Thomas Breen photo
Squint and you can almost see the green.
One idea for a future Gibbs Street Park, which received support from neighborhood kids.
A new public park may someday take shape where Gibbs Street meets the Farmington Canal Trail — perhaps with a playground, exercise equipment, and a park for neighborhood dogs.
The Board of Alders will vote next month on whether to authorize the city to apply for and, if awarded, accept a state grant facilitating the remediation of the 1.08-acre parcel at 0 Gibbs St., where such a park is envisioned.
At the moment, the city-owned site at 0 Gibbs St. is a triangular parking lot adjacent to the Farmington Canal Trail.
According to a letter from Steve Winter, who directs the city’s Office of Climate and Sustainability, the city intends to convert that area into a public park that seamlessly connects to the Farmington Canal Trail beside it, similar to the Canal-adjacent Scantlebury Park.
The parcel was previously home to a cement mixing plant and an underground gasoline storage tank. “There hasn’t been meaningful use of the site since the 1960s,” Winter said at a City Services and Environmental Policy Committee meeting earlier in February. While initial environmental studies indicate that there is contaminated soil that needs to be removed, he said, more investigation is needed in order to understand the scope (and cost) of the remediation required.
“I think the number one thing I’ve always heard from my neighbors is that we need to have more spaces and more activities for our young people,” Winter said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “That’s really the vision for this park: to have a safe and inviting place where kids and families can go relax and play.”
He noted that the area is adjacent to one of the warmest census blocks in the city, a parking lot for Yale vehicles, which greenery has the potential to mitigate with a cooling effect. And he argued that there will be even more demand for the park in the coming years, given both the growth in new housing in the area and plans to extend the Canal Trail to connect to various other bike paths in the eastern parts of the city.
The city plans to apply for a $250,000 CERCLA Brownfields Grant through the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. According to Winter, $100,000 of that grant would fund further environmental study of the site and $150,000 would fund initial stages of remediation.
The city is planning to combine the grant with a $250,000 contribution from the nearby Winchester Green development in Science Park. Winter said that more funding — and a few years — will likely be needed in order to fully transform the contaminated site into a safe park with amenities.
Winter said that he and Dixwell/Newhallville/Science Park Alder Troy Streater have spoken with neighbors about their visions for the park, including with kids and teens.
They heard feedback that the park should have plenty of open space, exercise equipment, a swing set, and a dog park, according to Winter.
When he represented the neighborhood on the Board of Alders in prior years, Winter often spoke of a dearth of public greenspaces, aside from the narrow Canal Trail, in the area.
“I think it would be really excellent to have more open space along the Canal line,” he said to the committee.
“Currently there is no park in the 21st Ward,” said Streater in a phone interview. “I think that the park would mean a lot for the community. The kids would have somewhere to go play in our neighborhood.”
Also on alders’ agenda next month is a $200,000 Brownfields Grant application for a nearby pair of former industrial buildings, also adjacent to the Canal Trail: 71 and 89 Shelton Ave., which are owned by developer Schneur Katz.
The properties have both undergone environmental remediation efforts, according to the resolution that alders passed, including the removal of asbestos, lead, and uranium from the former nuclear manufacturing facility site at 71 Shelton to “Industrial/Commercial” criteria.
According to the resolution passed by alders, “supplemental environmental assessments are required in order to determine the extent of additional remediation necessary in order that the Site may be redeveloped” — including, potentially, any further cleanup needed to enable the building to become “affordable housing.”
The two remediation sites in question: 0 Gibbs St. (the upper triangular site) and 71-89 Shelton.