News release from Mayor Bill Finch:
As the clawed excavator ripped though the blighted building, Ann-Marie Griffith looked to the future.
“This is just the beginning. We’re really looking forward of seeing what’s to come,” she said, looking on with her two sons and husband as heavy machinery knocked down 55 1/2 Revere St.
The demolition is viewed as the latest step in a planned revitalization of the block bounded by Revere Street and Central, Stratford and Newfield avenues.
Mayor Bill Finch said the demolition is long overdue and expressed frustration at state laws that enable owners to allow properties to fall into ruin, giving municipalities little recourse and landlords too many legal loopholes.
“The East End neighborhood is a neighborhood of families. It is a neighborhood that should not have to look at buildings like this,” said Mayor Bill Finch. “For five years the City of Bridgeport has been after the owner of this property.”
The location had been a magnet for criminals and squatters.
The demolition is part of a larger planned project for the block. The city owns or plans to acquire seven properties in that block. The city will partner with a developer to build a mixed-used development that includes first-floor retail and residential apartments on the upper floors. The plan is in its formative stages.
“There has to be a first step and this is it,” said Griffith, who is active in the East End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone. She remembered the block as dangerous and frightening when she first moved to Central Avenue.
“You name it, it was happening on Revere Street,” she said. “It looks 100 percent better now.”
In other words Finch wants to gentrify the East End. Finch’s idea of revitalization will not involve the long-suffering residents of this neighborhood.
This is the nicest thing I’ve ever heard you say about Finch.
Only in Bridgeport and only in an election year do we hear about all the “good deeds” performed by the administration. COINCIDENCE???
Has anyone seen articles that describe the larger plan for this block? I know I read about rehabbing another block in the neighborhood but not this one–the block includes the old Newfield Library and the current Newfield Library.
Live Blogging from the B:Hive in downtown Bridgeport.
www .bhivebridgeport.com
In a neighborhood gone wrong, the demolition is an improvement. The needle is moving in the right direction. Somewhere in the midst of this I sense a foreclosure or housing miscue that delayed today’s outcome. Bridgeport is inching its way toward progress and wise men are pitching Bridgeport as the new suburban frontier. Invisible value is being created in Bridgeport and doomfreaks everywhere are running scared.
In an unrelated matter, I’m taking this opportunity to re-introduce myself to the OIB blogosphere.
Local Eyes = www .twitter.com/door24
*** Just another pipe dream that will start with a promised big bang and end up in smoke like so many others! Like any artist painter who picks a subject and the paint colors, once it’s done it could be viewed as great art or just another canvas piece with colors on it headed for the trash! *** ANOTHER EMPTY CITY LOT ***
You could get Momma Entitlement to build you a big new building so the people can vandalize it and use it for a toilet … The circle goes ’round and ’round …
*** HOW ABOUT ANOTHER MUCH-NEEDED BUT NOT MAINTAINED NEIGHBORHOOD CITY PARK! ***