‘Zoners For Ziti’ Redux–Apartment Complex Poised For Sold North End Restaurant

As a neighborhood advocate/activist, I can offer a perspective of the health of our city in terms of the health of our neighborhoods inasmuch as a city derives most of its social and political, and to a significant degree, its economic health and wherewithal from the collective health of its neighborhoods. Indeed, the economic health of a city is reflected in the health of its neighborhoods. An economically healthy city will have cohesive, low-crime neighborhoods that support collections of businesses and basic social activities that serve the daily-living needs of its residents. In these regards, Bridgeport is hard-pressed to identify more than a couple of geographically definable “neighborhoods” — out of dozens of such geographically definable areas — describable in such functional terms/conditions per the previous sentence.

Bridgeport’s neighborhoods are largely in decline or teetering on the brink of disintegration. Bridgeport’s neighborhoods are besieged from within by underservice (police, public works, et al.), overdevelopment (e.g., ridiculously dense, inappropriate, disruptive, destructive development — per dormitory-style residential development incompatible with family-living, neighborhood conditions), and besieged from without by destructive, parasitic development by (especially) our bordering suburbs. And Bridgeport’s besieged have no strong advocates at the local, state, or federal level, with our present and immediate past mayor having given the “keys to the city” to the suburbs, institutions, and developers that would seek to parasitize the social, infrastructure, and municipal benefits provided by the besieged.

A couple of cases in point, in this regard, are the North End neighborhoods bordering the SHU campus, as well as the Lake Forest neighborhood, both of which have been severely impacted by the infestation of disruptive, destructive SHU students, with the latter neighborhood also having to deal with the issues of unchecked overdevelopment on its Trumbull order in the context of the related, dysfunctional use of the city’s sewer system by Trumbull resulting in sewage discharges into Lake Forest that have recently resulted in prohibiting the recreational use of the lake by resident Lake Forest members.

So: In terms of the health of the City of Bridgeport by the basic metric of “neighborhood health,” Bridgeport is on the critical list thanks largely to the present and immediately past mayors.

Whatever wherewithal remains of the Madison Avenue neighborhood in the vicinity of the planned, inappropriate, multi-unit, residential monstrosity slated to be constructed on the corner of Madison and Westfield Avenues, they would probably best use their energy to quash that development by soliciting commitments from Bridgeport voters — citywide — to vote against the present neighborhood-sacrificing regime and replacing it with a neighborhood-friendly regime (definable as a regime that will reduce taxes for resident homeowners even as they use all means available to protect the safety and quality of life of the residents…)

It should be kept in mind, when thinking in terms of overall municipal health and neighborhood health, that all types of businesses tend to look to locate in cities with a diversity of hospitable neighborhoods, with stable labor forces, when planning moves or expansions. So, for any Bridgeport City renaissance, we must also look to a Bridgeport neighborhood renaissance…