Homegrown developer Anthony Stewart has endured frustrating starts and stops building a linchpin for the East End, the Honey Locust Square project along Stratford Avenue featuring a grocery store, pharmacy, healthcare facility, restaurant and M&T Bank branch.
Delayed by Covid and cost complications in its aftermath, Stewart required local and state government subsidies to keep the project alive. The final state piece, $3.5 million, is finally in place to complete the development in a neighborhood without a grocery store and bank branch.
Stewart, owner of Ashlar Construction, joined Mayor Joe Ganim, see video above, to sign the paperwork to release the funds to finalize the build out and fit up with an anticipated summer opening.
Stewart also served as the builder for the adjacent East End public library.
A milestone for sure, congratulations Mr. Stewart!
A neighborhood without a bank branch or grocery store? Are you talking about Black Rock? At the moment, yes as well as East End. Even when “plans for development” are discussed, with timetables established, they end up as wish lists, not guarantees.
Congratulations to Anthony Stewart with whom I walked streets in the East End before COVID to have had the desire to plan a major change within the East End, and then the guts and patience to find the additional dollars, people, and approvals necessary to creep progress along. I look for the opening of the properties which will suspend the “desert status” of this neighborhood and mark objective progress, and perhaps some profit for the City and businesses. This is certainly a case of: time will tell.
I want to Congratulate my brother who grew up in the Eastend Mr. Stewart with me. His father was a little league coach at Buckley field in the Eastend. His mother did hair at Ella’s on newfield Avenue. Remember as a kid we didn’t have to leave our community. I want to thank our NRZ and City and state for their help.
Certainly, being a key player in providing relief from “food-desert” status and the establishment, after long absence, of an essential banking/finance-service center, along with a pharmacy and the “normal” neighborhood amenity of a restaurant are accomplishments that Mr. Stewart should savor with great pride.
The people of the East End, along with their political representatives, should also be proud and grateful for Mr. Stewart’s vision and tenacity in regard to this essential step toward East End revitalization.
Now; with this example of potential progress toward a real Bridgeport socioeconomic renaissance to provide a bit momentum, wouldn’t it seem to be a propitious time for Bridgeport’s local leadership and state and federal delegations to approach the Biden Administration about tapping into the billion$(!) that is trumpeting that it intends to distribute throughout the US for the reestablishment of US manufacturing/technological primacy?! WHY SHOULDN’T BRIDGEPORT BE A LEADER IN THE NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, AS IT WAS IN THE LAST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION THAT MADE THE US THE LARGEST AND MOST POWERFUL ECONOMY/POLITICAL POWER IN THE WORLD?!
Only a total lack of vision and neglect of stewardship responsibilities prevent the necessary planning and political effort to put Bridgeport back on top again — as a major, municipal political and economic player… (Only a total lack of vision and, perhaps, the support of other nefarious plans to kneecap Bridgeport for the sake of the advancement of the interests of “rival” Connecticut cities — such as Stamford and Hartford, with the latter having received $billions toward their revitalizations, even as Bridgeport begged, languished, and descended closer toward the point of “no-return.”)
Let’s see what happens next in Bridgeport. Will Mayor Ganim, our state delegation, Governor Lamont, Congressman Himes, and Senators Blumenthal and Murphy do anything really meaningful for our city as the federal government holds out BILLION$ in incentives for the furtherance of US manufacturing/technological primacy that could spell C-O-M-E-B-A-C-K for languishing, deteriorating, one-time industrial, jobs-rich, prosperous cities, such as Bridgeport?! If Bridgeport fails to cash-in on America’s manufacturing/technological “great-leap-forward” initiative, we’ll have only Mayor Joe Ganim, Governor Ned Lamont, Congressman Jim Himes, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senator Chris Murphy to blame. (It would seem that President Biden would only be too happy to send some of his initiative’s $billions to Bridgeport if he was approached with a sensile plan and earnest request for such…)
I would bet that Mr. Steward would be only too happy to be involved in the challenge of the planning and building of a few factories, associated with several thousand permanent jobs for Bridgeport, if there were RFP’s and $ for such on the table…
Did this recently-ended, seemingly forever mayoral election cycle give any of the relevant political players any pause for thought — about Bridgeport’s future?! We’ll see… (Or as, JML would say, time will tell…)