corridor. Thus, this new Route-25-8 Connector, together with the new Bridgeport train station, and all of the new housing initiatives in Bridgeport, are part of a plan to optimize workforce availability to grow the Stamford/Gold Coast economy.
Thus, the exploitation and decline of Bridgeport will continue as Bridgeport continues to provide the housing and related municipal/social services to maintain the Stamford/Gold Coast workforce, while Stamford/The Gold coast continue get a free ride on Bridgeport’s back. (The full extent of this plan has not been presented to the general public. A city-state public hearing concerning this development must be conducted.)
And there will be other dire consequences for Bridgeport as a result of this accommodation of the Gold Coast/Suburban economy: The 435-acre forest, known as Remington Woods (currently referred to as the Lake Success Business Park), will be destroyed by the Seaview Avenue corridor and related, non-taxable, low job-yield development, resulting in a worsening of our already dangerous air pollution, and huge volumes of traffic will traverse the East Side, Upper East Side, and North End neighborhoods as car and tractor-trailer traffic are fed on to and off of the new highway connector.
The past six decades in Bridgeport mark a period in our history that is definable in terms of the abandonment of the environmental and economic stewardship that gave rise to the storied, prosperous Bridgeport that was once a Northeast vacation destination because of its combination of urban amenities and rural/seashore beauty.
The destructive greed that decimated our parkland/open space and economy during the past six decades (especially the Route 25-8 Connector) must not be allowed to continue. Bridgeporters, with enlightened help from the state and federal government, must fight to protect our remaining open space while we regenerate a viable economy/tax base.
Even with our greenest of mayors and his greenest of initiatives, our environment and economy just don’t seem to be able to get any greener.
The third-world, slash-and-burn treatment of Bridgeport by the region and the state must stop. The story of Bridgeport must change dramatically.
Just say “NO!” to the Seaview Avenue Corridor Project and the destruction of one of America’s last great urban forests–Remington Woods. (See friendsofremingtonwoods.org/)
So the vision for Bridgeport will be for it to be a city of dormitories. The boys and girls will work elsewhere. Essentially it would continue as a residential tax base. Under this vision I do not foresee any substantial change to Bridgeport’s tax base. It also places the danger of losing land to residential housing that could be used to attract businesses. The number-one thing Bridgeport needs is jobs.
Andmar,
The really terrible reality is the tax abatements are being used for residential developments, so there are no long-term jobs or industry. At the moment the easiest thing for a developer to influence is a City that wishes to appear as developer friendly. The developer in CT has no control over the necessary costs of building materials, the costs of borrowing are at historic lows, and apparently there are enough forms of revenue assistance for future likely renters and government lending assistance so the cost of land (relatively low in Bridgeport compared to other Fairfield County cities because of the issue of high taxation) is also OK and the easiest movable item in the equation is a tax deal. No one is really looking at the hard job of controlling expenses, training and evaluating City jobholders, setting up benchmarks and system indicators that will produce necessary services at a reasonable expense for taxpayers, etc. It is easier to be Mayor Finch with tax giveaways that will last for too long into the future, perhaps beyond the usability of those properties being financed today. Public discussion? None. But the Mayor is furious when the vote turns against him. Such leadership. Time will tell.
I am in total agreement with you, Andmar. Every other initiative should place far behind the growing of the tax base and the creation of jobs. Every single one.
With the obvious exception of improving the educational system, of course.
Gabrielle, there is little chance of significant improvement of Bridgeport’s education system–and the defining indicators of that improvement, in terms of the high school graduation and college attendance/graduation rates of Bridgeport’s children–until Bridgeport parents have local living-wage jobs and the normal work hours associated with such jobs.
Brand-new, state-financed schools and other capital improvements to the school system are just window-dressing, as Bridgeport’s school performance indicators would bear out.
For a viable, effective public education system, Bridgeport needs the major, basic-level social changes that only full employment, at local, living wage jobs, for all Bridgeport parents, can facilitate (along with a robust tax base capable of effectively and reliably financing world-class education).
The children of poor, overworked (or even worse, unemployed) parents are not going attend school in an education-ready state.
So if education is the number one municipal priority, local job-based economic development must be given equal status.
At the present time, there are no defensible indicators that such are the priorities of our municipal government or of its state-government mentor.
Jeff, I believe that’s what I said.
With the obvious exception of improving the educational system, of course.
Yes indeed it is, Gabrielle! I just wanted to take the opportunity to get in another two cents. 🙂
It’s “Power to the People” vs. a “Robert Moses Mindset” time. We had over 600 signatures to stop the GE demolition and we had an artist colony that was evicted from Remington for the great fires that have erupted there and the Perfume Fire on Seaview, under this administration. Bridgeport Backroom Deals. Kohut’s scenario seems unreal but for the unreal events that have occurred recently in Bridgeport. I thought the ungodly expense of the Seaview RR underpass put this plan away, no?
We actually have a railroad, the Remington Railroad, from the main tracks up to Remington Woods. That would be cool to fix that. Highway construction is backward. So is the widening of I-95.
Bob Halstead, great point about Robert Moses. Neighborhoods, jobs and school districts were “destroyed” with his plans of roads, highways connectors in New York City. PBS did a great film showing how this was done and the plan for Bridgeport is the same mindset and it must be stopped because there is nothing in the plan that talks about jobs that pay enough for Bridgeport residents to pay for these new dwellings.