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Living Up to Its Name
The Park City strives to do more with less
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Business New Haven
7/13/1998
By: Linda Mele
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The poorest city in the richest county in the United States of America is working hard to live up to its motto: Industria Crecimus - By Industry We Thrive.
In 1991, when Mayor Joseph P. Ganim took office, the city of Bridgeport was bankrupt and faced a $20 million deficit. Crime was rampant, businesses were fleeing and the outlook was bleak.
Today, balanced budgets, tax cuts, infrastructure repairs, business expansions, new development and jobs, and the lowest crime rate in 20 years heralds a much brighter future for the Park City. Whether it can redeem that promise will be the key to its fortunes as it enters the post-industrial future.
Home to the largest deep water port between New York and Boston, the city is currently finalizing plans to build a $200 million waterfront complex to be known as Harbour Place. The project is expected to generate 12,000 construction jobs over six years and, once complete, provide 7,000 permanent full- and part-time jobs.
Businesses such as Lacey Manufacturing, Bodine Corp., Casco Corp. and Magnatech are expanding and expected to generate about 350 new jobs.
The Ballpark at Harbor Yard, a $17 million stadium complex, is now home to the Bridgeport Bluefish baseball team of the fledgling Atlantic League. Events like the annual Barnum Festival and the Black Rock Lobster Festival continue to draw tens of thousands of visitors.
Bridgeport is often overlooked as a tourist attraction, but it boasts the state's only zoo, the Beardsley Zoological Gardens, the Discovery Museum, the Barnum Museum, the Housatonic Museum of Art and Captain's Cove Seaport.
The city also boasts 1,367 acres of parks, 27 playgrounds, 40 tennis courts and one public golf links. The city is continuing street beautification projects throughout its neighborhoods.
According to the state's Department of Economic & Community Development, the city issued 199 demolition permits in 1997 (highest in the state), and recorded only 25 new housing starts. So far this year, it has already reported 26 new housing starts, which indicates the city is trying to get rid of its blighted buildings - and that people are still interested in living there.
Employment from 1996 to 1997 dropped 0.2 percent, while the population between 1995 and 1996 was stable, increasing by 0.1 percent.
Building and renovation projects are proliferating.
Housatonic Community Technical College is now located in the former Lafayette Plaza complex; its former Barnum Avenue will become industrial space.
The Days Inn site on Lafayette Boulevard - where the hotel was spectacularly imploded earlier this year - will become an 80,000-square-foot retail center and provide a significant number of construction and permanent jobs.
Last September, the city received nearly $1 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop an Inter Modal Transportation Center that will tie together public transportation serving the downtown area.
By 2005, the Enterprise Community Strategic Plan hopes to:
• reduce the number of children living in poverty from 29 percent to 15 percent;
• develop a business-assistance program that will help businesses secure financing and generate jobs;
• reduce unemployment to no more than one percent above the state average;
• create safer neighborhoods and reduce crime by 30 percent to improve the quality of life;
• reduce the number of individuals who are homeless or threatened by homelessness by 200 each year;
• reduce the number of contaminated industrial sites by half;
• create active, viable community development corporations (CDCs);
• generate 20,000 new jobs for city residents; and
• stimulate sufficient economic activity that the growth of the city's tax base equals or exceeds that of the region.
Laudable goals, all. However, even with all the progress, the city still faces serious environmental concerns.
In its latest report, the Natural Resources Defense Council rated the city's sewage and stormwater treatment and open space/wetlands/beaches protection only “fair,” citing problems with overflowing sewer and stormwater systems during wet weather, “not working aggressively” to regulate stormwater pollution and “limited protection” for wetlands.
Those concerns require vigorous attention and effort to set right. In all, however, the city is being reborn and seems ready, willing and able to take advantage of the state's overall economic turnaround.
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