Maya McFadden Photo
Common Ground alum Crystal Fernandez at Kimberly Field planning gathering.
When Crystal Fernandez returned to the Hill with her four sons three years ago, she decided she would be a part of the change she wanted to see in her neighborhood by starting with Kimberly Field.
Fernandez was one Hill advocate of a group of 20 who have stepped up to participate in planning for improvements for the field.
The group includes Hill neighbors, Betsy Ross School community members, the Urban Resources Initiative (URI), and staffers from the city’s engineering department.
The group joined at Kimberly Field Wednesday evening to take the neighborhood’s first steps towards creating a group of committed volunteers and advocates devoted to the park’s revitalization.
By the end of the walk-through, neighbors agreed that their first steps will include a park clean-up this spring. Fernandez volunteered to help spearhead arranging the park clean-up with one of her neighbors.
URI Associate Director Chris Ozyck gathered the neighbors for the Wednesday walk-through of the park to begin brainstorming restoration ideas to eventually apply for URI’s Community Greenspace program, to begin this summer. Ozyck reminded the neighbors to gather ideas for what kind of greenery should be brought to the park in addition to the city’s parks department’s plans to allocate $101,500 toward drainage improvements, benches, trash cans, requisite demolitions, and basketball court improvements. (Read more about those plans here.)
In addition to those collaborative plans between the city and URI, a $10,000 grant from Athletic Brewing Two for the Trails to URI will be used for the development of a new walking trail in the field. (Click here for the grant press release.)
“URI has pledged to utilize the grant to work in Kimberly Field with the City of New Haven, the adjacent public school — Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School, EMERGE CT, and community members to improve the park for Hill neighbors to have a walking trail and beautiful public greenspace to enjoy,” the press release states.
While gathered in the park, neighbors first shared about their personal investments and connections to nature and parks. Experiences ranged from coaching sports, daily walks, and fishing to gardening, playing outdoors as a child, and biking.
Ozyck reminded the neighbors that a committed group of park advocates is the key to the Community Greenspace program.
“It’s always your project, not our project,” Ozyck said.
Fernandez plans to work with a neighbor named Carlos in the coming weeks to create a Doodle poll to set a clean-up date that works for the neighbors.
Ozyck agreed to provide the materials for the clean-up.
Fernandez, 34, moved from the Bronx to New Haven as a teen to attend Common Ground High School.
“Common Ground was divine intervention and timing,” she said.
After graduating in 2005, she left New Haven to attend the University of Connecticut (UCONN). She became a single mother to her four sons, ages 14, 8, 7, and 5. Her oldest son is now a freshman at Common Ground.
While in high school, Fernandez lived in the Hill. She returned three years ago to live on Ella Grasso Boulevard. Over the next few weeks she will move into a home next door to her aunt and uncle on Rosette Street, nearer to the park.
She returned to New Haven in 2019 to continue her work with youth at Common Ground as the program manager of the Green Job Corps and College and Career Services.
“I want to teach my boys what it’s like to live in a service mindset,” she said.
Fernandez said she hopes for the park to become a place for neighborhood children and adults to get enrichment through camps, stewardship programs, and workshops teaching composting and home gardening.
“Too often people want to get out of the hood, but I think it’s just as important for people to stay,” she said.
“The Hill deserves to have more than fast food and bodegas,” she said. “This can be a spot in the neighborhood that can help increase access to resources.”
The group agreed that the restoration and stewardship project will aim to “build social capital” in the neighborhood.
The group walked through the park identifying its four entrances and discussed ideas for highlighting those and other areas.
While discussing water sources for maintaining greenery in the park, Ozyck pointed out a potential water line from the former St. Peter’s Church building at 164 Kimberly Ave.
“Identifying a water line is something you really have to consider when deciding” on what will be in the Greenspace, Ozyck told the group.
Possible water source?
Other water sources to maintain the space would require neighbors to transfer buckets of water, use hoses, or get permission to use water from the school property, Ozyck added.
Some neighbors suggested building a well or using rain barrels in the park for a water source.
The group discussed ideas for pollinator gardens, fruit trees and bushes, benches, a streetscape garden at the Kimberly Avenue Park entrance, enhancing natural pathways, bird habitats, and park trash cans.
Ozyck did warn neighbors that food trees or bushes can attract rats, be easily damaged by kids, require safe metal-free soil, and possibly encourage kids to eat uncertain foods. Supplementary options included berry bushes for birds.
The group in partnership with URI plans to knock on neighboring doors to get additional neighborhood participation this summer.
Neighbors gather at Kimberly Avenue park entrance.
URI's Ozyck and engineering department's Katherine Jacobs.
For the Kimberly Avenue park entrance, Ozyck suggested the group think creatively with “iconic” ideas for the entrance that can make it less discrete and easily mistaken as a tucked away green alley or home backyard.
Neighbors were asked to consider if they want to draw more attention to the entrance sign on Ella T Grasso Boulevard and “formalize” the park corner. This would also help with concerns previously brought up about park-goers using the school parking lot entrance instead of the others, Ozyck said.
Tree buffers to protect from cars were also suggested, near the entrance by the busy roadway.
At the Greenwich Avenue entrance, neighbors suggested keeping up with refilling the current dog waste bag dispenser.
Boulevard park entrance.