Transportation assets fuel Park City's long-awaited revival
Business New Haven
07/10/2006 by Sharon L. Cohen
Sooner or later, it was going to happen. Now it is. Bridgeport is moving forward with renovations and new construction on of one of its strongest assets - becoming a regional transportation hub.
The Park City has ample infrastructure assets. Running right through the center of the city are I-95; the Route 8/25 connector to the Merritt Parkway; the bus depot with Peter Pan and Greyhound lines and Greater Bridgeport Transit Authority; the Metro North and Amtrak train station; and the seaport. What about air? Planes take off only ten minutes away at Sikorsky Airport, just over the Stratford town line.
Seven years ago the city initiated the Bridgeport Intermodal Transportation Center (ITC) project to physically and functionally integrate several existing and proposed modes of transportation in the nucleus of Bridgeport's central business district. The combination of intra- and inter-city bus, commuter rail, ferry, taxi, limousine, airport shuttle, automobile and pedestrian transportation modes is expected to be a significant magnet to the city's downtown and waterfront areas.
In order to design and develop the ITC project, Bridgeport has been working with state and federal officials and state Department of Transportation (DOT) representatives to secure necessary funding. Federal funding for the ITC provides for 80 percent of the overall cost while the state pitches in a 20-percent match.
Explains Nancy Hadley, director of Bridgeport's Office of Planning & Economic Development, "Bridgeport is emerging into a transit-oriented urban center with a dynamic downtown residential neighborhood that extends from the 'teardrop' down Main and Broad streets to Seaside Park."
The Bridgeport Interstate Reconstruction Program, which is about 95-percent complete, includes modification of the I-95 roadway cross-section and realignment of I-95. The project stretches from approximately 1,300 feet west of the Fairfield/Bridgeport town line to the vicinity of the Bridgeport/Stratford border near Exit 29. The total distance is about eight miles of travel way, or the total linear footage of 140 football fields.
This April the city broke ground with federal and state officials on a new $23 million bus terminal on the corner of Stratford Avenue and Water Street to replace the smaller, obsolete facility across from the train station. Seventeen bus bays will be built as well as a 10,000- square-foot terminal for passengers, which will physically link to the railroad platforms.
At the groundbreaking, Mayor John M. Fabrizi said that the new development was "designed in a way that allows residents and developers to take advantage of the bus, rail, water and highway connections that the city has to offer. There is no question this investment will improve the economic vitality of not only Bridgeport but also lower Fairfield County."
Newly constructed covered walkways will link the new bus terminal with the train and the transit garage immediately adjacent to the Arena and Ballpark at Harbor Yard. The transit garage, which now houses 750 cars, will have two additional parking decks added by mid-2007 to double its capacity for monthly and daily spaces. The train station, which suffers from wear-and-tear problems similar to those of the bus depot, will likewise get a facelift with an expanded lobby/waiting area and more passenger platforms.
Throughout most of the 20th century until the mid-1980s, downtown Bridgeport area bustled with residents and commercial activity radiating from busy factories and a core of downtown banks. But the end of the '80s saw the doors closing on Mechanics & Farmers Savings Bank, BankMart (City Savings Bank) and Citytrust, and much of the commercial life of the city center died with them.
But not all of it. In the Main Street area closest to the bus and train station, surviving companies such as People's Bank and non-profits such as the Barnum Museum and, more recently, the new Playhouse on the Green theater, a renovated Housatonic Community College and redeveloped Seaside Park, continue to draw visitors and commuters to the center city. In addition, Bridgeport recently opened a national Artspace Project, Sterling Market Lofts, in the former Reed Department Store building with 61 one-, two- and three-bedroom residential units for artists.
Anyone with an appreciation of architectural design would be charmed not only by the facades of the downtown bank buildings, but by the elaborate interiors that include a Tiffany stained-glass window and Art Deco lighting and design. Now these buildings are coming back to life as well.
Progress is continuing on renovations to the former Citytrust building on Main Street. The reborn structure will house 30,000 square feet of retail space and 118 one- and two-bedroom apartments priced from $800 to $1,200 a month - the higher-priced units located on the top floor with a panoramic view of Long Island Sound.
Long-range development plans call for 1,000 new downtown residential units. Some of these additional apartments will be located in the Golden Hill Street building that also is presently being refurbished. When finished it will encompass 22,000 square feet of street-level retail space housing a half-dozen stores, as well as 12,000 square feet of office space and 35 residential units.
It is expected that the new residential units, like the townhouses and condominiums in the Warnaco and Village at Black Rock developments (see accompanying story), will attract young couples and singles, in addition to older twosomes who are downsizing from their larger homes now that their children have left the nest.
Just a couple weeks ago, Nancy Hadley of the city's Office of Planning & Economic Development announced that Westport Capital Partners had won the bid for the right to develop 60 Main Street, where Remington once produced shavers. Depending on the final accepted design, the building could be converted to condominiums, apartments and/or businesses.
The site commands fine views of Seaside Park and Long Island Sound and has easy access to I-95 and the railway station. The site is also being considered for a proposed high-speed ferry terminal that is part of a feasibility study for service between Bridgeport, Stamford and New York. Bridgeport Harbor is one of three deep-water harbors in Connecticut and is the deepest harbor monitored by Save the Sound. The harbor has three tributaries: the Pequonock River, Yellow Mill Channel and Johnson's Creek/Lewis Gut.
For all the years that people went in and out of the downtown arcade on Main Street to patronize the newsstand, post office or retail stores or for a bite to eat at McDonald's, who would have thought that this was a landmark? Indeed it's the third-oldest arcade in the United States. Renovation will be completed in 2007 as 23 residential apartments and 34,000 square feet of retail space on two floors are completed. One of the nation's first enclosed shopping malls, it features a spectacular glass skylight roof, and Victorian gingerbread details in wrought iron and along its balcony.
The historic Bijou Square is another property being reborn with a new restaurant, café, movie house and upstairs ballroom. The theater is the oldest in the country constructed as a movie house. The original owner intended it as an opera house and then changed his mind partway through construction when he recognized the growing popularity of "moving pictures." He quickly altered his plans, and the building's second and third floors that would have housed the upper galleries of the opera house became a ballroom with an overlooking balcony. The movie theater opened in 1910, and operated under a succession of owners and names over the next seven decades.
Development of Bridgeport's distinctive harbor area, Steel Point, has been in and out of the news for years. With hopes for redevelopment, however, have come a series of disappointments dating back to the early 1980s when a retail center called Harbor Pointe failed to get off the ground and then, in the early '90s, when an attempt to build a casino there died in the General Assembly. Other suggestions have included an early American village with restaurants, retail shops, a fishing pier, a waterside esplanade, hotel and conference center, a maritime museum and amphitheater, and fitness and wellness center.
Plans for a $1 billion Steel Point project beginning this fall and continuing in phases until 2012 list a retail center, restaurant, entertainment facilities, residential low-, mid- and high-rise structures, offices, hotel/conference center, marina and yacht club and a continuous public esplanade along the waterfront. The city also hopes to establish a light rail system featuring "streetcars" connecting Steel Point with downtown and Seaside Park.
Last month, the ongoing struggle over the future of the area owned by the United Illuminating Co. concluded (apparently) with a $14.9 million agreement between the city and UI that was submitted to the state's Department of Public Utility Control and is expected to be approved. The city needs to acquire two more parcels of land on the peninsula, but New York-based Midtown Equities, LLC and RCI Marine, the chosen developers for Steel Point, estimate that construction of the complex could begin before year's end. (The original developer with RCI Marine, LNR Property Corp. of Florida, pulled out in 2002.)
New schools are also on the drawing board for the Park City. These will include five pre-K-to-8 schools on eight-acre sites over the next four years, as well as extensive renovations to the high schools and a several elementary schools.