Allan Appel Photo
Fence and asphalt bring Wilmot Road to an end at the Hamden border.
As Hamden’s mayor prepared to tour of New Haven’s newly rebuilt West Rock projects, tenants and housing officials threatened to go to court if necessary to tear down the local version of the Berlin Wall, a decades-old fence that blocks cross-border travel.
Fifty tenants and officials came together at the auditorium of the Brennan-Rogers School Tuesday evening to sign petitions and rally local energy in expectation of a visit by Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson and his town councilmen next Monday.
The Hamden contingent plan to tour the newly rebuilt Brookside projects, now a mix of rental and owner-occupied homes with added levels of social services and security. Officials hope the tour will convince the Hamdenites that the time to take down the fence has not only arrived, but is decades overdue.
“We’re going to do everything we can [to convince them to pull that fence down] including suing them. But we hope that won’t be necessary,” said Housing Authority of New Haven [HANH] Deputy Director Jimmy Miller, who conducted Tuesday’s impassioned community meeting.
With the fence removed, Wilmot Road will be able to be connected to Woodin Street in Hamden. Then two newly created in streets in Brookside, Jennings Way and Augustine, would also connect to Woodin. With bus service added, the troubling isolation of the area would end, according to the plan.
If Hamden changes its mind and takes down the fence. Mayor Jackson was noncommital in a recent Independent interview, saying he’d like to see it happen, but not sure when.
Ribbicoff Cottages tenant April Pearson.
The fenceless future vision was music to April Pearson’s ears. A van for disabled people like her costs $2.60 each way and goes to the Whalley Avenue Stop and Shop downtown via a long circuitous route. With the roads open to Hamden, Pearson said, she could go to the nearby plazas in Hamden “The plazas have lots of stores [too, not just a grocery]. If you have to go to the doctor or foot doctor, you can plan your schedule. I could get a few things accomplished at once. Let the bus go through,” she said.
Miller said self-interest should also motivate Hamden to take down the fence. In two years, when all the phases of Brookside are complete, 1,000 homes will have been built, housing 3,000 people. “Our residents have the same desires. We spend money at all the big boxes. It’s an economic boon,” he said.
Click here for a June story on Mayor DeStefano’s call for the fence to come down, and Jackson’s response, on the occasion of the inauguration of the first rental and home ownership dwellings at Brookside Estates and Belden Brook, the newly named and reconfigured developments.
Tenant Clifton McClain (with Dorothy Harris) compared the fence to the wall divding East and West Germany.
Those ongoing rentals and home purchases are the first phase of a $200-million 1,000 unit community of new rentals, homes, and stores replacing the old crime-plagued Rockview and Brookside developments. Children robbing homes across into Hamden during the 1980s and 1990s triggered the controversial fence’s construction, noted Dorothy Harris, a social worker who has lived in the area for 49 years.
But all that has changed, with the new developments having far more older people and far more security, Harris said.
She also disagreed with Miller’s approach of suasion first and legal steps later if necessary: “They should go to court. It’s been there too long.”
Miller agreed and disagreed. “Someone long ago should have taken a civil rights action. [The fence] is there and it’s been reinforced. They did it unilaterally. They got no permission.” Miller said that HANH has been in touch with lawyers at the Yale law clinic, just in case. However, the legal route would take a long time. Miller wants the roads open as soon as possible, because people are renting, buying, and moving in.
New Haven state Sen. Toni Harp called the wall an outrage and a “public health and environmental hazard” because it limits quick access for emergency vehicles. “If there’s flooding [without the roads being opened], we’ll have another Katrina here,” she said.
” I think my record has been supportive for that [taking down the fence]. The question is how we get from A to B,” Mayor Jackson said in a recent interview. “Those fences are there for a reason.”
He added that although he personally has been to the redeveloped Brookside “many, many times,” the city of New Haven has to do a better job communicating the improvements to Hamden’s residents. “There needs to be an open house, an open invitation for residents to come see the construction, because they’ve seen a lot of bad stuff in that area,” he said.
That open house, starting with Hamden officials, will be Monday night next week. Miller said he hopes residents will present Mayor Jackson and his council petitions with at least 250 signatures.