Sam Gurwitt Photo
Leng receives the news of his primary night victory.
Hamden plans to start cracking down on blight.
So announced Mayor Curt Leng Wednesday during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” program.
Leng said his administration is launching a two-pronged effort called “Hamden Fights Blight.”
One part involves “more aggressive attention” to abandoned, rundown properties the town already knows about and has on its blight list. The town plans to move more quickly than in the past to apply $99-a-day fines and place liens on problem properties whose owners have ignored a “half dozen or more” attempts by town officials to contact them or get them to clean up their mess.
Eight vacant properties currently appear on a city “hot list” of particularly troublesome sites, according to Leng. Another 20 – 25 need serious attention.
One of them straddles the New Haven-Hamden line, an abandoned property at 922 Winchester Ave. (pictured) with a burned-out house owned by a Woodbridge woman. New Haven has already initiated a foreclosure case for the 40 percent of the property lying in the city, according to Leng; now Hamden will follow suit with the 60 percent of the property lying in the town. The town hopes to sell or give portions of the land to abutting property owners if they wish to expand their lots, or else develop the land itself through the Hamden Economic Development Corporation.
This property at 293 Goodrich is also on the Hamden blight “hot list.”
The second part of the new campaign involves “proactive” steps: Starting 12 days ago,Hamden inspectors are visiting two streets a day to add to the inventory of blighted properties and then address them.
Campaign-Trail Lessons
Leng said blight was one of the concerns he picked up on while knocking on doors during the recent Democratic mayoral primary campaign. (He won that primary with 61 percent of the vote and now faces Republican Jay Kaye in the Nov. 5 general election.)
“The messages across the town were very consistent,” Leng said: concern over town finances, policing, and quality of life issues like blight, trees, and sidewalks.
He also picked up on a need to improve the town’s communication with constituents, now that the local radio station (WQUN) has gone out of business, a local weekly is publishing less often, and not everyone is following social media.
“People here a decade or more don’t know about” town concerts, after-school youth programs or the expansion of the food bank, among other subjects about which the town has sought to communicate, Leng said.
In response, he said, the town plans to unveil a retooled website soon with a front-page community calender; and to send staffers and volunteers to “beat the shoe leather” knocking on doors to spread the word about programs and services.
As for sidewalks, the town recently secured a second $250,000 state Local Capital Improvement Program grant to make repairs, prioritizing spots with tree root damage, corrosion, and frost heaves.
On the “Dateline Hamden” episode, Leng also announced he will seek an “overhaul of our planning and zoning regulations.” He’s seeking “more business-friendly rules” to remove “hoops” developers need to navigate to build on, say, State Street or Dixwell Avenue. Current pedestrian and new urbanism-oriented rules on setbacks and parking and density make sense for more “main street” spots like Whitneyville, but not a “five-lane state highway” like Dixwell, he argued. “You’re not for the most part going to have people taking a stroll on Dixwell,” he said.
Leng said he sees possibilities for renewed commercial development on Dixwell near Mather and Treadwell thanks to the opening of the nearby Whitney Commons apartments. He plans to suggest that operators of the Space Ballroom relocate there as an anchor, from their current industrial park spot up the road on Treadwell.