Believe it or not, this is a scene from a city neighborhood. Neighbors like Nan Bartow are organizing to keep it this way as Southern Connecticut State University expands.
Beaver Pond Park is the very definition of “hidden jewel.” Wedged among Southern, Jackie Robinson K‑8 School and Hillhouse High School, the largest body of fresh water in the city was hidden by tangled overgrowth and filled with trash. But after the Friends of Beaver Pond Park (FOBPP) got busy, it’s no longer a hidden jewel but a very visible one. The Friends are determined to keep it that way, but they are battling encroachment on all sides —” in particular, now, from SCSU’s expansion plans. Those plans will be the subject of a neighborhood meeting this coming Tuesday night.
Bartow is one of the movers and shakers of FOBPP. On a tour of the 136-acre park on a brilliant but icy morning this week, she showed me all the improvements the group has wrought. With help from the city parks department and Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative, they’ve cleared out invasive Norway maples and 12 foot-tall phragmites —”- reeds with the signature plumes on top —”- that had lined the banks of the pond. They’ve planted a variety of native species of trees, including alanthus, also known as the tree of life. “They travel quite a bit per year with new shoots,” Bartow said, “and they’re moving in on the phragmites and eventually will take out the phragmites, because they shade them out. It’s a natural succession.”
Bartow (in photo) and others have created narrow paths along the pond that afford great, close-up views of the wildlife on or over the water —”- which on any given day could include red-tailed hawks, cormorants, egrets, great blue herons, ducks, and lots of songbirds. On the day we walked the snow-covered paths, we followed the tracks of rabbits and other small animals. In a chance encounter with a maintenance worker at Southern, he and Bartow discussed sightings of coyotes and red foxes.
On a canoe trip several years ago with Inner City Outings, Riverkeeper Peter Davis toured us through South Pond. (Beaver Pond is made up of two distinct but connecting ponds.) This was before the latest burst of activity from the Friends group, and I felt as though we were in a medieval swamp, the phragmites soaring overhead, almost blocking out the light. Even though a clean-up had just been done, cans and bottles and other trash were everywhere, because it had rained recently and the rain washes all the detritus from neighboring streets into the pond, since there are no nets over the inlets. Getting those nets is another goal of the Friends. This week, in the sun, everything looked spic-and-span.
The Friends are unhappy about a baseball field that Southern built near the pond, and are concerned about a proposed parking garage nearby, as well as the possibility that Southern will build a new main entrance to the campus by extending Ella Grasso Boulevard across Crescent Street and right over the pond. “We’re certainly objecting to that,” Bartow said, “because they’ve already encroached on the pond in enormous ways, and that would be an even bigger encroachment.”
SCSU spokesman Patrick Dilger said no worries —”- the growth going on at Southern is in the existing campus footprint. He said the university is conducting a study to determine the best place for a new 600-car parking lot, “but at no time would we have built it on any of the park land.” He also says there are no current plans to extend Boulevard across the pond to make a new entrance, adding, “In all of this we are trying to be sensitive to the needs of the neighbors and certainly to the environment. In all our planning, that’s a prime consideration.”
Area alderwoman Babz Rawls Ivy is holding an informational meeting about Southern’s construction plans on Tuesday Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Beaver Hills police substation, 386 Whalley Ave.