New Havener Of The Year

Giovanni Zinn is ending a busy 2021 with a new bridge to show off, not to mention speed humps and cycletracks and raised intersections all over town.

The span in question is the Grand Avenue Bridge over the Quinnipiac River connecting Fair Haven and Fair Haven Heights. Zinn, the city engineer, oversaw a $28 million rehabilitation of the 19th century bridge. He promised it would be done by early 2022.

It’s done. It officially reopens Jan. 18, painted ​“Oregon Dot Green” as a result of a neighborhood ​“ranked-choice voting” process. It boasts a widened promenade-like sidewalk, replaced spans at both ends with new abutments, redone control house, new mechanical and electrical systems, a lower-cost higher-performing ​“exodermic” deck, and three-quarter inch epoxy-based polymer overlay. 

OK, I don’t really know what that all means. At least until Zinn explained it to me, and re-explained it to me, without checking his watch or cell phone, the way he patiently explains the mechanics of bridges and roads and bollards and tunnels and sewers to people all over town, night and day.

Zinn explained that, like many construction materials caught in pandemic-caused supply-chain delays, that epoxy polymer was hard to find. It looked like the city wouldn’t get it to finish the job in time; it would need to close the bridge again in the spring to apply it.

At the last minute, Zinn’s team obtained the material and ​“snuck in” the work on the last warm-enough December day.

So the job got done. Early. Under budget.

“It’s a miracle,” Zinn marveled as he looked over the bridge.

Who You're Gonna Call

Zinn has quietly been performing, if not miracles, solid engineering feats for the city for years. His work has put him at the center of efforts to combat climate change, plan for rising sea levels, and modernize streets and drainage systems.

This past pandemic year has posed some of the biggest challenges yet to municipal engineers. Zinn has overcome them time and again in ways that have made our city safer, especially when it comes to two of the hottest-button government issues of our time: ​“infrastructure” in general and ​“safe streets” in particular.

Zinn, who is 38 and grew up in Hamden, has had a hand in structural improvements all over town in 2021, including completion of another phase of the City Plan Department-led Route 34/ Hill-to-Downtown South project reclaiming a mini-highway that tore apart the center of town.

He and his 15-member team in the City Engineer’s Office took the lead on other completed projects that will improve everyday life for just about everyone in town, projects that the public has long requested and that took years of planning and follow-through.

His department managed the construction of the long-awaited new Dixwell Community Q House. In addition to getting the job done, Zinn helped minority-owned contractors get their fair share of the work, said Rodney Williams, who organized a group of those firms seeking work. Zinn was originally a target of criticism by protestors. As is his wont, Zinn didn’t get defensive or appear to take the criticism personally; instead, he got to work to fix the problem. ​“Giovanni helped keep pressure” to make the project inclusive, Williams said. ​“He is doing an excellent job of trying to help as many minority contractors as possible get opportunities to work in the city as possible. Tell him I said, Thank you!’ ” 

Zinn’s department also took a lead role in designing and building out and reopening a new stretch of Columbus Avenue near Union Station. He has been holding planning meetings and working with neighbors on designs for over $14 million in state-funded improvements to Whitney Avenue, Whalley Avenue, Valley Street, Lighthouse Road, and Quinnipiac Avenue.

Some projects, like the Grand Avenue Bridge, cost tens of millions of dollars and are visible to thousands of people a day. Others, like speed humps and protected bike and pedestrian lanes, may attract less notice but can cumulatively make as much of a difference.

During an ongoing building boom, Zinn has also been counted on to question builders’ engineers about storm drainage systems at City Plan Commission hearings.

“I’ve enjoyed working with him from Day One and watching him grow,” said Leslie Radcliffe, a Hill neighborhood organizer who chairs the commission. ​“He knows what he’s doing. He can make the most complicated things appear to be simple. He can speak in layperson’s terms. And he’s always one phone call away.”

Radcliffe recalled calling one such phone call. ​“Giovanni, I need a speed hump,” she said. “ ​‘Let me make a few phone calls,’ he said. Then he showed up in my neighborhood and walked the neighborhood.”

TCB Of DWP

Zinn this week powered up an all-electric city-issued Nissan Leaf — part of a government fleet he’s gradually looking to wean from gas-powered vehicles — for a look at some of the projects completed in 2021 and explain why they matter.

As he stopped at points east and west and in between, it was clear that, as with the Grand Avenue Bridge’s exodermic overlay, Zinn and his team had to work fast and think creatively to pass the finish line. At each stop, he pointed out how small infrastructure changes can make a big difference in people’s lives.

Take Kensington Street, and its new ​“detectable warning pads.”

Zinn’s department reengineered the curbs as all the street’s sidewalks were replaced. He changed the radius of the curbs so pedestrians would be more visible to drivers passing by. Whenever possible, he had two separate pedestrian ramps installed at each corner.

In the past, the curbs had one ramp leading pedestrians into the street, at a 45 degree angle right into traffic. Now the two ramps lead pedestrians into crosswalks to navigate the road more safely.

The ramps are colored brick-red, to be more visible. And they have bumps on them.

Those are the ​“detectable warning pads.” They help vision-impaired people find their way into the street by first tapping a cane along the bumps, then emerge onto the sidewalk on the other side by tapping the bumps there. (Sometimes an existing impediment, like the utility pole at one of the four corners of the Kensington-Edgewood intersection, prevents the redesign of a double-ramp curb. The photo above shows the two different configurations at the intersection.)

“More people,” Zinn noted, ​“are going outside, walking around the neighborhood” since the pandemic started.

“Good sidewalks, good crossings make neighborhoods more walkable. They help people, especially people who are older or use a wheelchair or push a stroller,” reflected Zinn, who as a father of four children under 10 knows all about sidewalk navigation.

The Cosmos Beckons

As he piloted the electric Leaf to another street reborn with sidewalks and paving this year — Fairmont Avenue in the Annex — Zinn recalled growing up in Hamden, one of three children with two astronomers for parents. Zinn inherited their interest in examining outer space up close. He still has the six-inch Newtonian reflector telescope he bought for $280 at 12 years old. He doesn’t have much time to pull it out these days to examine the moon and the planets and globular clusters. But he retains that interest in science and technology.

He learned a lot about what machines work. And how to find the parts.

“I liked pulling stuff apart. I was practically minded, pulling stuff apart,” he recalled. Home repair was his favorite class in high school. In college he pursued engineering — a ​“good mix” between scientific exploration and practical problem-solving.

As the Nissan Leaf crossed the Ferry Street Bridge (pictured) from the Annex to Fair Haven, Zinn gave an example: This year the city changed the ​“programmable logic controller” there.

The system was decades old. Some of the parts needed to work with the system were no longer made.

“We were actually eBaying for parts in the old system. That well was going to run dry,” Zinn said. So this year the city updated to an entirely new system. The updated system promptly diagnoses problems, pinpointing, say, what step in the process is preventing the bridge from closing.

Another bridge, over Humphrey Street, could have become a public hazard — but Zinn’s crew discovered erosion in time to put together an approved plan to fix it.

As he steered carefully through the east side’s safer-than-before streets, Zinn spoke of how he also inherited his family’s interest in examining not just the cosmos but the landscape right here on Earth. Right here in New Haven. In the early ​‘90s, at the age of 10, Zinn tagged along with his older brother to his first New Haven public meeting. It was about the ​“Vision Trail,” the path created in conjunction with the Special Olympics to guide walkers and cyclists through previously blocked-out paths from Downtown, under I‑95, along the railroad tracks, to Long Wharf.

Grade-schooler Giovanni spoke up at the meeting. ​“My big suggestion was to expand recyclables. I always loved the environment.”

“It was an exciting time,” he recalled, ​“in New Haven.”

That trail has since been blocked off again. But the broader vision — of reconnecting the city and reclaiming it from suburban car-centric design — has blossomed, has become the impetus for projects ranging from the Farmington Canal Trail to the state’s first two-way protected bike lane. It became an even more exciting time in New Haven. Meanwhile, Zinn caught the civic engagement/planning bug. As an adult he first interned with the city after college, then returned shortly afterward to begin a career in municipal government in 2005, just as the then-DeStefano administration, prodded by the Green Party, took a hard-environmental turn and built solar roofs and backed policies promoting hybrid vehicles and cycling. Each mayor has launched more ambitious green agendas. Zinn has emerged to play one of the leading roles in those efforts.

The Boneyard & The Bioswale

An affiliated spoke of that efforts has been the ​“safe streets”/ ​“traffic calming” citizen movement seeking to slow down cars and make room for pedestrians and cyclists to share the road without landing in the hospital or the grave.

This year saw the completion of one such response at a previously treacherous spot, the intersection at Glen Road and Ella Grasso Boulevard in Beaver Hills. Zinn’s team designed a complicated mix of features centered on a raised intersection. 

“We had to find the last scraps of granite to get it down,” Zinn said. Supplies from New Hampshire and North Carolina were backed up because of the pandemic. So Zinn’s team headed to ​“our boneyard” at the public works storage yard. They found pieces of granite left over from other projects, and had enough to construct the Glen and Boulevard project.

The raised intersection there slows down drivers. The sidewalks slope up to meet the intersection, making pedestrians more visible. Again, a smaller radius at the curb brings pedestrians into view as well. Islands separate the intersection to slow drivers further, as do bollards placed around the curb.

Another challenge Zinn’s team faced: They might need to move a catch basin on one side of Glen to catch stormwater flowing from the raised intersection. Instead, they found a cheaper and greener solution: They built a bioswale (pictured) around the storm drain. That absorbed more of the water, relieving the pressure on the sewer system during storms while enabling the basin to stay in place.

No Rubber Duckies Allowed

Similar multi-pronged solutions were called for in reengineering Zinn’s team completed this year on two other wide streets where speeders endanger school kids and neighborhood pedestrians: on Crescent Street between Hillhouse High and Southern Connecticut State University, and across from Edgewood School on Yale Avenue.

They constructed newfangled two-way somewhat-separated pedestrian-cycletracks.

Ideally Zinn would have liked to construct granite curbs to protect the bike-pedestrian lanes. But that would cost too much. Neighbors shot down the placing of plastic ​“delineators” (aka ​“rubber duckies”) on aesthetic grounds.

So for now Zinn’s team placed planters between the two-way track on Yale Avenue and a new lane of parking. That lane addressed a second problem: Parents had no legal place to park when they dropped off kids at schools, so they blocked homeowners’ driveways.

In addition to narrowing Yale Avenue’s vehicular lanes, the project included new speed humps to slow drivers, plus flashing lights for kids crossing.

It has all taken some getting used to in the initial months. Some arguments have broken out between parents and neighbors over how to cross the street. Drivers getting used to the new design took out a planter or two. ​“I think we prevented the crashes we worried about — people speeding.” Drivers have had no choice but to slow down. Joggers and cyclists have had a smooth, safe journey.

You — along with hundreds of thousands of other people — can watch this video detailing the construction of the Yale Avenue project created by a member of Zinn’s team who doubles as a breakout TikTok star.

As National Infrastructure Year Looms

“It was a challenging year,” Zinn reflected. ​“Supply chain issues were tough to get through. There’s no sign of letting up. We’ve got to keep going ahead and continue creating a people-centered infrastructure that ties neighborhoods together.”

The list of ​“miracles” planned for 2022 runs long. It includes the expected-spring completion of the long-awaited protected Edgewood Avenue bike lane from Forest Road to Downtown: curbs and sidewalks and ramps are in, as is a speed table, with pedestrian signals (the most expensive part of the project) coming next.

The city and the feds are moving toward the design phase of a 10-year plan to install a pump station along Long Wharf Drive and removable gates at various spots near the harbor to respond to major storms. The city beat out other communities in Fairfield and New Haven County to convince the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to launch the regional coastal-protection plan here in anticipation of rising sea levels.

With federal millions set to flow from the newly passed federal infrastructure bill, Zinn is hoping to see the city and the state work together to grab a grant to construct a 10-foot stormwater tunnel 50 feet below-ground from the police station to Long Wharf, to relieve regular flooding in both areas.

Zinn has also been thinking about how to build out charging stations so people can feel more comfortable buying electrical cars, so the government can electrify its own fleet, so people can more conveniently repower e‑scooters.

First, though, some celebration is in order, back at the Grand Avenue Bridge. The city plans to hold a block party there the night before the reopening, to reconnect neighbors from the Fair Haven and Heights ends. Zinn wouldn’t miss it.

Previous New Haveners of the Year:

• 2020: Maritza Bond
• 2019: Anthony Duff
• 2018: Kim Harris & Amy Marx
• 2017: New Haveners Under 30: Caroline Smith, Coral Ortiz, Justin Farmer, Jesus Morales Sanchez, Margaret Lee, Sarah Ganong, Jacob Spell, Steve Winter, Eliannie Sola, Leiyanie Lee Osorio
• 2016: Corey Menafee
• 2015: Jim Turcio
• 2014: Rev. Eldren Morrison
• 2013: Mnikesa Whitaker
• 2012: Diane Polan, Jennifer Gondola, Jillian Knox, Holly Wasilewski
• 2011: Stacy Spell
• 2010: Martha Green, Paul Kenney, Michael Smart, Rob Smuts, Luis Rosa Sr.
• 2009: Rafael Ramos
• 2006: Shafiq Abdussabur