A proposal to enhance the West Rock Nature Center with a new, energy-efficient building moved forward Wednesday with the blessing of the city parks commission.
The nature center, at 1080 Wintergreen Ave., is seeking a $100,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation to aid planning for the expansion. At a meeting Wednesday evening, the city parks commission approved an initial $3,768 covering a retainer fee for local architect Regina Winters to complete the exploratory work necessary for the grant proposal.
Nature center representative Illisa Kellman (pictured) made the appeal to board.
“The West Rock Nature Center lacks a lot of functionality,” she said, “and is completely lacking in accessibility. There’s no classroom and no storage facility, and as a result there’s been a lot of theft of outdoor equipment.”
City parks director Robert Levine said the need for a new building was clear. In a unanimous vote, he and fellow commissioners approved he initial disbursement of funds to complete the application.
“We know the building we have as single-pane windows with metal frames and the woodwork is getting eaten by insects and woodpeckers, and it’s in a state of deterioration,” Levine said. “This grant would get us moving in a direction where we can come up with something better.”
CitySeed Asks For Signs
In their annual meeting with the parks commission, Jennifer McTiernan and Becky Elias of CitySeed (pictured) urged committee members to approve signs for Quinnipiac River, Russo and Edgewood parks in order to raise awareness of the city’s outdoor farmer’s markets.
“What we’re hoping we might have is some kind of signage in the three parks that says, ‘There’s a farmer’s market here,” McTiernan said, “because, for example, at Edgewood Park the market is only on Saturdays so you could go to the park every Wednesday and never know that it was there.”
The signs, McTiernan said, would be part of a larger effort by CitySeed to promote local food and fight childhood obesity, funded by a “Get Fresh, Get Moving” grant through the Connecticut Department of Public Health. Other public awareness efforts based on the grant, she said, will eventually include a a bilingual cookbook of healthy local recipes based on locally grown produce.
New Haven schools Executive Director of Food Services Timothy Cipriano, she said, “has agreed to put at least two of those recipes into the school lunch program, so as families have been sharing their recipes, they’ve been doing so knowing those recipes are going to be part of what their kids are eating at school.”
Parks commission chairman David Belowsky said he was uncertain the proposed signs would be in keeping with park regulations.
“We don’t really advertise inside the park,” he said. “I mean, if you go to a park, you don’t really want to see any signage.”
Elias said the group had considered several different options for the signs, some of which would not involve any new sign posts.
“We’ve look at some that have posts similar to the U‑shaped metal pole of a stop sign that could have an aluminum sign either on one side or on both sides,” she said, “and then we’ve looked at some that would be a sign that could wrap around an existing structure in the park, if there wasn’t an interest in adding a new structure.”
Levine indicated that despite the no-signage rule, there might be room for negotiation.
“I’m guessing something could be done that could meet your needs and aesthetically blend in,” he said. “We’ll take it under advisement.”