Early in Kudzu Queen’s set Thursday evening, Jess Jones paused to change the battery in the pickup of her guitar, but also to look out over the audience that had assembled in front of the band and appreciate what was happening.
“It’s so nice to see everybody out here, of all ages, sizes, shapes, and colors,” she said. “I’m going to let you bask in your you-ness.” In front of her, families sat at tables and ate pizza. Friends conversed a little farther back. Kids played on the pavement in between the tables.
Lawrence Street Plaza on Upper State Street, an experiment in community gathering, seemed to be going right. But it was serving a dual purpose, too; the other goal, as it turned out, was traffic calming.
Earlier in the year, “I began hearing from a lot of neighbors on Lawrence Street that traffic speeds were really high,” said East Rock/Fair Haven Alder Caroline Smith. Drivers heading south on State Street were turning right onto Lawrence Street at speed. “The next moment of pause isn’t until Nicoll,” Smith said, “where there’s a stop sign.” Many of those who noticed were parents and kids walking to and from school.
Traffic calming measures can be as straightforward as stop signs and speed bumps. Another tool, however, is “plazas,” Smith said, which have been “used to great effect” in New Haven and elsewhere. Lawrence Street would mark the third street closure to make a new public space — the first two being Orange Street north of Crown, in Ninth Square, and the section of Central Avenue in Westville between Fountain Street and Whalley Avenue. As Smith talked to her neighbors, a question emerged: “What if we were to close this street down and activate it? What could that look like and could we try it out?”
Caroline Smith (center) with fellow organizers Kai Addae and Brandon Doyle.
Neighborhood conversations about closing the street began in April, eventually involving a committee of over 20 residents. Excitement built around the possibility of a new outdoor space as well as calming traffic. They settled on the idea of trying a month-long pilot program “to see if it works.” With that came ideas for how neighbors might want to use the space once it became available. The idea of outdoor dining was popular, as was the idea of music, dancing, and games. “We also love tables just to be able to sit and read,” Smith said — features that would help people meet the other people in their neighborhood.
In short, Smith said, it was about beginning “to imagine that it was a park.”
Sept. 1 saw a launch party for the Lawrence Street Plaza, with Salsa in Ninth Square bringing a party. “It was amazing to see 30 or 40 people dancing in the street,” Smith said. Since then, Thursday evenings in September from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. have featured live music and by-the-slice pizza provided by Next Door.
Since the street has been closed, Smith said, there have been questions about how drivers navigate the turn off of State Street, which is now at a light, onto Mechanic Street, and considerably sharper than the turn onto Lawrence Street was. “It is inconvenient,” Smith said. It also “slows cars down.” She has a feedback survey out now, and is installing cameras along Lawrence Street, to gather information about whether traffic is being calmed, at what costs, and to what benefits.
“The vast majority of people have been really excited about it.”
“We’re at a moment in time where there’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm to utilize our public space in innovative ways, that actually address the broader city challenges we might have,” Smith said — issues such as “loneliness, mental health, and spaces for connection,” as well as traffic and public safety. Tackling those issues can help foster a sense of belonging, which can in turn have “ripple effects,” Smith said. “It can be people building friendships and knowing each other on the street,” and “knowing more about their local businesses.”
If the events continue to be popular, Smith is weighing the possibilities for next year. “Something that would be exciting to keep is the number of people who have been able to touch this project.” One resident, Rishabh Mittal, used chalk spray to put hopscotch squares in the street. Another resident, Celia Poirier, designed the poster in the kiosk on Lawrence Street, while the city’s deputy economic development administrator, Carlos Eyzaguirre, helped install it. “That’s the spirit of a block party,” Smith said, that a “diffuse but also coordinated group of people are rallying together.”
For Smith, the Lawrence Street activity also opens up questions about “what our vision is for this part of Upper State Street,” she said. “What is conducive to those goals of how we want to envision this area for the next five years?” This involves further supporting long-standing businesses like The Pantry, Mezcal, and Rice Pot while also bringing more of a sense of a plaza to the area, as has happened in Ninth Square and Westville.
Thursday evening gave a taste of what that might look like. As Kudzu Queen — Jess Jones on vocals and guitar, Andrew Agraves on cello, and Terron the Light on percussion — bopped through a set of its inventive, Brazilian jazz-inflected, and often environmentally themed originals, at any given time about 30 people were congregating in the space, taking in the music, the food, and the general atmosphere.
Next Door was on hand, selling four kinds of pizza and sodas. In front of its stand were a few yard games and chalk for drawing on the street, which adults and kids alike took part in.
A few picnic tables more than adequately defined the space, as people sat to enjoy the music and food. Some took a spot on the Lawrence Street curb. Others leaned against the street trees. A couple had brought their own lawn chairs. The passing cars on State Street were close at hand, but easy to forget about as Kudzu Queen played on. Cars looking to head down Lawrence Street did indeed have to slow down to make the sharp turn onto Mechanic Street first, though never enough to create a traffic problem.
“What a night. What a world, this planet Earth. Can’t get enough of that little blue marble,” Jones said, nodding to a common nickname for the celestial body we call home. But she also alluded to the kind of community gathering Smith had in mind. A young man entered the plaza and Jones gave him a nod, then made an announcement to the audience. “I left my wallet in East Rock Park the other day and this kind fellow picked it up for me.”
The man grinned. Not long afterward, she sang what felt like the evening’s refrain, delivered in a lilting melody in the warm air: “All my friends / don’t give up / we are building dreamlands.”