Mayor Pushes New East Side Train Station

From Mayor Finch:

 The New York-Connecticut Sustainable Communities Consortium will host a town hall meeting, Thursday, January 26 at 6 p.m., at Housatonic Community College.

The meeting will include a discussion of how the partnership is working to expand job and housing opportunities, how the Regional Plan Association and the City of Bridgeport are participating in the effort, and how to obtain preferred status for federal grant applications and opportunities to participate in planning for the City’s second train station.

This meeting is the fourth in a series of town hall meetings being held throughout the consortium area; the first was held in Mineola, N.Y., in December.

The New York-Connecticut Sustainable Communities Consortium, a partnership between the federal government and 17 cities, counties and organizations in New York and Connecticut, represents an unprecedented bi-state collaboration of cities, counties and regional planning organizations. This initiative, funded with a $3.5 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant, will integrate housing, economic development, transportation and environmental planning. The goal of the consortium is to reposition the New York-Connecticut region to fully harness its innovation capabilities in a competitive global environment, build on its strong foundation of energy efficiency, and become as equitable as it is efficient. Its primary focus is to leverage the most extensive and robust transit system in the nation by developing livable communities with mixed-income housing and employment at key nodes in the MTA Metro-North Railroad and MTA Long Island Rail Road network.

Speakers at the January 26 meeting include: Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, Donald C. Eversley, Director, City of Bridgeport’s Office of Planning & Economic Development; Julie B. Fagan, Connecticut Field Office Director, U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development; Gerry Bogacz, Director, New York Metropolitan Council, and Frank Gardner, Brownfields Project Officer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“With the Sustainable Communities Consortium, we are working together across city boundaries and state lines to bring jobs and housing to our region,” said Mayor Finch. “In Bridgeport, we have focused our efforts on bringing a new train station to Bridgeport which presents a tremendous opportunity for economic growth for the East Side, East End and the City as a whole.”

“The region’s transit network is key to achieving economic development in Connecticut’s communities,” said David Kooris, vice president and Connecticut director for Regional Plan Association. “Enhanced rail service can spur job growth in Bridgeport, and help the residents of the state’s largest city access economic opportunity.”

The meeting is open and the public is encouraged to attend.

When: Doors open at 6 p.m., Thursday, January 26, 2012. Meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.

Where: Housatonic Community College, 900 Lafayette Boulevard, Beacon Hall Event Center, Room 214 (Beacon Hall is accessible via HCC’s Broad Street entrance.)

About the New York-Connecticut Sustainable Cities Initiative

Consortium members include the cities of New York, New Haven, Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Yonkers, White Plains, New Rochelle, and Mount Vernon; Nassau and Suffolk counties; the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council; South Western Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization; Greater Bridgeport/Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization; South Central Regional Council of Governments; the Long Island Regional Planning Council; and Regional Plan Association. For more information visit www.sustainablenyct.org or www.facebook.com/sustainablenyct.