Green Conservancy Debuts

Call her a starry-eyed young optimist, but Caroline Tanbee Smith believes this could be the century of civic engagement — and the New Haven Green the heart of an activated civic infrastructure that will make us a less isolated, more connected, and a healthier city for all.

As one of six members of the newly minted New Haven Green Conservancy, charged with raising engagement in and dollars for that revitalized vision, Smith is poised to be at the heart of the process.

Smith is the alder for East Rock/Fair Haven’s Ward 9, and the former chair of the Downtown/Wooster Square Community Management Team.

On Monday, shortly after the conservancy’s second meeting, Smith shared her hopes and offered details on the role of this promising new group in the next chapter of the Green’s nearly four centuries of history and change.

The Independent spoke with Smith as part of an ongoing series of interviews about the Green’s past, present, and future — all sparked by city plans to reconfigure bus routes and enhance amenities on New Haven’s central public greenspace.

Here are some highlights from that exchange:

Independent: Who are the current members [of the New Haven Green Conservancy]? How appointed? Serving how long, and so forth?

Smith: Thank you … amid the tumult, when things are so stressful, it’s good to talk about the Green. The Proprietors selected the inaugural board [of the Conservancy] to serve three-year terms, renewable for up to three terms, so a nine-year max, and we meet three or four times a year. The co-chairs of the Conservancy are Kica Matos and David Newton. In addition to myself, the other members are Nick Norcott, Geri Mauhs, Will Ginsberg, Alexandra Daum, and Rebecca Bombero.

[Matos and Newton are both Proprietors of the Green; Norcott is a lawyer, judge, and Community Foundation for Greater New Haven board member; Mauhs is chair of the Friends of the Green, and active in the life of the churches on the Green; Ginsberg is the recently retired long-time president of the Community Foundation; Daum is a former state economic development commissioner and current head of Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs; Bombero is the city’s deputy chief administrative officer.]

And is the mission articulated?

The core purpose is to raise funding and to attract resources for the community’s collective vision for the Green. That’s the heart.

So not directly to shape that vision?

I personally feel privileged and excited because we’re in a moment of time when there’s so much excitement about investments in the Green. Whatever plan we align around will require resources. The idea is to be a supportive group to attract resources for the agreed-upon vision. It’s primarily a fund-raising role. We’re an instrument of the vision, not a creator.

What triggered the creation of the Conservancy now, as opposed to a year or three years ago? Why now?

It’s a combination of things. The proprietors had launched an advisory committee in the last couple of years [and a conservancy was one of the suggestions made]. That’s in combination with the ARPA [federal American Rescue Plan Act] dollars [that are now available], and many other cities across the country have started conservancies, and it was born out of this multi-layered increasing interest. We’re in a moment when the city, proprietors, and the broader community are excited for the Green to evolve, shift, address needs, and that requires resources, and the conservancy will be a partner to do that.

Has a fund-raising goal been established?

Probably too early to have a fundraising goal, but here are the questions we’re interested in: Are there some short-term investments to facilitate the broader plan? For example, could we support community engagement efforts? I’m a big believer that the more people who are involved in a process can make the result more resilient and healthier. The conservancy therefore can support, for example, listening tours or going to nearby public schools whose kids spend after-school time on the Green, stakeholder sessions to really bring the city together.

As you speak I’m hearing that at least from you personally, raising engagement in the civic process to land on a vision for the future of the Green is as important as raising money. Any other examples of how that might look, other efforts the conservancy could support to foment engagement?

The process should be open and bring as many as possible to the table. That might require resources like for adding signage, perhaps QR codes. What if they were around the Green where someone can record their story and put it on a podcast and it could be played on a New Haven radio station? And maybe history walks. I am a believer in process being just as important as the outcome.

A second potential priority for short-term investment would be for activation of the Green. The proprietors in recent years have hired Angel Dahfay as the manager of public programs and activation for the Green. She helped to organize the New Year’s Day program on the Green, so maybe more or similar small events. Yoga on the Green? I’m also wondering if there’s room for activations that function as pilots. One idea [discussed at the recent public meeting] was a café kiosk, so maybe we support a food truck promenade over the summer to build that culture that leads to folks spending time on the Green to help us understand, to explore some of the bigger questions.

Another potential short-term investment could be simple maintenance sprucing up the Green, new investments in picnic tables, benches, flowers that give the Green a spring refresh, tangible concrete investments toward looking at the Green with pride.

You’re clearly very much of a process-focused person. With so many ideas out there, and perhaps ideas containing competing values, what are your thoughts on how the conservancy, the proprietors, the city should fairly evaluate them?

Speaking for myself, not on behalf of the conservancy, yes, there are so many conversations with neighbors with hopes and ideas about the Green, can we come up with some guiding principles? Here’s one: How can we make the Green a place to meet. Yes, people do meet there now, but wouldn’t it be exciting if the Green were a place where people might want to picnic or go for a first date? This excites me because it makes the Green safe, have more vibrancy, more economic activity, and spurs community pride.

A second guiding principle I’ve heard: Making sure we prioritize excellent bus service. It would be important to me and others to have a commitment that with any kind of investment the result would be at least parity, [but preferably] improvement. I wonder if there are ways we can see that in the next five or ten years New Haven can have the best bus service in the state, with improved bus stops, user-friendly, beautiful.

A third guiding principle that feels important to me and that makes the Green special [is that any proposal be in the service of making it] a gathering space, gathering in mourning, in protest, a place to take action. I think it was Will Ginsberg who told me in New Haven after Pearl Harbor not everybody had a telephone, so people gathered on the Green … so to allow that to be true [again today] will be important.

A fourth guiding principle that comes to mind and I agree with: Whatever investments are made to the Green, they should be made with relation to the Green’s history. To preserve the sense that many things have happened here, and what’s new should be in alignment with what’s happened here … the burial ground, the places of worship. This will make eventual plans stronger.

Those are four, but my core interest is that we come together on those principles and that will make it easier for us to evaluate the ideas that come in the next years.

You hail from Kentucky and you came to New Haven to go to college at Yale. And you’ve mentioned many times in our conversation of your love for the city. Can you talk a little about how that’s come about and in relation perhaps to peak moments for you on the Green?

The Green’s played a meaningful role in my falling in love with the city. One memory was 2011 and Yo-Yo Ma came to perform at Arts & Ideas. It was pouring rain, there were 8,000 people, drenched, watching his Silk Road ensemble. I was close to the stage, he was playing gorgeous music, and it was one of those feelings that everyone in the city was there. Everyone in the city has such a story. There were other times when I’ve gathered for various rallies to take action. I remember particularly the pop-up music events, the ​“We are a nation of immigrants” photography project.

Maybe on a more personal, emotional note, whenever I leave City Hall and it’s sunset and I look out on the Green, I can’t help but pause and have this moment of gratitude and re-connection of my love for our city. I feel the same way when driving from back home and I see the [Angel of Peace] monument on East Rock Park; you can’t help but pause.

As soon as I graduated I went to my first community management team meeting, and I was so welcomed. What fuels my love [for the city] is that there’s this rippling energy of civic engagement. We should build more pathways for that, the heartbeats of energy to be activated. It is 2025 and we have 75 years left in the century. My broadest hope is that this becomes the civic century … and we can invest in a future of New Haven being a model of civic infrastructure, less isolated, more connected would be very healthy for ourselves … and the future of the heart of our city at the Green. That activation of the Green and civic activation could happen concurrently. Activation begets engagement begets activation. 

Thank you so much.

See below for other recent articles about the Green.

• Town Green: Make That Doughnut A Danish
• Green Proprietor: ​“We Are Not The Committee Of​‘No’”
• City Historian: The Green’s Constant Is Change, & ​“Public Good”
• Prof/Filmmaker: The Green’s Not Just About Fun
• Green Remakers Face Grave Question
• Big Changes Eyed For The Green