R E D E V E L O P M E N T :
"Blight" caused sometimes by fire or not...then
comes
"renewal" in CT..."The better part
of valour is discretion". - (Act V, Scene IV, Henry IV part one).
Some
background on: infrastructure failure, natural disaster, and "eminant domain" - not to mention large scale redevelopment of "brownfields"
H A R T F O R D , C O
N N E C T I C U T
Colt Dome
Matt
Hennessy, Eddie Perez's Chief Of Staff, Steps Down. Says Mayor's Trial Not A Factor
The Hartford Courant
By JEFFREY B. COHEN
August 15, 2009
Matt
Hennessy, Mayor Eddie A. Perez's fiercely loyal chief of staff for all
of his eight years in office, announced his resignation late Friday.
Hennessy said in an interview that
there's never a "right time" to leave a job like his, but that he
couldn't pass up a new, "private sector" opportunity. He wouldn't say
what that job is.
Hennessy's timing — his last day is
Sept. 14 — is already the subject of speculation. Perez is less than a
month away from jury selection for his trial on charges of bribery,
fabricating evidence and conspiracy to fabricate evidence in relation
to allegedly discounted work done on his home by a city contractor.
Perez has pleaded not guilty.Hennessy, 38, said unequivocally Friday
that his decision — at least the second major departure from Perez's
upper management in as many months — was unrelated to Perez's legal
challenges.
"It's hard for me to believe this
has absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing investigation," said
Democratic Councilman Kenneth Kennedy, long a Perez — and Hennessy —
critic. Noting that Hennessy's resignation comes not two months after
that of former Chief Operating Officer Lee Erdmann, Kennedy said, "This
administration appears to be winding down."
But others were less sure.
Council President Calixto Torres, a
Perez ally, said he knows Hennessy has been looking for a career
change. Democratic Majority Leader rJo Winch said the timing of
Hennessy's resignation as Perez's trial looms is coincidental. And John
Kennelly, a former city councilman who has known Hennessy since they
both worked in a Rhode Island restaurant together as teenagers, says to
leave now because of a 2-year-old investigation wouldn't make sense.
"Whatever damage that's going to do
to Matt and his prospects has already happened," Kennelly said.
"Whatever the outcome, it's not going to change Matt. He isn't getting
out of town before the trouble hits. The trouble's already hit."
Hennessy has served as Perez's chief
of staff since 2001. He is paid more than $114,000 a year to handle
public policy development, intergovernmental relations, special
economic development projects, and strategic communications. Talk of
Hennessy's future was stirred in spring 2008, when the city paid
$58,000 to send him to a two-month advanced management program at
Harvard Business School.
Before taking the chief of staff's
job, Hennessy worked with Perez at the Southside Institutions
Neighborhood Alliance, building the Learning Corridor project.
For much of Perez's time in office,
Hennessy was a frequent public face and voice — advocating for the
mayor in person and in print, unafraid to throw political elbows.
On Friday, Perez credited Hennessy
for having a strong hand in some of his greatest achievements — playing
"a key role in city development projects including the rehabilitation
of the Hartford Hilton Hotel and ... the city's federal and state
legislative efforts that generated millions of dollars in new aid for
city priorities."
In an e-mail to the city council and
its department heads with the subject line "Keeping You Informed,"
Perez said he would miss Hennessy's "good advice and keen insight." He
praised Hennessy's wife and daughter, and said that Hennessy would
"remain a trusted adviser and friend."
But Hennessy's advice and friendship
have been a frequent font of material for Perez's critics. Kennedy says
Hennessy made city politics personal, and called his style a "net
negative" for the city, costing it both goodwill and good money.
"You can be a harsh No. 2 without
being vindictive, and Matt was vindictive and unnecessarily harsh,"
Kennedy said. "And the mayor clearly condoned it."
"Matt always believed he was the
smartest guy in the room and he didn't believe anybody else had
anything else to contribute," Kennedy said.
But Hennessy's style caused a more
civic-related concern for Kennedy. "There became a whole mentality in
Hartford where people became afraid to speak out because of Matt's
style," Kennedy said. "That did tremendous harm to democracy in the
city."
Kennelly takes a kinder approach.
"Every smart executive has the guy
who can say, 'No,'" Kennelly said. "You need somebody who can be the
bad guy, who can be the tough one, and Matt served that purpose very
well."
"In the end, everyone was always
blaming Matt, and they weren't blaming Eddie, and that's exactly the
role that he was supposed to play," Kennelly said. "He's the lightning
rod."
Winch agreed, saying Hennessy knew
his part and played it well.
"I always knew that the mayor was
the mayor and he was the chief of staff," Winch said. "People said he
was acting like he was the mayor. I never saw that."
And when it came to Hennessy's
style, Torres said the chief of staff "did what he was supposed to do."
"If the mayor would have been
dissatisfied with his performance, he would have done something about
it a long time ago," Torres said. "The mayor was satisfied with his
performance, and he worked for the mayor."
Asked whether the criticism of his
style was warranted Friday, Hennessy was himself.
"I'm not sure if it's particularly
relevant," he said. What matters, he said, is whether the mayor's
agenda was advanced.
And, he said, it was.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford
Courant
Yale Art Center - the Yale campus, while attracting
business to the area, does not bring in property tax revenue to New
Haven.
Biotech building part
of Route 34 plan
to reconnect roadway with downtown
By Mary E. O’Leary Register Topics Editor
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
NEW HAVEN — A new lab center for biotech research is expected to
be the first building to go up as part of the city’s ambitious plan to
reconnect downtown with the Yale University medical center.
In an update Monday, private developer Carter Winstanley said he is
ready to begin construction this year on a 300,000-square-foot office
and lab building in the Route 34 East right-of-way between the Air
Rights Garage and College Street.
His announcement was part of an update on the city’s plans to abandon
the Route 34 East highway in favor of an urban boulevard, and to create
a new street grid in the Hill section that connects downtown, the
medical corridor and Union Station.
“The goal here is to create a footprint for what happens in New Haven
over the next 15 years,” Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said.
The larger boulevard and street project will be phased in over that
time, something that creates 18.3 acres of developable land, DeStefano
said in a press conference with Yale officials, Winstanley and U.S.
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, at 300 George St.
Unlike the 881 families displaced to create the Route 34 connector, and
the 350 buildings that were razed, the new proposal might affect the
Doctor’s Building at 2 Church St. South and the College Plaza,
DeStefano said, but no residences. St. Anthony’s Church would be safe.
Work so far has been funded with $5 million in a federal allocation
that came through DeLauro’s office.
Going forward, the city is requesting $60 million over the next five
years as part of the SAFETY-LIU transportation fund, with $25 million
of that needed for a fixed rail streetcar along College Street that
would connect the medical corridor with Yale’s University’s north
campus near Newhallville.
Unlike much of the rest of the state, Winstanley said demand is high in
New Haven for research and clinical space, specifically near Yale-New
Haven Hospital and the Yale Medical School, even in a down market.
“From my standpoint, the importance is to try and stay in front of the
tenant demand,” he said. “New Haven is in a very fortunate situation.”
Winstanley has more than 1 million square feet of development in New
Haven already, between 300 George St., 25 Science Park and the ongoing
rehab of the former U.S. Repeating Arms. Co. in Newhallville.
His latest proposal would be adjacent to 300 George St., which is 95
percent leased to research tenants. He envisions locating partly in the
Route 34 East right of way near Exit 3, which would be closed, with
several lanes of traffic rerouted; an entrance to the Air Rights Garage
would remain.
Winstanley and the city have been talking to the state Department of
Transportation about the plans for two years, while the DOT and city
have selected Parsons Brinkerhoff to flesh out the boulevard design,
incorporating the Winstanley project.
Winstanley estimated construction will take 18 months or less, probably
starting near the end of the year.
Filling in Route 34, from the Air Rights Garage, east to the
Metro-North/Amtrak tracks by the former Veterans Memorial Coliseum site
and by creating new blocks in the Hill, would nearly double the size of
the central business district.
Dr. Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale Medical School, called the project
one of the most exciting for the medical school since he has been there
as it connects the school with downtown. “There is a really a void,”
Alpern said of the situation.
He said his school has grown at a rapid rate in research and clinical
care, placing in the top five in the amount of aid awarded by the
federal National Institutes of Health.
“The only thing that would limit that increase would be the ability to
have facilities in which to grow it,” Alpern said of continuing boosts
in funding.
DeStefano said at the completion of the “Downtown Crossing” project,
there will be 4.5 million square feet of new space, roughly 1.2 million
square feet of commercial and institutional space, 300,000 square feet
of retail and 1.4 million square feet and nearly 1,400 units of new
housing.
In addition to 10,000 construction jobs, he estimated creation of
12,000 permanent jobs of all skill levels; it would generate $21
million in sales tax, $7.5 million in income tax and $86 million in
property tax, he said.
With the current development projects under way at Yale-New Haven
Hospital, 360 State St., and plans for the former Coliseum site, “We
are left literally, without any land to develop,” the mayor said.
B R
I D G E P O R T , C O
N
N E C T I C U T
Finch seeks moratorium on pension
funding
CT POST
By Ken Dixon, STAFF WRITER
Updated: 05/20/2009 12:18:47 AM EDT
HARTFORD -- Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch lobbied his former colleagues
in the state Senate Tuesday in an attempt to defuse a financial time
bomb that could blow up and cost the city about $25 million.
The improvised fiscal explosives date back 10 years, when Joseph P.
Ganim, now in federal prison on corruption charges, decided to invest
city-employee pension funds in the stock market, which fell sharply a
couple of times over the years before plummeting to historic lows last
fall.
The $350 million bonded in 1999 fell in value to $269 million by the
end of 2006, $263 million in 2007 and it's now worth $161 million for
the 1,000 city police and fire department employees and retirees who
joined the Pension Plan A by 1980, according to Michael Feeney, the
city's chief financial officer.
Now, Finch wants a two-year moratorium on contributing to the fund at
levels required by the state, with the hope that the markets will come
back and the city will recoup some of its losses.
At stake are city jobs that Finch said he would be forced to terminate
to make up for the losses.
"Bridgeport was one of six cities that bonded and then took the bond
revenues and bought stocks, much the way that George Bush had talked
about privatizing Social Security," Finch said. "It turns out it's not
a very good idea." He said the city has been filling a $3 million
deficit in the pension plan each year, but this year the requirement
will be more than eight times that, but
it hasn't been planned in the city budget.
"It's not in the budget because no town has that ability to backfill a
pension deficit," Finch said. "There's plenty of money to continue
paying people for many years, but actuarially you're supposed to spread
the deficit over three or four years." He said the state law that
allowed the pension bonding requires extending payments of the deficit
over several years.
"So we need to suspend that for two years because of the market
collapse, in order to be able to see if the market will come back
enough to backfill this," Finch said. "I mean, we're talking about many
times the $3 million at a time when there's no possible way to do it."
He stressed that retirees are in no danger of missing pension checks,
but the city just needs a little time to wait for the stock market to
readjust. He talked of the so-called dot-com bubble, which burst in
March 2000, when the value of high-tech companies fell sharply.
"The market has gone down from 1999," Finch said. "It turns out it was
a very bad idea, but this temporary relief is justified and important
because of the very serious consequences of coming up with 20 million
more dollars would either require an enormous tax increase or very
sizable layoffs."
Feeney, in a phone interview from Bridgeport City Hall, said the state
requires Bridgeport to keep that pension fund at a minimally funded
threshold of about 78 percent. To do this, the city would have to
invest $25 million this year, including about $4.5 million already set
aside.
He said over the last 18 months the funding ratio has fallen to 45
percent.
"We're looking for relief over the next few years to put together a
game plan to go forward," Feeney said. "In the meantime, everyone who
currently has a pension will keep getting paid." He noted that the
State Teachers Retirement Plan has regularly been underfunded and no
educators have missed out on pension benefits.
"No one will ever notice this," Finch said. "But we really need to get
this relief or, frankly, there's not much of a plan to do what's
required because it's so catastrophic."
Finch and Feeney said the governor's budget office -- which enforces
the funding-level requirements -- and Democratic majority leadership
support the legislation.
"There's only a consequence if you enforce the law," he said. "If you
don't enforce the law you may be putting off a consequence to down the
road, but it's way down the road and you would hope that over a period
of 20 or 30 years the stock market would go back and fill these coffers
that you don't want to fill up with cash right now because it would be
so serious a consequence."
Finch hopes that sooner rather than later, the stock market will come
back.
"The law was well-intended, but never contemplated a complete collapse
of the capitalist financial system," Finch said, noting that Pension
A's levels got worse and worse during last year's Wall Street collapse.
"I think what it points out is that investing in the stock market for
people's pensions was an ill-fated idea from the beginning," Finch
said. "We're paying for the sins of the past."
The mayor was also in the Capitol on Tuesday to remind House and Senate
members that urban centers need to retain current levels of state aid.
"I'm here to remind the legislators that we're going to have
extraordinary cuts at the local level in police, fire and sanitation if
we aren't held harmless from what we're hearing are pretty significant
cuts being discussed," Finch said in an interview outside the House.
"We can do them, but they have to understand that we won't have the
manpower we need to run them."
He said that when the Legislature voted last week to approve union
contracts that protect state jobs from layoffs for two years, it set up
the towns and cities for cuts in state aid.
On the National
Register of Historic Places since 1979
No one goes there any more - Bridgeport. Why
do you think?
Once glorious, now nothing but blight
Connecticut Post Staff
Updated: 06/05/2009 04:51:34 PM EDT
You could almost envision the beam of light, hear the soft whir from
the darkened projection booth as you pad quietly -- and carefully --
along the upper balcony of the old Poli Palace theater on Main Street
in downtown Bridgeport. The only light in this spectral cavern is
what sneaks in through unseen portals here and there, and from electric
lights jury-rigged near various entrances.
And, on this particular afternoon, from a flashlight.
A phantom could be most comfortable here, lurking perhaps in one of the
side boxes that soar up three stories on either side of the stage,
resident in any of the warren of chambers backstage, in the basement,
off the hallways, sitting perhaps at midnight at the organ whose
towering pipes respond only to his touch.
When you squint and from the balcony take in the whole view, there's a
certain gauzy, faded grandeur to the place, the marble staircases and
railings still sturdy, the ceiling murals and delicate plaster work
still visible under decades-long accumulation of grime, grit and mildew.
Pieces of the once-glorious marquees lay rusting and disassembled in
the alleyway between the two theaters.
But when you open your eyes wide and look at the reality, the collapsed
flooring, the mold, the flooded basements, the overwhelming disrepair,
you recognize that this place is part of Bridgeport's past, and not --
at least not like this -- part of its future.
It would seem that if there is indeed an apparition hanging around
these two theaters it's that they're coming back. In the lobby of
the smaller Majestic theater next to the Palace is the remains of a
cabinet for display of movie posters.
"Coming Attractions," it says.
The problem is there are no attractions coming to the Palace and
Majestic theaters.
They're up for sale, of course, just as, let's face it, any city-owned
property is in these days of multimillion-dollar budget shortfalls.
The Palace, and the smaller Majestic, opened in 1922. They were venues
for live stage shows, then for movies, and when Bridgeport's Main
Street on a Thursday night was thick with shoppers and strollers, the
theaters thrived.
Times change. People didn't need to go to the movies on a sweltering
summer day to take advantage of air conditioning; more and more had
their own.
By 1972, the theaters' time had ended, the last newsreel, the last
Saturday double-feature, the last picture show, so to speak, had run.
Since then the huge Italian-Renaissance building has stood essentially
unused -- a church group used part of the building briefly in the late
'70s -- and today the Downtown Cabaret theater has used part of the
Majestic as a storage area for its props.
John Tristine, an employee with the city's maintenance division, was my
guide the other day. Flashlights in hand, we wandered the aisles,
hallways and balconies. In some areas, it was like exploring a sunken
wreck, nothing but agitated motes of dust, like silt, shooting through
the shafts of light.
There is, however, at least one absolutely magnificent work of art in
this complex. It is a tryptych-style stained glass window inside the
lobby of the Majestic. It is perhaps 15 feet tall and 25 feet wide.
Someone has had the foresight to appreciate its beauty and value and
has encased it in a secure, protective plywood casing.
Here and there also are period sconces, the occasional stained-glass
circular ceiling fixtures, a chandelier or two, that could be removed
from the theaters, restored and displayed somewhere in the city.
The cost of demolishing the theaters would be enormous. But who knows,
some deep-pocketed theater buff may appear -- deus ex machina, if you
will -- and want to bring them back. That would seem unlikely, but in
the world of theater I suppose all things are possible.
For some in the area, the theaters conjure pleasant memories. But it's
more than 35 years since they closed. For a whole generation of people,
they conjure the word "blight."
Time
to bring theaters down
Editorial
Connecticut Post Staff
Updated: 05/29/2009 06:09:01 PM EDT
When it opened on Main Street in 1922, Bridgeport's downtown theaters
complex -- the Palace and the Majestic -- was a spectacular addition to
the city's entertainment options.
Eddie Cantor, an American entertainment icon, was the master of
ceremonies for the opening of the Palace on Labor Day in 1922.
"This is your theater, Mr. and Mrs. Bridgeport. Be proud of it," he
said, according to the research of Mary K. Witkowski, head of the
Historical Collections of the Bridgeport Public Library.
The smaller Majestic opened two months later. For 50 years, Vaudeville
acts, stage productions and, beginning in 1934, when Loew Theaters took
over, the flickering of motion pictures kept the box offices and
concessions stands busy.
But times changed. The theaters closed in 1972. For decades, City Hall
and residents around the region who recall happy interludes in the
theaters have cherished them and envisioned a grand restoration that
would once again put them in the spotlight.
That's not going to happen. The interiors, though eerily evocative of
past glory -- with the organ pipes and opera boxes visible in the
gloom, soaring to the ceiling -- are a wreck. Like the double feature
and the newsreel, their time has passed. As they stand now, and have
for decades, they are less a reminder of a lively past than they are of
the city's stagnant present.
The city is taking one last stab at offering the huge Italian
Renaissance-style building for sale. If, in defiance of all that seems
reasonable, a deep-pocketed, theater-fancying developer should step
forward to buy them, all well and good.
But after waiting a reasonable time, the city needs to bite the bullet
and get them down.
Nostalgia has its place. It's a scent, though, to be
enjoyed sparingly. It's not meant for wallowing. So, inside the
theaters are a handful of fixtures, stained glass, memorabilia -- a
"coming attractions" cabinet for the display of posters -- that could
be salvaged and displayed, perhaps at the Barnum Museum or in a
municipal building. Beautiful photos from various stages of their lives
are available. They don't need to be forgotten.
But what once were magnets that brought activity downtown, are now
impediments to progress.
The wrong choice for city commission
Connecticut Post Staff editorial
Updated: 05/05/2009 05:11:47 PM EDT
In depressingly typical Bridgeport fashion, an appointment that should
have been a sure thing has gone sour. Mayor Bill Finch's choice to fill
a vacancy on the Planning and Zoning Commission has city officials
trading barbs and raising accusations of bad faith.
It was easy to see coming. Jose Tiago, owner of Tiago Construction on
Seaview Avenue, has fought with zoning officials over his business,
which authorities say was illegally established. Choosing him to help
make decisions about other city residents and how they can use their
land was bound to spark controversy.
Complicating matters further are allegations Tiago was less than
forthcoming with the city's Ethics Commission, which in January
approved the mayor's appointment. One commissioner later said he felt
deceived because Tiago falsely told the panel his zoning issues had
been resolved. Others say he may have misunderstood the question.
Ethics Commission hearings by law are held behind closed doors; there's
no way to tell for certain what anyone said. It well could be a simple
misunderstanding.
That's not the issue. A member of a city commission should be free of
conflicts regarding the public's business. Fighting a years-long battle
over what the city says was an illegal business does not clear that
hurdle.
Tiago was issued a cease-and-desist order by the city several years ago
for his failure to obtain a special permit or coastal site plan
approval for a construction yard on the Seaview Avenue site, which
borders the Yellow Mill Channel. In 2007, Tiago went before the PZC
seeking to legalize the use of the property, but was denied.
It can be hard to find qualified, available people to serve on boards
and commissions who don't present some sort of conflict. Realtors,
builders, developers -- these are people who understand city planning,
and would do well to serve on a panel like the PZC. Almost anyone who
has done business in the area could potentially present a conflict, but
that shouldn't preclude everyone with experience from public service.
This goes too far. Zoning rules exist for a reason, and someone who
flagrantly flouted the rules over a period of years does not belong in
a position to enforce those same rules, even if it does not legally
disqualify him.
The city could have found someone with experience and a good working
relationship with zoners. Instead, we get one more example of how
progress in Bridgeport will always be a long, hard slog.
Finances threatening downtown
renewal
BILL CUMMINGS bcummings@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 02/23/2008 11:57:51 PM EST
Despite the sudden loss of financing for the first new downtown condo
construction in decades, the city remains confident nearly $2 billion
worth of similar projects now on the table will not suffer the same
fate.
Whether those projects go forward is a serious issue considering the
city is betting its economic future on becoming a shopping and bedroom
community for urban-friendly commuters, empty-nesters and others. A
sense of foreboding seeped across the city's business community
recently after word spread that Bridgeport Developer Phillip Kuchma had
lost $18 million in financing from Citibank for an 84-unit, low-rise
project now under construction downtown, off Fairfield Avenue.
"It's not good," said Paul Timpanelli, president of the Bridgeport
Regional Business Council. "It sent ripples. To have actual work and
evidence of private investment now at risk, when you see that laid
open, it makes people stop and say there really is a problem here,"
Timpanelli said.
Kuchma and the city believe the construction loan was pulled because of
the national subprime lending crisis and huge drop in the housing
market. Kuchma is now seeking tax breaks from the city, which he says
will help reduce sale costs and prompt other lenders to finance the
building. As Kuchma struggles to complete his $24 million
residential project, three similar, although much larger, residential
projects are now nearing the construction phase, which means they will
soon need financing. Those projects represent about $2 billion worth of
investment in the city, and are expected to be a catalyst for
Bridgeport's long-awaited revival.
The ventures include the $1.5 billion plan to redevelop Steel Point
along the waterfront into a community of condos, shops and other
features; a $225 million plan to build condos, apartments and stores
next to the city's baseball stadium; and ultra luxury condos planned
for waterfront property where the Remington shaver plant once operated
in the South End.
There are other smaller-scale plans as well, all of which center on
housing and will need financing. The city expects its downtown
developer, Eric Anderson of Urban Home Builders, to convert over a
dozen unused buildings into hundreds of new apartments and
storefronts. Anderson, who has already moved tenants into the
former Citytrust bank building, said banks are pulling the plug on new
condo loans, at least for now. But Anderson said the credit crunch will
not last long.
"Right now, the condo market is in disarray. The banks have lost a lot
of liquidity in the sub-prime market. No one is doing condo financing.
It just fell off the cliff," Anderson said.
But Anderson said financing for rental apartments has not been affected
so far. He predicted the condo market will eventually turn around, it's
just a matter of when.
"We are in a moment and the moment will pass," Anderson said.
Anderson urged the city council to approve Kuchma's requested tax cuts,
saying his success, or failure, will impact projects now on the table.
Anderson said by the time the larger redevelopment efforts, like the
Steel Point plan, require financing — sometime in the next year or two
— the credit problem will have dissipated. Mayor Bill Finch
agreed with Anderson's assessment, and said the city's biggest
developer, Rex Midtown LLC, is proceeding with its massive Steel Point
project.
"I'm not concerned. It's a large scale project that will be built and
sold over time. It will be several business cycles before its fully
underway," Finch said.
"Midtown is a well financed company. If they were more dependent on
outside capitol, I would be more concerned," Finch said.
The Steel Point plan involves some 3,000 high-end condos, along with
dozens of stores, restaurants, marina slips, hotel rooms, theaters and
other features.
The mayor said work on Kuchma's low rise building is continuing. "He's
using his own money right now," Finch said.
Daniel Pfeffer, president of Rex Midtown, did not return calls seeking
comment. A representative from Canyon Johnson, the lead developer for
the collection of condos and shops proposed for the former Pequonnock
apartment property by the baseball stadium, also did not respond to
calls.
Timpanelli said the bad times will recede, but added the cost is likely
to be delays. "It will have the impact of slowing down projects with a
residential component. I was betting on a 2008 ground breaking for
Steel Point. Now it will probably be 2009," Timpanelli said.
Finch said officials with Rex Midtown are working with his staff to
complete an interlocal agreement by summer. That agreement will lead to
creation of a special taxing district and the sale of some $190 million
in bonds to fund infrastructure needs on Steel Point. Still, the
mayor said Rex Midtown recently pushed the panic button over whether
Bank of America, which is expected to purchase the $190 million in
bonds and sell them to other investors, was still onboard.
"They were concerned about what the market would do, if the TIFF would
work. But they now say it's not a problem," Finch explained.
The term "TIFF" stands for tax incremental financing. The $190 million
in bonds are to be repaid by diverting a portion of new real estate
taxes generated on Steel Point
Citing further evidence that Steel Point remains on track, Finch said
he recently met with the state's Department of Environmental Protection
to discuss Rex Midtown's need to fill in several small sections of the
waterline around Steel Point so bulkhead repairs can be completed, and
a five-acre waterfront park created.
"I would not waste my time talking to the DEP about that if the project
was not proceeding," Finch said.
Meanwhile, Anderson said he's gearing up for the next phase of his
downtown rental project, which is renovating a block north of the
courthouse on Main Street. He did not expect problems obtaining
financing. Much of Anderson's project so far has been fueled by
complicated housing tax credits, which are sold to banks. He said
tenants will begin occupying a building at the corner of Golden Hill
and Main Streets next month. Work continues on the former Arcade Hotel
on Main Street to create new apartments and stores, he said.
Primary: 105 Extra
Votes Cast
CT POST
Associated Press
June 16, 2008
BRIDGEPORT — - In Bridgeport's contentious Democratic mayoral primary
last year, 105 more votes were cast than there were voters who checked
in at polling places, according to an examination by the Connecticut
Post.
Bill Finch, then a state senator, defeated state Rep. Christopher
Caruso by 270 votes of about 9,000 cast to win the party nomination. He
was elected in November.
Caruso quickly appealed his Sept. 11 primary loss in Superior Court,
claiming that numerous election laws were violated. The judge dismissed
his case, and he was rebuffed in an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Following the newspaper's ballot count, which was reported Sunday,
Caruso told the Connecticut Post he believes ballots were passed
illegally through voting machines to increase his opponent's vote.
"I've said from the beginning that this election was stolen," he said.
"You only needed a few votes to swing that election one way or the
other. When you put it all together, there was a conspiracy between the
Democratic town committee, supporters of Finch and a willing registrar
of voters."
City officials say the primary was fair, the results were accurate and
that Finch legitimately won.
"The vote is accurate. I'm really, really sure of that," said Santa
Ayala, the Democratic registrar of voters, who ran the election.
Finch said he's confident there were no significant problems in the
election.
"As determined by the state Supreme Court, the minor irregularities in
this primary were no different from any other election under either the
new or old voting systems," the mayor said.
Adam Joseph, a spokesman for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz,
said it's not unusual to find a few more votes than voters in a given
polling place because poll workers make mistakes such as forgetting to
cross out the name of a voter who was given a ballot.
But he said the discrepancy found by the newspaper was too large to be
considered "usual" and easily attributed to simple mistakes. He
declined to comment further, citing an investigation by the state
Elections Commission.
A spokeswoman for the Elections Commission confirmed that an
investigation is continuing but declined to give details.
Caruso said the results of the primary could not be trusted because of
dozens of alleged violations of election law.
The Post calculated the 105 additional votes by counting the number of
voters who checked in at each of Bridgeport's 23 polling places and
comparing it with the "machine count" of ballots.
Conn. Supreme Court upholds results of
Bridgeport mayoral primary
DAY
Posted on Feb 19, 11:46 AM EST
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court has declined to
overturn the results of Bridgeport's Democratic mayoral primary because
of a candidate's claim of voting irregularities.
Former State Sen. Bill Finch won the September primary and went on to
win the November general election. He has been serving as mayor since
December.
State Rep. Christopher Caruso, another Democratic primary candidate,
filed a court appeal after he lost the September primary to Finch by
270 votes out of about 9,000 cast.
In a decision released Tuesday, the seven Supreme Court justices
declined to overturn a lower court ruling and order a new primary.
They say Caruso did not meet the heavy burden of proving that
understaffed polling places, alleged poll worker bias and other
irregularities placed the results of the election seriously in doubt.
Messages seeking comment have been left with Finch and Caruso.
Finch studies selling City Hall
BILL CUMMINGS Bcummings@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 02/10/2008 04:29:35 PM EST
BRIDGEPORT — Mayor Bill Finch is thinking about selling off city
property — probably the biggest sale ever.
As Finch settles into his new job, the mayor is studying whether it
makes sense to sell city buildings, including City Hall on Lyon Terrace
and City Hall Annex on Broad Street, and an assortment of other
facilities scattered around town.
At the same time, Finch is considering building a new government center
that, with the sale of the two major municipal office complexes, would
be designed to bring all city officials and agencies under one roof.
Municipal offices are spread between three downtown buildings — the
annex, City Hall and McLevy Hall at State and Broad streets.
Another major city-owned asset that may be on the block is Sikorsky
Memorial Airport in Stratford. Acquisition of the airport is something
Stratford would seriously like to explore, Stratford Mayor James R.
Miron said last week, and Finch has agreed to discuss the proposition
with Miron.
According to Finch, selling city office properties would return the
buildings to tax rolls and allow private developers to convert them
into money-making enterprises, such as stores or housing. The new
tax revenue generated by such redevelopment could be used to pay for a
new government center that could house all major city functions, from
the mayor's office to the Office of Vital Statistics, where birth and
death certificates are stored.
The mayor said a possible location for a new government
center is Congress Plaza, a tract of city-owned property in northern
downtown, near the old Majestic and Palace theaters on Main Street. The
city seized the property years ago for a courthouse that was not funded
by the state.
The Finch plan envisions either the city owning the new
government center or having a private developer build the facility and
lease it to the city. A lease arrangement would relieve the city of
having to pay upkeep and maintenance on the building.
"Everything is on the table," Finch said.
"We are looking at the big picture. It could be all the
buildings or one or two. I want to move toward a leaner, greener city
government."
Part of the motivation to sell properties is that many
municipal buildings are old and in need of repair. The buildings are
also inefficient in terms of modern heating and air-conditioning
systems, and lack "green," or ecologically friendly technology, which
could save money over the long run and help the environment. Roof
repairs alone at various city buildings are estimated at over $10
million, according to a recent internal study.
"This mayor is very green and looking at more efficient
buildings," Michael Feeney, the city's finance director and former
chief of staff.
"Lyon Terrace is very old and with the annex, there is a
disconnect with City Hall. It's not very efficient. We need one City
Hall," Feeney said.
Finch said the discussion is "preliminary" and no plans are
in the works to sell anything. Still, he said it's worth looking at the
buildings and determining whether it's feasible to sell some or all,
and build a new government center. Finch pointed out that private
developers could obtain grants and other funding sources to redevelop
facilities like City Hall on Lyon Terrace for other uses, such as
affordable housing. That building, in fact, was not built for office
but as a school — and had been Central High School before its
conversion in to City Hall.
"Lyon Terrace could be eligible for tax credits for
developers to build moderate-income housing. The public sector can't
get those credits. You could leverage millions in private investment,"
Finch said.
The City Hall Annex, he added, has never been suitable for
government use. The building was renovated at a cost of millions by
former Mayor Joseph P. Ganim, who moved the mayor's office from Lyon
Terrace to an opulent suite of offices that had once served as the
office for a bank president.
"That building is not built for public purposes. I think the
mayor's office is too opulent," Finch said.
Ganim also moved the city's economic development office, the
city attorney's office and office of policy and management to the
Annex. Among offices housed in the City Hall on Lyon Terrace is the tax
collector, town clerk, city clerk, building department, planning and
zoning department, purchasing department, tax assessor, finance
department and some Board of Education operations, such as the
superintendent's office. The registrar of voters and the vital
statistics office is at McLevy Hall.
Finch ticked off a list of benefits to his plan, including
cash gained from selling buildings, a reduction in upkeep expenses,
savings gained from new alternate energy sources and more efficient
buildings, additional tax revenue and more affordable housing for the
community. The idea of selling the City Hall Annex to a developer
willing to convert it into stores, offices or housing is not new. state
Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, pledged to sell the former bank
when he ran against Finch last summer during the Democratic mayoral
primary.
City Council member Robert Walsh, D-132, said he would sell
the annex and return city government to City Hall on Lyon Terrace,
where he said it belongs.
"There's your metro center. I would sell the annex if I
could. I've said that for a couple of years. You go through [the annex]
and there is too much space," he said.
But Walsh said constructing a new government center would
cost too much. "It doesn't make sense."
Finch said he's included all city departments in the
discussion, and recently had a meeting with Supt. of Schools John
Ramos. The superintendent's office is on the third floor of City Hall
on Lyon Terrace, occupying a suite once used by former Ganim. However,
most of the school system's other administrative office are housed in
another former bank building on Main Street. The mayor promised to
release the results of his deliberations in the near future.
Finch names Nunn Bridgeport CAO
BILL CUMMINGS bcummings@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 12/06/2007 11:31:05 AM EST
BRIDGEPORT — Mayor Bill Finch on Tuesday named former Monroe First
Selectman Andrew Nunn as the city's new chief administrative
officer. Finch also announced that he has filled 11 other
positions in city government. In keeping with tradition, Finch, after
being sworn in on Saturday, asked all staff who serve at the mayor's
pleasure to tender resignations.
"I'm pleased to announce this incredibly talented group of people to
lead my administration and the staff of the mayor's office," Finch said.
Nunn opted not to seek re-election this year as Monroe's first
selectman, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family after
serving for six years. As first selectman, he presided over a $70
million town budget.
The chief administrative officer is probably the second most powerful
position in city government. The office runs day-to-day operations and
coordinates the various departments.
Other staff appointments announced on Tuesday include:
? Michael Feeney as the city's finance director. Feeney served as chief
administrative officer for former Mayor John M. Fabrizi and previously
served as town manager in Stratford. He will earn $114,000 a year.
? Adam Wood as chief of staff. Wood helped run Finch's mayoral campaign
and has worked with Finch's state Senate staff for years. He will earn
$105,069 a year.
? Kaitlin Lesnick as press secretary. Lesnick served as spokeswoman for
Finch's campaign. She will earn $44,378 a year.
The following positions were also announced: Ruben Filipe, deputy chief
of staff; Rina Bakalar, federal government liaison; Michele Mount,
director of legislative affairs; Tyrone McClain, director of
constituent services; Chris Rosario, constituent services; Shurley
Lazarus, executive assistant; Lydia Johnson, administrative assistant,
and Rebecca Cabanas, receptionist.
Wood, the new chief of staff, said none of the assignments represent
new jobs or additional jobs within the mayor's office. He said in some
cases titles were changed to more accurately reflect duties, and said
the mayor's office is slightly under its authorized budget.
The new mayor has not announced who will be public facilities director
or director of the office of policy and management. Lesnick said those
positions will be filled in the coming weeks.
In announcing Tuesday's hires, Finch repeated his pledge to make
Bridgeport the "cleanest, greenest, safest and most affordable city. I
look forward to working with them over the next few years to accomplish
the mission."
The new mayor said he has met with the city's police and fire chiefs
and the school superintendent. He said he also scheduled ethics
training for his staff and new appointments and called developers
working in the city to remind them that economic development is a
priority for the administration.
Bridgeport redevelopment deal could miss deadline
DAY
Posted on Aug 24, 5:40 PM EDT
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) -- Bridgeport's Steel Point redevelopment
project appears to be in jeopardy, but the mayor said he believes the
deal to build the $1.5 billion waterfront complex is still alive and
well.
The city and its Steel Point developer, Rex Midtown, are set to miss a
crucial deadline next week to begin the process of selling $190 million
worth of bonds to help finance infrastructure improvements at the
50-acre peninsula site, the Connecticut Post reported in its Sunday
edition.
Missing the deadline means the city and Rex Midtown, a New York and
Miami real estate partnership, will technically be in violation of a
land-disposition agreement adopted by the City Council last fall for
the project.
"I realize we are up against a deadline, and it will be difficult to
meet at this time. But I've been meeting with the developers and I'm
encouraged," Mayor William Finch told the newspaper. "They are talking
about retail clients."
Rex Midtown has proposed turning Steel Point into a mix of waterfront
shops, offices and 3,500 luxury condominiums. The project also calls
for a hotel, conference center, marina and boardwalk that would be
built in phases over 10 years.
City officials said it has been difficult to sell the type of bonds the
developer plans to sell because of the poor economy.
The bonds will ultimately be repaid by diverting a portion of new real
estate taxes generated on the site. The financing arrangement was
approved by the General Assembly several years ago instead of a direct
state grant.
The city and state have been working for many years to develop the
peninsula.
City Council President Tom McCarthy said he's not giving up on the
project.
"We can't sell the bonds if the market does not want it. The market is
calling the shots," he said. "I'm confident Steel Point is a sure bet
over the long run. The market will turn around. There is money to be
made here."
Trial
begins over failed $1 billion Bridgeport development
plan
DAY
Posted on Mar 5, 8:01 AM EST
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) -- A trial has begun in Waterbury Superior Court
that features conspiracy allegations against former Bridgeport Mayor
Joseph Ganim and others in connection with a failed $1 billion
waterfront development proposal.
R. Bartley Halloran, a lawyer for developer Alex Conroy, told a
six-member jury on Tuesday that Ganim and his associates derailed
Conroy's Bridgeport Harbour Place project in 1998 so that development
of the Steel Point property could be handed over to others who promised
kickbacks.
Craig Raabe, a lawyer for Bridgeport, countered that Conroy's plans
could never have become reality because they were too ambitious for
financiers and tenants.
Ganim is serving a nine-year prison sentence for corruption.
Conroy is suing Ganim, Bridgeport and five other defendants, including
Fairfield real estate developers Alfred Lenoci Sr. and Alfred Lenoci
Jr. FBI reports say the Lenocis, who were convicted in the city's
corruption scandal, promised kickbacks of $1 for every square foot they
developed in Bridgeport.
The
Steel Point Saga
By KATHLEEN SCHASSLER
Special To The Courant
November 13, 2007
The long and painful struggle to turn one of Bridgeport's worst
waterfront areas into a swanky urban community is now closer to reality
than it has been in nearly three decades.
After more than two years of negotiations and a string of failed
attempts by other developers since the early 1980s the city council in
the Park City agreed last week to sell 52 acres on the Steel Point
peninsula to a New York developer with a grand, $1.5 billion vision for
economic revival.
Midtown Equities LLC envisions 3,500 luxury condominiums and townhouses
facing Bridgeport Harbor along with stores, restaurants, a waterfront
esplanade, a 350-slip marina and yacht club and perhaps a hotel and
office space.
SteelPoint Harbor would change the city's skyline and encompass more
than 7 million square feet. It would give rise to a development of
multistoried buildings including gleaming residential towers and create
an area nearly the size of downtown Bridgeport.
The project, is expected to get under way next year, after all zoning
approvals are secured and financing is finalized, and take a decade to
complete. Though Midtown investors are committing $1.5 billion to the
project, local property taxes generated from the site will repay $190
million in bonds the developer will sell for extensive roadwork and
utility upgrades.
Along with the road and utility work, a shopping center with major
tenants and a smaller "Main Street"-style shopping village will be the
first to be built. In addition, some housing on the waterfront will be
constructed to establish the now-desolate area as a destination.
It is hoped that a higher profile will later fuel the construction of
nearly 175,000 square feet of office space and a hotel and conference
center.
Eventually, a 3,500-space public parking garage would back up to I-95,
cushioning the development from the noise of passing motorists.
Grand Plan, Rough Road
In the final months before last week's vote, Midtown Equities and the
city administration faced opposition from housing advocates who said
the development plans were too upscale. While the plans call for 50
moderately priced units on Steel Point and another 250 scattered around
the city, housing advocates said more should be on Steel Point. That,
they said, would better replace the homes of 300 low- and
moderate-income families that were taken by eminent domain in the 1990s
to prepare for redevelopment. Once, more streets in Steel Point were
lined with Victorian-style houses.
Midtown Equities and the city won out last week, however, with a vision
for a development that could put Bridgeport back on the map as a
credible place for economic development. Steel Point could eventually
generate $30 million annually in taxes.
Daniel Pfeffer, president of Midtown Equities, said he believes the
past string of failed plans at Steel Point "actually hurt" the current
process by creating "a tremendous amount of skepticism" to overcome.
Midtown Equities was jubilant at last week's approval, in which the
city agreed to sell the land for $4.5 million and the developer agreed
to conditions for developing the land. Those conditions include
shouldering costs for cleaning up contaminated soil, guaranteeing tax
revenues and paying monetary penalties if some conditions aren't met.
"We're still celebrating here," Pfeffer said. "The most difficult part
was getting to this stage. It's been very emotional for so many people."
The debate over the development opened years-old wounds inflicted when
the homes on Steel Point were taken and bulldozed all except one that
some are still fighting to preserve because it was the home of
Bridgeport's only Baseball Hall of Fame member, James Henry O'Rourke.
Janice Kelly lived in that house, where she provided transitional
housing for abused women and children. She remembers well how the Steel
Point community was torn apart in the late 1990s.
Not only were families displaced and scattered, but a half-dozen
businesses, including the La Famile restaurant, were relocated. The
restaurant went out of business three years after it was relocated
downtown.
Kelly knows that it's impossible to go back, but she shed a tear Monday
visiting the site at the request of The Courant, remembering her plans
for a playground on a lot next door to her house and a towering pine
she lit every year at the holidays.
She maintains the housing once occupied by homeowners and tenants of
modest means should be replaced. She says she hopes the developers will
keep their promises, but she's learned to be skeptical.
"They say this is going to turn out to be a blessing for Bridgeport,"
Kelly said. "But so often we believe and trust and later we find out
the very thing someone said they would do, they don't do. Let's hope
it's not all talk."
Detours and Dead Ends
The recent road to victory was earlier paved by costly detours and dead
ends. The failures were blamed on city bureaucracy, bad timing,
unworkable ideas, political corruption in the city and an economic
slump.
Mostly, the proposals were for a combination of housing, shops,
restaurants and other amenities. In 1995, then-Gov. John G. Rowland
supported a failed bid to build a casino on the site.
Between 1983 and 1994, The Sterling Group Ltd. struggled to bring its
$700 million Harbor Pointe project to life, wrestling with how to
acquire all the properties on Steel Point needed for the development,
including the homes.
Woven throughout the area's history also is the taint of political
conflict and corruption.
One of the first was a conflict of interest charge involving Thomas
Corso, then Mayor Leonard Paoletta's aide on economic development.
Corso was simultaneously working as the Sterling project manager for
the Harbor Pointe project when political opponents cried foul during
the 1985 mayoral election.
From 1985-89, with Thomas Bucci as mayor, a new feasibility study of
Harbor Pointe was ordered raising eyebrows with its $800,000 price tag
to determine whether the city would renegotiate or terminate its
contract with Sterling. But ongoing uncertainty about UI's plans for
its Steel Point power plant, and an impending financial crisis in the
city combined to halt progress.
In 1994, two years after former Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was elected,
Harbor Pointe was scrapped to make way for the $1 billion Harbour Place.
Though the city started acquiring property, Harbour Place developer
Alex Conroy, of Greenwich, had three financial partners back out of the
project between 1997 and 2000. The city eventually pulled the plug on
Harbour Place.
Though the lack of money was initially thought responsible for this
failure, Conroy later sued a string of businesses and individuals in
the region for breach of contract and unfair trade practices. This
lawsuit came after Ganim, a five-term mayor, was convicted of 16 counts
of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, extortion, mail fraud,
bribery, conspiracy and filing false income tax returns.
Conroy claimed Ganim repeatedly suggested that he team with United
Properties one of the firms from which Ganim was convicted of steering
city contracts in return for $500,000 in favors. Conroy refused.
Under Mayor John Fabrizi, the past four years has set the stage for
SteelPoint. The city has regained its financial footings and attracted
developer interest downtown for housing and entertainment projects.
Putting The Pieces Together
Midtown Equities, which has similar projects in Baltimore and Miami,
played a key role in jump-starting long-stalled negotiations to acquire
critical property on the harbor viewed as essential to the project's
success.
Cobbling together property for the project has depended heavily on
$38.6 million set aside by the state bond commission.
Most recently, the city paid $14.9 million using $8.5 million in state
bond funds to purchase property owned by the United Illuminating Co.
that was once a power plant. And soon it is expected that the city will
finalize a deal to purchase the Pequonnock Yacht Club, giving Midtown
control of the waterfront.
"For 15, 20 years they've [the city] tried to assemble these
properties," Pfeffer said.
It appeared the city was headed toward court with another property
owner, the Tallmadge Bros. oyster-harvesting company. But Midtown
helped strike a deal with the company, which has been located on the
harbor for more than 100 years, to move to another location on the
peninsula.
Tallmadge will continue to run its "beautiful, phenomenal" oyster
operation at SteelPoint Harbor, Pfeffer said.
Pfeffer sees SteelPoint Harbor as key in making Bridgeport a
destination, both from land and water. He hopes the new marina and
yacht club will be a draw for pleasure boaters traveling along the East
Coast.
Views across Bridgeport Harbor aren't unobstructed and include a
recently renovated shipbuilding yard and a coal-burning power plant.
Pfeffer said those landscapes aren't unusual in an urban waterfront
area. He said he may suggest the power plant be lit up at night to turn
it into a harbor icon.
"Something," Pfeffer said, "like they would do in Brooklyn."
Courant Staff Writer Kenneth R.
Gosselin contributed to this story. Kathleen Schassler is a
free-lance writer living in Southington. Copyright © 2007,
The Hartford Courant
Bridgeport
Harbor plans stuck in the sand
JOHN BURGESON jburgeson@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 11/05/2007 12:04:16 AM EST
BRIDGEPORT — How much is 800,000 cubic yards of mud?
It's enough to fill 57,000 huge four-axle, 14-yard dump trucks.
It's also the amount of sediment that has to be removed from Bridgeport
Harbor to carve out its "authorized" depth of 35 feet, as opposed to
the 30 feet it now has.
And according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, getting rid of the
harbor bottom's sand and silt will present a significant challenge in
both engineering and effort.
"The material in the harbor is unsuitable for ocean disposal," said
Mike Keegan, project manager for the corps' New England District.
He said that because of the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuary
Act, or MPRSA, finding a place to deposit all of that muck, which is
full of pollutants, will first mean digging a hole elsewhere within the
harbor's breakwater that has "suitable material."
After this cleaner material — about 1 million cubic yards' worth — is
deposited beyond the breakwater out in Long Island Sound, the
unsuitable material can then be dumped in the hole and capped over.
"So all together, you have to move 1.8 million cubic yards of material
from one place to another," Keegan said.
The hole — which would be called a "confined aquatic disposal cell," or
CAD cell — cannot be located outside the breakwater, he said. To
complicate matters, it won't be easy to find a place to dig that hole
because of the nature of the harbor bottom, which is mostly bedrock.
"We've been looking at a lot of ledge material," he said.
To date, according to the Army Corps, a suitable location hasn't been
found for the CAD cell.
The corps' official report, dated Sept. 30, said: "Investigations
completed today have not identified a suitable CAD cell location."
Still, Keegan said that a proper CAD cell location could eventually be
found. But, he added, that the president's 2008 budget did not include
the $500,000 that would be needed for this research work, which
involves drilling and analyzing core samples.
"That would be up to Congress," he said.
The actual cost of the dredging will be about $25 million, Keegan said.
Some months ago, the city asked the corps to perform "maintenance
dredging" of its harbor, which set in motion a lengthy process of
figuring out what to do with the huge volume of dredged material that
would result.
"Unfortunately, disposal on land isn't much of an option, either," he
said, adding that at least some of the $25 million cost would have to
be borne by state or local sources.
Mayor John M. Fabrizi said that $25 million dredging operation would
"essentially be a state project" that would be funded jointly by the
corps and the state.
"The harbor is essential to the city," Fabrizi said. "We have a number
of projects in the works — Steel Point is only one of several — that
require a harbor." MPRSA is often referred to as the Ambro Amendment.
It's named after named after the late U.S. Rep. Jerome Ambro, a
three-term Democrat who represented New York's Nassau and Suffolk
counties between 1974 and 1979.
Although it is complex legislation, Keegan said that it essentially
means that all of Long Island Sound falls under the aegis of
Connecticut, New York and federal environment regulations.
Finch to resign Senate seat
BILL CUMMINGS bcummings@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 01/19/2008 12:42:37 AM EST
BRIDGEPORT — It's finally just Mayor Bill Finch.
The city's recently elected chief executive on Friday announced he will
resign his state Senate seat when Tuesday's special session of the
state General Assembly concludes.
Finch has been the target for a stream of criticism for holding onto
his Senate seat after he took office as mayor Dec. 1. He repeatedly
vowed to decide whether to leave the Senate once the state Supreme
Court ruled on an appeal of the Sept. 11 Democratic primary that led to
his victory in November's general election.
The state's highest court has yet to decide whether to overturn the
primary, but Finch on Friday said it's time to resign from the Senate.
"While I am taking a personal risk in making this decision prior to the
final Supreme Court ruling, I do this to put the interest of the
citizens of Bridgeport and those of the 22nd Senate District ahead of
my own," said Finch, a Democrat. He said his resignation is
effective at the conclusion of the special legislative session
scheduled to begin Tuesday and end later that day. The session is
dedicated to criminal justice reforms.
Finch said a special election for his seat will be held in about 45
days, and a new senator should be in place by the last month of the
regular legislative session, which begins in February. He said the last
month of a legislative session is the most important time, when many of
the major issues are voted on.
The 22nd Senate District includes a portion of Bridgeport, as well as
Trumbull and Monroe.
The mayor's resignation as a senator is expected to unleash a
free-for-all to succeed him. The winner of the special election,
expected in mid-March, will serve until November, when the term expires
and all of the state's legislative offices are up for a vote.
Possible Democratic candidates include former Bridgeport City Council
member Thomas Mulligan, a lawyer, and Hector Diaz Jr., a former state
representative from Bridgeport.
Potential Republican candidates include Rob Russo, chairman of the
Bridgeport Republican Town Committee; state Rep. T.R Rowe, of Trumbull,
and state Rep. DebraLee Hovey, of Monroe.
During a press conference Friday, Finch took a shot at state Rep.
Christopher Caruso, who he beat in the Democratic primary. Caruso had
appealed the hard-fought primary's result to the state Supreme Court,
arguing city election officials violated so many state laws that the
outcome could not be trusted and should be overturned. Finch won
the September primary over Caruso by 270 votes.
"That court case has persisted in endless appeals, costing the
taxpayers of our city and state tens of thousands of dollars, while
selfishly and improperly casting a pall on the city and the people of
Bridgeport," he said.
"But if I were to defer my decision any longer than today, despite the
fact that my opponent's latest appeal has not been resolved, I would
put the 22nd District at risk without this vital representation," he
added.
Caruso took issue with Finch's statement and took his own shot at the
new mayor, saying, "If it was a fair and honest election, we would not
be in court. There are over 20 violations of mandatory election law.
That's why the Supreme Court took the case and why the State Elections
Enforcement Commission launched an independent investigation."
Caruso also said, "I never told Mr. Finch to lie to the people of
Bridgeport. He promised if elected he would resign. I'm sorry if he's
upset that we have to hold elected officials accountable to their own
words."
Trumbull First Selectman Raymond Baldwin and Monroe First Selectman Tom
Buzi, both Democrats, attended the press conference and praised Finch
for his decision. Council members in both towns have discussed
resolutions calling on Finch to resign his Senate seat, saying he could
not effectively represent their town's interests and those of
Bridgeport at the same time. Baldwin had directly called on Finch to
resign.
"This has been a long issue and I'm glad Bill made a decision. He has a
big job and if the past is pre-lude, he will do a great job for the
city," Buzi said.
"Bill understands his responsibilities lie with the Bridgeport. This
exemplifies his good judgment," Baldwin said.
State Sen. Edwin Gomes, D-Bridgeport, who sits next to Finch in the
state Senate's roundtable format, said he will miss his colleague.
"I will miss seeing Bill there. He has been a good and productive
senator. If he's as good a mayor as he was a senator, Bridgeport will
prosper," he said.
Finch said he will now focus on Bridgeport's pressing needs, including
economic development, expanding the tax base, reducing the city's
carbon footprint, professionalizing city government and improving
education.
Court
denies Caruso election appeal
MARIAN GAIL BROWN mgbrown@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 12/24/2007 05:09:28 PM EST
The Connecticut Supreme Court delivered some Christmas coal to state
Rep. Christopher Caruso and his Bridgeport City Council running mate
Monday, slapping down the mayoral hopeful's bid to cancel the city's
general election on procedural grounds.
But that doesn't mean Caruso's bid to unseat Bridgeport Mayor Bill
Finch is dead — a fact that even Finch seems mindful of. The justices'
decision addresses the statutory route and pleading rules Caruso and
Toyka Simmons-Cook used to reach the state's top court. The court must
still decide whether decisions made by election officials affected the
outcome of the Democratic Party primary.
"I'm very optimistic. It may be a joyous New Year after all. This case
has not been decided on its merits yet," Caruso said after consulting
with his lawyer, Thomas J. Weihing. "This just leaves me where I was on
Nov. 30th," when the justices "heard oral arguments. They can still
decide to overturn the primary and order a new election."
Twice, Weihing used the wrong statute to get Simmons-Cook and Caruso's
case into court on an expedited basis — an issue the city of Bridgeport
used in an unsuccessful attempt to get the primary challenge tossed out
by claiming the court lacked "subject matter jurisdiction."
Weihing did not return calls seeking comment.
"The plaintiff argued at the hearing on the motion that there was no
need for him to file the motion to stay in this court, or the motion
for postponement of the general election in the trial court because
[Practice Book section] 61-11 automatically had stayed the city's
general election for mayor," Chief Justice Chase Rogers said in an
opinion for the court.
"We conclude, however, that the automatic stay provisions did not
operate to postpone the general election for mayor. Because the
plaintiff did not request in his second amended complaint an order
temporarily enjoining the election pending final resolution of his
claims, nothing in the proceedings before the trial court or in the
trial court's judgment in favor of the defendants affirmatively
provided relief ordering the city to hold the election as scheduled, or
indeed, affected the election in any manner."
"More fundamentally," Rogers continued, "the plaintiff has provided no
authority for the proposition that this court, or indeed, any court,
may postjudgment order a form of relief that was not requested in the
underlying complaint. Where the procedure used by the plaintiff is of a
special statutory nature ... not only must the plaintiff pursue his
remedy in strict conformity with the statute but the judge may go no
further in extending relief than that outlined in the statute."
In a two-sentence statement, Finch said he was "pleased with the
reasoning of the state Supreme Court on the motion [to] stay the
[general] election argued on November 5," seeing the decision as a
preview to a later one on the merits.
"I await with confidence the final ruling of the court," Finch said.
Assistant City Attorney Arthur Laske III, who represented Bridgeport,
its Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala and other election
officers, agreed the Supreme Court decision "only deals with the first
day's arguments."
"What this opinion is saying is that they didn't like Caruso's
arguments on procedural grounds," Laske said. "Procedurally, from the
beginning, this case has been in the wrong place, proceeding under the
wrong theory. And we got that impression from the bench that [first]
day" before the Supreme Court. They weren't impressed."
At the end of the September Democratic primary for mayor, state Sen.
Finch bested Caruso by 270 votes of the nearly 9,000 ballots cast. To
trigger a mandatory recount under Connecticut election law, the spread
between their tallies would have had to be less than 20 votes or one
half of 1 percent, which would have amounted to 47 votes.
In his lawsuit to overturn the primary results, Caruso claims that
Ayala violated at least two dozen election laws. For a judge to
invalidate an election, a candidate has to show that there was an error
in the vote count or an election official made substantial erroneous
"rulings" — interpretations of election law that call the reliability
of the results into question.
In Caruso's and Simmons-Cook's original lawsuit, a trial judge decided
that Ayala's actions in the days leading up the Democratic primary,
during it and afterward, were not rulings under the statutory scheme
envisioned by lawmakers because her decisions did not interpret
Connecticut law or resolve a legal dispute.
Caruso's lawyer contends that Ayala's "decision to ignore" certain
election laws is tantamount to making a ruling.
High
Court Explains Ruling On Vote; Bridgeport Mayoral Candidate Was
Denied A Postponement Of The General Election
Hartford Courant
By SUSAN HAIGH | Associated Press
December 25, 2007
The state Supreme Court on Monday said it didn't have the authority to
postpone last month's general election in Bridgeport while Rep. Chris
Caruso challenged the results of the Democratic mayoral primary.
The opinion authored by Supreme Court Chief Justice Chase Rogers was
filed Monday, nearly two months after the justices heard arguments and
ruled against Caruso on Election Day.
Explaining why the court declined to postpone the election, Rogers
wrote that the court could not grant Caruso a stay because the election
is not a court function. "It is clear ... the plaintiff actually was
seeking an original order of injunctive relief from this court," Rogers
wrote. "Whether an election should be enjoined pending appeal of a
matter potentially affecting the election, however, involves questions
of fact that this court is not competent to address in the first
instance."
The opinion does not address Caruso's request to overturn the Sept. 11
Democratic mayor primary.
"We're still waiting for that opinion," said John P. Bohannon Jr.,
attorney for current Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch.
Finch, a former state senator, defeated Caruso by 270 of about 9,000
votes in the September primary. Finch went on to defeat six others in
the general election and was sworn in as mayor of Connecticut's largest
city earlier this month.
Caruso has claimed there were numerous voting irregularities,
violations of election laws, and a major shortage of poll workers that
should not be ignored.
On Monday, the state legislator said he remains hopeful that the
justices will rule in his favor. He was buoyed by the fact the justices
are taking time to consider the case.
"There may be a joyous new year after all," Caruso said.
But Bohannon said he believes the Supreme Court will ultimately dismiss
the matter.
"He's not complaining about anything that made any difference in the
outcome of the election," Bohannon said. "It's only a matter of time
until his claims are rejected."
Bridgeport Election Will Go Forward
BY LYNNE TUOHY | The Hartford Courant
5:00 PM EST, November 5, 2007
The state Supreme Court this afternoon unanimously denied Bridgeport
State Rep. Christopher Caruso's request to postpone the city's
municipal election so he could challenge his loss to state Sen. William
Finch in the Democratic primary Sept. 11.
The high court, in it's two-paragraph order, did say it would hear the
appeal filed by Caruso and unsuccessful city council candidate Toyka
Simmons-Cook, alleging the primary was fraught with numerous polling
place violations and voting irregularities.
Caruso lost the primary to Finch by 270 votes out of more than 8,500
votes cast. Simmons-Cook lost by two votes to Richard Bonney.
"There were so many violations of mandatory statutes I
wouldn't have time to go through them all," said Attorney Thomas J.
Weihing, representing both Caruso and Simmons-Cook. While he charged
that there were insufficient polling place workers and 18 more ballots
countered than voters who had been checked in at one polling place,
Attorney John Bohannon Jr., representing Finch, argued there was no
evidence to support those claims.
The court's ruling came as little surprise to anyone who had attended
today's hearing.
During the two hours of arguments, the justices repeatedly expressed
skepticism that the appeal was properly before them, citing a panoply
of procedural issues involving jurisdiction and the court's authority
to postpone a general election under these circumstances. Nearly all of
the seven justices questioned what authority they had to halt a general
election, particularly after a lower court that heard the appeal had
validated the results of the primary.
Lawyers representing the City of Bridgeport, Fitch and the Secretary of
the State's office respectively argued that to let a primary challenge
result in postponement of a general election "would turn the law on its
head" and invite losing candidates to disrupt the electoral process.
Assistant Attorney General Perry Zinn Rowthorn, representing the
Secretary of the State's office, said an order that the mayoral race be
postponed would effectively postpone all Bridgeport races from being
decided today because there would be no time to prepare new ballots.
The new optical scan voting machines, he said, are programmed to read
all races, and could not be programmed to discount the mayoral race.
"If you postpone the election on the possibility Mr. Caruso prevailing,
there would be significant disruption," Rowthorn argued. "The practical
effect of any postponement of the mayoral election is that all races
would be postponed."
Attorney John C. King, representing Bridgeport, said the likelihood of
Caruso prevailing on appeal was "virtually zero."
"The irreparable harm of perhaps disenfranchising 64,000 potential
voters in Bridgeport is far greater than the harm to [Caruso,]" of
proceeding with the election, King said.
Caruso filed his challenged the primary results in Bridgeport Superior
Court Sept. 25--the last day of the 14-day period he had by law to do
so. Judge John F. Blawie heard from 23 witnesses during seven days of
trial. He denied Caruso's request that he order a new primary on Oct.
24, and certified the results of the primary to the Secretary of the
State's office. Although Blawie noted that the primary marked the first
election using the new paper ballot system and optical scanning, "the
discrepancies are not sufficient to change the results of an election."
Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers asked Weihing why he waited six days
after Blawie ruled to seek an expedited appeal before the Supreme Court.
"There were some serious monetary concerns about taking an appeal,"
Weihing replied. Attorney Arthur Laske, also representing the city,
echoed Rowthorn's concerns that the entire Bridgeport municipal
election would be jeopardized by a postponement of the mayoral race.
"It will affect the under ticket to eradicate the top of the ticket,"
Laske said. "It would be chaos."
Supreme Court rules that
Bridgeport election can go forward
DAY
Posted on Nov 5, 4:13 PM EST
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- The state attorney general says a ruling by the
state Supreme Court has allowed Bridgeport's mayoral election to be
held Tuesday, despite a candidate's claims of voting irregularities in
the Democratic primary.
Bridgeport state Rep. Christopher Caruso requested the delay after
losing the Democratic mayoral primary to state Sen. Bill Finch in
September.
Caruso contends voting irregularities tainted that election, which he
lost by 270 of 9,000 votes. A lower court judge dismissed Caruso's
claims last month.
A lawyer for the city said postponing Tuesday's mayoral election would
lead to chaos.
But Caruso's attorney said there were numerous irregularities that
needed to be reviewed, including claims that there weren't enough poll
workers and that more people voted than had signed in at one polling
place.
Caruso seeks to postpone
Bridgeport election
DAY
Posted on Nov 1, 6:51 AM EDT
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) -- Bridgeport State Rep. Christopher Caruso is
going to the highest court in the state in his bid to get on the
Bridgeport mayoral ballot.
Caruso lost the Sept. 11 Democratic mayoral primary to state Sen. Bill
Finch by 270 votes out of 9,000 ballots cast.
Last week, a Superior Court judge dismissed Caruso's lawsuit
challenging the results of the primary for mayor. Caruso has maintained
there were voting irregularities.
In his planned appeal to the state Supreme Court, Caruso is seeking to
postpone the Nov. 6 election in Bridgeport.
Caruso has claimed that city election officials improperly prevented
some voters from casting ballots and directed others to vote for Finch.
Candidates
close on development
goals
CT POST
BILL CUMMINGS
Article Last Updated: 09/02/2007 12:34:45 AM EDT
BRIDGEPORT — With high taxes and stagnant services on the minds of most
voters, no issue generates more attention in the state's largest city
than the pressing need to redevelop large portions of the community.
The two Democrats seeking the party's mayoral nomination during the
upcoming Sept. 11 primary — state Rep. Chris Caruso and party backed
candidate state Sen. Bill Finch — are generally offering similar views
on city redevelopment.
Both say they support the big ticket items now on the table, such as
the $1.2 billion plan to turn Steel Point along the waterfront into a
new community of stores, apartments, offices, marina slips, hotel rooms
and entertainment venues.
They also both support, at least generally, the hundreds of apartments,
new stores, restaurants and entertainment venues planned downtown.
Still, there are differences. Caruso said he's open to changing the
"mix" on Steel Point, and complains that Bridgeport is set to become a
"bedroom community" for Stamford and Norwalk. He said officials are
ignoring the need for affordable housing for working class families.
"I'm not coming in to implode development projects in the city. I will
work with what's started and add on, or expand. I want to see what we
can do to expand areas and grow the economic base," Caruso said.
Finch has worked on development issues for years, primarily as
president of the now defunct Bridgeport Economic Development Corp.,
which helped bring housing for
artists to the old Read's department store on Broad Street. Today, he
manages member relations for the Bridgeport Regional Business Council,
which supports current redevelopment plans.
Finch said he favors the plan to stake the future of downtown on
housing and entertainment. He acknowledged a need to retain jobs and
expand the city's industrial parks, and said he's interested in
bringing in new "green" technologies.
"I love economic development. It motivates me and has been a large
chunk of my life. We are doing it for jobs and tax relief," Finch said.
Finch said Caruso's support for ongoing projects masks his real belief
that downtown housing should take a back seat to offices and
businesses. Finch said large scale downtown office development sounds
good, but has not happened in decades, and is not likely to anytime
soon.
"A mayor has to have a reasonableness test. That's the difference. I've
known Caruso for 30 years and he has never been pro-development. Now he
has a newfound religion on large development," Finch said.
"What makes me nervous is all these developments are tenuous. and with
the drop in the markets it makes these projects less secure. Who has
the experience to do this. He has had a career of going to zoning
meetings and stopping things," Finch said.
Caruso said the Democratic Party is desperate to paint him as
anti-development.
"I'm a proponent of downtown housing, with mixed retail. I'd like to
see more retail and nightlife and entertainment. Maybe a film studio, a
recording studio and a high school for performing arts," Caruso said.
"Right now the political machine is holding on by the fingertips. They
are so nervous they will say and do whatever they can to mislead the
people of this city. They are distorting my economic development
record. All I can say is shame on them," he said. Finch said he's
proposing a new housing endowment fund to help build affordable
housing. He said developers would contribute to the fund each time they
chose luxury or high-end housing over affordable housing, and that
money could help build affordable units in the city, he said.
"I like the fact that we haven't built new housing in 20 or 30 years
and that the market is now building housing," Finch said.
Caruso said he supports Steel Point, but said he may seek to change
some of the details.
"I would negotiate the mix. We have to get the best advantages for
taxpayers. The plan was more office space and mixed use. Now its more
housing, with 3,100 units. Housing is important, but I want a balanced
program between jobs and economic development," Caruso said.
Finch said he would "slow down" and look for neighborhood level
development., while doing a better job of considering the impact of
projects on the community. Finch proposes a neighborhood development
office to guide projects and provide the same level of input as the
city's economic development director.
"We need a little more balance between big projects and neighborhood
projects," Finch said.
Mayoral race gets bizarre with new
party
MICHAEL P. MAYKO mmayko@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 06/10/2007 01:55:08 PM EDT
BRIDGEPORT — It was
quite a scene in Black Rock on Saturday. There were elephants
turning into donkeys. Donkeys hoping to become something more.
The top elephant saying it's all for the better.
And master illusionist Criss Angel was nowhere to be found.
Instead, this was just another day in local politics. It all took
place Saturday morning at the Harborview Market owned by Rick Torres,
the Republican Town Committee chairman. There, Torres was trying
to convince Republicans to change their affiliation so they could vote
for his chosen mayoral candidate, state Rep. Christopher Caruso in the
Sept. 11 Democratic primary.
Twenty Republicans switched Saturday. Torres said another 50 switched
previously. All paperwork on those changing affiliation to vote in the
Democratic primary has to be in the Registrar of Voters office on
Monday.
"What happened is I lent out these people to help Bridgeport get honest
government," said Torres, who was not among those that changed their
affiliation. "I trust they will come back to the Republican Party."
Within listening distance sat City Councilman Keith Rodgerson, a former
Democrat who two months ago renounced his affiliation to become an
independent. On Saturday,
Rodgerson told anyone who would listen that he is now something else —
the standard bearer of "Bridgeport First" — a third political party.
He said his party will consist of "young urban professionals who for
the most part have not found a place for themselves in the other
parties. We will take the disenfranchised progressive voters and give
them a chance to be part of government."
Rodgerson, who has a Harvard University education and is working on his
master's in urban planning and development, predicts Bridgeport First
will run a full slate of 32 candidates. But on Saturday he
declined to identify anyone associated with the party other than
himself. "All of us are putting the needs of the city above our
personal political needs. Self-preservation in the Democratic Town
Committee seems to drive political agendas on both the federal and
state level," Rodgerson said.
Meanwhile, from the comfort of his living room Saturday, state Sen.
Bill Finch said all this maneuvering solidifies the Democratic Party,
which he said is behind his campaign.
"Some people would like this to become a circus," he said. "I'm more
interested in talking about improving schools, lowering taxes and
making our fleet of city vehicles more efficient and more green."
But Rodgerson, Torres and Caruso believe the only green the Democratic
Party is interested in is that which flows into their wallet. Caruso
cited a litany of misdeeds by the last four Democratic mayoral
administrations beginning with the late John Mandanici in the mid-1970s.
Although federal investigators targeted but never indicted Mandanici,
they did charge 18 people in his administration and convict 15.
Mandanici was followed by four years of Republican Leonard Paoletta
before Thomas Bucci became the next Democratic mayor. Caruso claims
Bucci's legacy was fiscal irresponsibility that nearly bankrupted the
city.
Following Bucci for two years was Republican Mayor Mary Moran.
She gave way to Joseph P. Ganim, the next Democrat. Ganim and former
Democratic state Sen. Ernest Newton are now inmates at the federal
prison camp at Fort Dix, N.J., following separate corruption
convictions. Once Ganim stepped down, John Fabrizi stepped up.
However, Fabrizi's name surfaced in a federal drug trafficking
investigation that eventually led to his disclosing abuse of cocaine
and alcohol.
That, plus his courtroom speech on behalf of a sex-offender, led to the
Democratic Party looking elsewhere for this campaign. They chose Finch
after others refused.
Caruso maintains that the Democratic Party machine "does not go into
the primary with a solid track records. Anyone endorsed by the
political machine wears the masks of its misdeeds." "I don't get to
pick my opponents, just my campaign," said Caruso, who lost the 2003
primary to Fabrizi by 300 votes. "I'm running to become mayor and bring
real change to the city of Bridgeport. This coalition shows the change
that we can bring."
Embarrassed Again, Bridgeport
Looks For New Leader
DAY
By John Christoffersen , Associated Press
Writer
Published on 5/20/2007
New Haven — Bridgeport Mayor John Fabrizi says he
agonized for months before deciding to call it quits.
Agony, it seems, has a way of returning to Connecticut's largest city
even amid signs of progress. Instead of payoffs, this time it was
personal demons.
Fabrizi, 50, said last week he would not run for re-election. His
decision came after he admitted last year to using cocaine while in
office and, more recently, drew fire and later apologized for speaking
on behalf of a sex offender in court.
“I probably agonized over this decision for a solid two months, each
and every day,” Fabrizi said Wednesday. “I'm talking about sleepless
nights, irritable, a lot of stress.”
Fabrizi's woes are the latest saga in a city that was on the verge of
bankruptcy in the early 1990s and for a time was known as the murder
capital of Connecticut. Mayor Joe Ganim helped salvage Bridgeport, but
he was sent to prison in 2003 for nine years after he was convicted in
a massive corruption scandal along with numerous aides.
Fabrizi's supporters and even some of his critics say he managed to
keep Bridgeport's revival going with new economic development projects
downtown, new schools and housing.
“Unfortunately character issues really were what broke the backs of
both of those administrations,” said state Sen. Bill Finch, a
Bridgeport Democrat who is running for mayor. “No one I know is happy
about our poor image in terms of integrity.”
Now Bridgeport faces a bruising Democratic primary in September. Four
candidates have already entered the race and Ganim's brother is
considering joining the fray.
“It's really at a crossroads,” said Gary Rose, chairman of the politics
department at Sacred Heart University. “One road can lead to reform and
the other road is basically business as usual, a continuation of
machine politics.”
Fabrizi said he'd rather try to finish projects he's started such as a
major waterfront development than compete in the primary.
“Knowing some of the candidates it would be nasty, personal and
vicious,” he said.
Fabrizi admitted the controversies played a role in his decision, but
said the main reason was he had enough of the long hours and lack of
personal time to spend with his wife and 20-year-old son.
Fabrizi, who says he's stayed off drugs for nearly two years, insisted
that he still had the support of Democratic Party leaders. But other
officials and observers say his support had eroded.
One of the candidates, state Rep. Christopher Caruso, is vowing to
shake up the party machine if elected. He says Bridgeport is still rife
with conflicts because many of the members of the Democratic Town
Committee and City Council have city jobs or relatives who work for the
city.
“They're been more interested in protecting their nest than the city of
Bridgeport,” Caruso said. “They put up candidates that have frankly
been major embarrassments for our city and hurt the reputation of the
city.”
Finch says such claims are overblown and that the real choice is
between continuing the city's progress or risking more divisive
politics.
“I think I'm the candidate who can unify the city,” Finch said. “I
think what we really need is someone who can be that sort of father
figure, that unifier who provides the direction without slipping and
falling.”
Bridgeport
mayor withdraws from
campaign; admitted drug use
DAY
By STEPHEN SINGER, Associated Press Writer
May 8,2007
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- Embattled Bridgeport Mayor John Fabrizi said
Tuesday he won't run for re-election as leader of Connecticut's largest
city, completing a public fall that began when he admitted last year to
using cocaine while in office.
"I will not seek another term as your mayor," Fabrizi, 50, said in
brief remarks at City Hall Annex.
Fabrizi has been under fire since he admitted that he had previously
used cocaine, although he said he was drug-free. He also drew fire for
speaking on behalf of an admitted sex offender in a court proceeding.
State Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, on Monday, announced his
plans to challenge Fabrizi in the Democratic primary.
Other Democrats also in the race are Charles Coviello, who works in
real estate and was an official in the Mandanici mayoral administration
in the 1970s, and City Council member Robert Walsh, who has organized
an exploratory committee.
Probate Judge Paul Ganim, the brother of jailed ex-mayor Joseph Ganim,
said Tuesday that he will decide by July whether to run.
"We're still looking at it," Paul Ganim said. "It's under strong
consideration."
Rick Torres, chairman of the Republican Town Committee, is expected to
run as his party's candidate. Torres lost to Fabrizi four years ago in
the general election.
State Sen. Bill Finch, D-Bridgeport, praised Fabrizi.
"The city has taken some positive steps in the past few years. During
that time, Mayor Fabrizi has done some very good things for our city,
but he has also gone through some very tough personal issues," Finch
said in a statement.
John Stafstrom, vice chairman of the Bridgeport Democratic Town
Committee, said he believes Fabrizi did the right thing bowing out.
"I think the mayor outlined the positive accomplishments of his
administration, and outlined his personal decision not to run for
re-election, which I believe was the right decision," he said. "As the
mayor outlined, he is not prepared to go through a long and nasty
campaign. I think it was the right decision for him and right not to
put the city through that campaign."
Fabrizi, former president of the City Council, took the helm when Ganim
was convicted of corruption in 2003. He was elected to his own term
later that year, defeating Torres, 58 percent to 42 percent, in the
heavily Democratic city.
Several Democrats said earlier this spring that Fabrizi's admission to
using cocaine while in office could have been less damaging politically
than speaking on behalf of an admitted sex offender. He appeared in
Bridgeport Superior Court on March 27, seeking leniency during the
sentencing of his son's friend, Juan Carlos Camacho, 22, who was
convicted of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor.
Fabrizi apologized the next day, calling it "completely inappropriate."
Following the incident, several Democrats said they were considering
challenging Fabrizi.
Caruso enters race to
unseat Fabrizi
DAY
Posted on May 8, 7:34 AM EDT
BRIDGEPORT,
Conn. (AP) -- Four years after narrowly losing a Democratic mayoral
primary, state Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, says he is ready
to take another shot at running for mayor.
Caruso on Monday established a
campaign committee that declares his intention to seek the city's
highest elected office. The committee allows Caruso to raise money for
the race and form a campaign organization.
"Now is the time to file and Sept.
11 will be the day for real change in Bridgeport," Caruso said,
referring to the Democratic Party primary.
Challengers from within the
Democratic party have been springing up since Mayor John M. Fabrizi
admitted last year that he used cocaine while in office. He has also
drawn fire for his recent decision to speak on behalf of an admitted
sex offender.
Four years ago, Caruso lost the
party primary, amid a crowded field, to Fabrizi by just over 300 votes.
Other Democrats also in the race are
Charles Coviello, who works in the real estate field and was an
official in the Mandanici mayoral administration in the 1970s, and City
Council member Robert Walsh, who has organized an exploratory committee.
Party officials says several other
Democrats are thinking about running for mayor.
Rick Torres, chairman of the
Republican Town Committee, is expected to run as his party's candidate.
Four years ago Torres lost to Fabrizi in the general election.
Trumbull
Businessman Admits Bribing Bridgeport City Official
DAY
Published on 6/5/2006
Bridgeport (AP)— A Trumbull businessman has admitted paying an $8,000
bribe to a Bridgeport city official, the latest chapter in the ongoing
federal investigation into corruption in the city.
“I'd love to be telling you that our investigation of public corruption
in Bridgeport is over,” U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O'Connor said Thursday.
“Instead, I'm saying that day is not arriving any time soon.”
John C. Hancock, 50, owner of Environmental Engineering Systems Inc. of
Bridgeport, admitted paying bribes to the official in exchange for
obtaining a $130,000 subcontract. Hancock's work involved
removing asbestos from buildings being demolished to make way for a new
elementary school. Court documents identify the employee as being
in a position “permitting him to supervise construction projects for
the city of Bridgeport, including participating in the hiring of firms
to perform construction-related services.”
The bribery by Hancock took place just six months after a federal jury
convicted former Mayor Joseph P. Ganim on 16 federal corruption
charges, including bribery, extortion and racketeering conspiracy.
The former mayor is serving a nine-year sentence at a federal prison
camp in New Jersey.
Former Bridgeport State Senator Ernest E. Newton in April began a
five-year term for taking a $5,000 bribe, stealing campaign funds for
his personal use and filing false tax returns.
Article
Last Updated: Monday, February 24, 2003 CT POST - 6:51:47 AM EST
Want to
see
Shays froth? Say Ganim, corruption
Folks in search
of something more entertaining than the current crop of anemic movies
this
past weekend could have done worse than make their way to Bridgeport's
Discovery Museum Saturday evening.
No, it wasn't
a preview of the museum's upcoming exhibit on the history of the
motorcycle
(that opens Saturday). The big event at the museum was a one-man
show. And chances are it was more fun than Hal Holbrook doing "Mark
Twain
Tonight." The Discovery show might have been called "Chris Shays
Tonight." It featured U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, doing his
long-running
community meeting show before an audience of constituents.
If the meeting
was anything like the one Shays held with a flock of Bridgeport
business
leaders on Wednesday, the audience had a better time than if they had
gone
to see "Daredevil" for $7.50. Shays' show was free. In that
meeting
with the business folks, Shays perked up a few ears with a
now-vintage
bit that might be entitled "Shays to Bridgeport: Get Lost."
The script
for the set piece centers around the horrors of the rampant (that's the
only word for it) corruption that has characterized Bridgeport
government
for, well just how long is anyone's guess. In the course of the
rant,
the congressman bemoans the negative impact the ongoing scandals have
on
the flow of federal money available to Bridgeport. The corruption
in Bridgeport government is a subject that touches or, more accurately,
jabs a knife into an exposed nerve in Shays' neck.
"You know,"
he says, "when I read the stories in your newspaper about the [Ganim]
trial,
I can't finish them. It upsets me too much."
When the subject
comes up, Shays' word delivery rate goes to flank speed. Forget taking
notes, that's a job for a world class steno. After a while he starts to
sound a like the voice-over guy in a TV commercial listing the possible
negative side effects of a prescription drug. Shays told the
business
leaders he found it very difficult to muster the enthusiasm needed to
push
for federal money for Bridgeport when the city was so rife with
corruption.
Although it is a sentiment he has aired often, some of the business
folks
found it shocking.
When he pointed
out that he got only $2 million for Bridgeport's Intermodal Corridor
Project
in the recent congressional spending bill, while a Stamford
transportation
project received $10 million, backs arched. More than one person
in the room wondered, some of them aloud, whether Bridgeport, the city,
should be punished for what Ganim, the administration, may have done.
The
short answer is: it's sad, but yes.
Shays later
defended his actions to the Connecticut Post's Peter Urban (see page A9
in Saturday's newspaper). "Am I supposed to appropriate money so
thieves
can steal it?" he asked. Shays says Bridgeport's "culture of
corruption"
must be cleaned up before federal dollars flow freely again.
While hurting
Bridgeport for what a bunch of slimy greed-mongers did does seem
unfair,
in the end, it's hard to argue with Shays' position. One of the
questions
people continually pose during discussions about the corruption and
Ganim's
role in it is this: so, do you think he'll get re-elected? The answer
to
that question has to be: you can't rule it out. Stranger things have
happened.
Americans have a high threshold for political chicanery and a bent for
letting bygones be bygones.
The logic goes
this way: so some palms got greased. So some guy got a shirt and some
wine
and some free landscaping. Hey, check out the baseball stadium and the
arena and the brick sidewalks. The temptation to drink deeply at
the public trough is pervasive. Even the great Twain felt it. "I think
I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket," he said, "if I
had remained in the public service a year or two."
Ganim Sentenced
Presented by: Dianne Wildman, Director of Editorial Services
Connecticut (Cablevision)
July 9, 2003
A few years back as rumors swirled that Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim was
being investigated for corruption, cynics were quick to dismiss the
matter.
Then Ganim and everybody else watched a story unveil that pretty much
put the lie to cynical scenarios. He was indicted on 24 federal
charges, including racketeering, bribery and extortion, and then
convicted on 16 of them after a trial in which 51 witnesses testified
against him.
Last week came the sentencing. Nine years in federal prison, declared
US District Judge Janet Bond Arterton. Plus a $150,000 fine. Defense
lawyer Richard Meehan had argued that Joe Ganim had done much good for
the city of Bridgeport, and that more than 100 letters had been written
to the court on his behalf.
But the judge said, "We don't have a sliding scale for punishing
corruption." She said Ganim's actions had tarnished his attempts to
improve his city, and led to general cynicism about politics. She's
right, and we were heartened by her words and her decision to come down
hard on a mayor who has so betrayed the public trust--and, p.s., has
never shown any remorse.
The mood at the sentencing was described as "funereal", a tragedy for a
family that once gloried in its favorite son's triumphs. His nine-year
prison sentence (of which he must serve at least seven and a half
years) should address Judge Arterton's concern about public cynicism,
but only if corruption everywhere and anywhere in Bridgeport stops. The
city must double its efforts to live by the rules and tolerate no more
cheating, no more Joe Ganims.
Almost
3-D: Discovery Museum goes high definition
By Patrick Verel
Staff Writer - Stamford ADVOCATE
January 2, 2003
Two years ago, the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport
decided to drop the "Arts" part of its "Arts and
Science" moniker and concentrate solely on the
sciences. That transformation continues this week
with the addition of "CineMuse," a high-definition
cinema that its creators say is five times sharper and
more colorful than standard video. The official opening
is Tuesday, but the test runs are currently open to
the public.
"You can call it previews if you want," says Paul
Audley, the museum's president.
The decision to embrace CineMuse, which is based
in New York City, was made in October. The
14-by-20-foot screen is in the museum's 100-seat
auditorium. The programing will include films about
science and nature, visual and performing arts;
documentaries; and family-oriented shows.
"The feathers and scales (of animals in the CineMuse
films) almost look like they're 3-D," says Audley.
The move follows the transformation of the museum's
art section into an exhibition area for revolving
displays.
"We could have built an IMAX theater, but the cost of
doing that was prohibitive, and we already have the
seating," says Audley. "If you're not doing IMAX, this
is the next really cool scientific product out here."
Another selling point for the museum was that
CineMuse is only available to museums and nonprofit
organizations, with the British Broadcasting
Company, Sony and a couple of small cinemas
comprising a network of filmmakers dedicated to the
format. This will be the only CineMuse theater in the
metropolitan area; the next closest ones are in
Boston and southern New Jersey.
Although films like "African Garden of Eden" and
"Underwater Odyssey," which are currently showing, sound similar to the
fare
offered at the Maritime Aquarium, which has an IMAX theater, Audley
doesn't
view the SoNo institution as a competitor.
"They're similar in scope and type of film, but what's different is the
clarity of the
image; it's not just about size," he says. "The Maritime Aquarium is
more
about
marine life, and what we do is physical and natural space."
As far as programming goes, at least one of the films being shown at
any
given
time will be directly related to an exhibit on display and another will
have a tie-in
to the museum's planetarium. For instance, "The Blue Planet," a
high-definition
series from the BBC, will be shown in conjunction with the exhibit "My
Home
Planet Earth." Since the movies will be included with the price of
admission
to
the museum, Audley says they're hoping for a 15 percent to 20 percent
increase
in attendance.
"Being a regional museum means you have to have many changing exhibits
to
keep people coming back," he says. "That's what this is about."
*
what: CineMuse Cinema
where: Discovery Museum, 4450 Park Ave., Bridgeport
when: Daily
Price: $7, $5.50 for children and seniors (includes museum admission)
Contact: 372-3521 or www.discoverymuseum.org
Friday, May 17,
2002 - 5:58:37 AM MS
Scorched
building won't be razed
By BILL CUMMINGS
BRIDGEPORT
- An aging Broad Street
building, damaged by a fire last month that closed three longtime
downtown
businesses, will be spared the wrecking ball.
The
Bridgeport Economic Development
Corp. has decided to keep the building, ending speculation that the
damaged
structure might be torn down or put up for sale.
"It's
the best course of action,"
said state Sen. William Finch, D-Bridgeport, also the executive
director
of BEDCO.
The
organization seized the building
several years ago in anticipation of tearing it down to make way for a
redevelopment project. That venture ultimately failed, leaving BEDCO
with
a building and no project to pursue.
The
property is adjacent to the former
Read's department store. It houses the Broad Street Caf, Rick's Deli
and
the Love and Care Salon.
Finch
said he would soon apply for
grant money to rehabilitate the building and repair fire damage.
Mary
Melita, owner of the Broad Street
Caf, said she's pleased the city is keeping the building.
"It's
good to know where you stand,"
Melita said, referring to the uncertainty of the building's fate.
The
March 14 fire badly damaged the
beauty parlor, and caused smoke damage throughout the building. Broad
Street
Caf initially reopened, but subsequently closed again. The tavern
reopened
this week.
Rick's
Deli and Love and Care Salon
have not reopened since the fire.
When
the building was seized by BEDCO,
officials planned to replace the structure with a parking lot, a small
green area and a new entrance to the nearby Arcade Mall and Hotel.
However,
plans to renovate the Arcade
building, which houses a nearly empty mall, fell through when no
developers
responded to a request for proposals.
Another
BEDCO-sponsored plan, the
transformation of Read's building into 63 studio studios/apartments for
artists is under way.
Part
of the rear of the Broad Street
building will be torn down to make room for additional parking spaces
for
the artists' complex, Finch said.
Finch
said the fire caused substantial
damage to the building, and estimated it will cost at least $500,000 to
tear off the back portion of the building and renovate the structure.
"We
want to bring back as much of
the original building as possible. The exterior is a mess, and we have
to fix the fire damage," Finch said.
Bill
Cummings, who covers regional
issues, can be reached at 330-6230.
THE MAZE MELTDOWN -
HIGHWAY BUCKLES: Tanker overturns on I-880 connector, igniting
thousands of gallons of gas — key overpass collapses
Patrick Hoge, Demian Bulwa, Peter Fimrite, San Francisco
Chronicle Staff Writers
Monday, April 30, 2007
A tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline had overturned at
3:41 a.m. and burst into flames on the 50-foot-high ramp connecting
westbound Interstate 80 to southbound Interstate 880. Within minutes,
the ramp above it -- connecting eastbound I-80 to eastbound I-580 --
collapsed in the 3,000-degree cauldron.
"It was massive," said Rodriguez, a 53-year-old sanitation supervisor
at the East Bay Municipal Utility District wastewater treatment plant.
"It looked like a big slab of plastic because it was melted."
But it was no big slab of plastic. The overpass was a critical
component of one of the Bay Area's busiest highway interchanges, the
MacArthur Maze. The network of connector ramps merges the East Bay's
three major highways: Interstates 80, 580 and 880.
The severed highway is a three-lane artery that served about 45,000
vehicles each day, and the damaged two-lane highway below it was used
by about 35,000 vehicles, said Caltrans Director Will Kempton. Not
since the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 has any other incident caused
such major damage to a Bay Area freeway.
Rodriguez, who was called by his supervisors and ordered to evacuate
the sewage plant, said that before the collapse, he watched the truck's
driver stagger away from the burning mass -- a silhouette in the orange
glow of flames.
"I saw movement, and there was a man up there. I started talking to the
guy. 'Are you the truck driver?' 'Yes.' He said, 'I'm burned. I got out
as soon as I could.' ''
The driver escaped just before the overhead ramp collapsed -- the fire
had melted its steel undergirders. When the smoke cleared around
daybreak Sunday, one ramp was draped like a comforter over the lower
connector.
Only the tanker driver, who suffered burns to his face, neck and hands,
was injured. No other vehicles were involved in the crash or fire.
The tanker was on its way from a refinery in Benicia to a gas station
on Hegenberger Road in Oakland.
The Oakland Fire Department, the first of numerous public agencies to
help tackle the blaze and cleanup, arrived with two
engines at 3:55 a.m., according to Capt. Cedric Price.
"We didn't know it was a tanker truck that was involved. As soon as
that was established, we immediately upgraded to a large-scale incident
response team and added two more engines and two trucks," Price said.
Firefighters soon saw that the upper ramp was buckling, Price said, and
by 4:02 -- seven minutes after they arrived -- it had collapsed. The
firefighters changed their strategy for battling the blaze.
"With no structures or lives in jeopardy, and with 8,000 gallons of
flammable fuel involved, you're basically better off letting it burn
itself out," said Price.
Firefighters used only water to control the blaze, which took about two
hours, Price said. Had there been lives at risk, firefighters would
have used firefighting foam, but the chemicals in it then would have
polluted the nearby bay.
"That this didn't happen on a weekday morning might have been the only
beauty of it," Price said.
California Highway Patrol spokesman Trent Cross said the driver of the
tanker, James Mosqueda, 51, of Woodland (Yolo County), was traveling
too fast in a 50 mph zone when his truck overturned.
At the accident scene, Mosqueda seemed disoriented.
"It looked at one time like he was walking toward the truck again,"
said Rodriguez, who urged the man to leave the truck. "I believe he was
in shock."
Rodriguez said he regretted not thinking to send a vehicle up to get
the injured man while he and a co-worker stood for some 40 minutes
watching the freeway burn.
Mosqueda, an employee of Sabek Transportation in South San Francisco
for 10 months, managed to get down and hail a taxi to Kaiser Oakland
Medical Center. He was later transferred to the burn unit at St.
Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, where his father said he
was "doing OK" Sunday afternoon after being treated for burns. The
family expected Mosqueda to remain hospitalized for a couple of days.
Cross said Mosqueda has a valid driver's license and there is no
indication he was under the influence of alcohol or drugs when he
crashed.
Engineers estimated that the flames reached close to 3,000 degrees --
hot enough to melt the green steel frame and bolts of the I-580
overpass.
Jennifer Summers, 36, was driving from her costume-design job in San
Francisco home to the Oakland hills when she saw black smoke and
realized the freeway was on fire. She quickly pulled off and looped
around so she could see what was going on.
When she got out of her car, flames were shooting into the sky over
multiple layers of freeway, and she could hear loud crackling and
explosions.
"There were bright, bright orange flames and they were huge," Summers
said. "There were cars driving through the flames. The first cars
slowed down like they didn't know what to do and then kept going. I was
shocked."
Summers said dozens of vehicles stopped to watch as the flames grew and
the freeway collapsed with a horrendous sound in a torrent of fire and
rubble.
"There was nothing you could do," she said. "I'm thinking, 'Oh my God,
this is going to be a nightmare, with the traffic problems we already
have.' "
No sign of the truck remained by daybreak. A Caltrans worker held up
his thumb and forefinger an inch apart to describe how big the tanker
was by then.
John Goodwin, a spokesman for the regional Metropolitan Transportation
Commission, said the maze is one of the worst spots for traffic in the
Bay Area. He anticipates that the impact of Sunday's fire will extend
well beyond the East Bay.
"This really strikes at the very center of the Bay Area freeway
network," he said, predicting that closure of the two overpasses will
"have a ripple effect" across the region.
"It will put more traffic on the San Mateo Bridge, the Golden Gate and
the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge," Goodwin said.
This wasn't the first major crash to clog the crucial traffic corridor
through Oakland. On Feb. 5, 1995, a tanker loaded with liquefied gas
crashed and burned in the MacArthur Maze, killing the driver, injuring
10 other people and creating an all-day traffic jam.
Witnesses said at the time that the tanker, which was changing lanes
when it skidded out of control, created a 100-foot-high fireball after
it crashed on the connector between westbound I-80 and eastbound I-580,
which is immediately northeast of the scene of Sunday's crash and fire.
The 1989 collapse of the Cypress Structure during the Loma Prieta
earthquake caused years of detours and traffic problems in the same
area.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANATOMY OF THE
COLLAPSE
3:41 a.m.: James Mosqueda, a Sabek Transportation employee, was heading
south along I-880 where it passes beneath eastbound I-580 when the
gasoline tanker he was driving overturned and caught fire, according to
the California Highway Patrol.
Underneath the roadway:
-- The I-580 overpass was exposed to flames estimated to be about 3,000
degrees. The overpass made of concrete and asphalt was held up by a
lattice of structural steel beams attached to concrete columns.
Imminent collapse
-- 3:55 a.m.: The overpass was buckling as firefighters arrived. Steel
is known to lose half of its rigidity at 1,000 degrees and begins to
melt at 2,750 degrees.
Fallen roadway -- 4:02 a.m.: The I-580 overpass collapsed onto I-880.
The driver had walked away from the accident and is being treated for
burns to his face, head and neck.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHART - Heat
Transformations
Engineers estimate Sunday’s flames reached close to 3,000 degrees.
Here’s a breakdown of heat’s effects.
Molten lava: 3,140°
Iron melts: 2,797°
Steel melts: 2,750°
Gold melts: 1,947°
Silver melts: 1,763°
Steel loses half its rigidity: 1,000°
Lead melts: 622°
Water boils: 212°
Source: “Comparisons” by the Diagram Group and
Chronicle research
Urban Transitway Project in
final design stage: Project
is designed to encourage use of public transportation
By CHASE WRIGHT, Norwalk Hour Staff Writer
March 28, 2009
Phase II of the Stamford Urban Transitway Project has reached the final
design stages, and project officials are preparing to acquire numerous
homes and businesses, some for demolition.
About $55 million has been allocated for Phase II of the project, $26
million of which has been set aside for 54 takings, said the project's
manager Ann Brown. Six of these properties are East Side small
businesses and will require full acquisition, she said. If necessary to
complete the project, the businesses could be leveled.
The Board of Finance narrowly approved the Urban Redevelopment
Commission's right to purchase the properties by negotiation or eminent
domain. The board voted last week -- three in favor, two opposed,
with board member John Louizos abstaining.
The Urban Transitway Project is designed to facilitate traffic and
encourage the use of public and non-motorized modes of transportation
by providing a direct link from the railroad tracks to the Stamford
Transportation Center off Elm Street. About 80 percent of the
project is being funded by the federal government, with the rest coming
at the expense of the city, said Brown.
Phase I -- a $62 million project in itself -- required the taking of 71
parcels of land and the relocation of 16 businesses and 33 families.
"As part of this we try to relocate businesses or offer relocation
services to keep them in Stamford," said Brown.
Still, some people may be comfortable where they are, in which case,
they have the right to appeal the acquisition, she said. The URC
faced about 15 appeals in Phase I, said Brown, about nine of which have
been resolved. She estimated the city has shelled out approximately
$1.5 million in legal fees related to the appeals.
"It's been our experience that most property owners are willing to
negotiate," said Rachel Goldberg, relocation consultant for the URC.
"We try and give them whatever they need to be happy and to thrive."
Between 80 and 85 percent of acquisitions were resolved through
negotiation during Phase I of the project, she said. To complete Phase
II, 18 businesses and 10 residential units will likely be relocated,
said Goldberg. According to the city's engineering bureau, the
land assembly process is governed by federal statute, Connecticut
General Statues and the city charter. Acquisitions begin with a
property appraisal and an environmental evaluation that may impact the
value of the property.
The city has allocated $26 million within the overall project budget
for property purchases. The acquisition budget is based on an
evaluation of city assessments, preliminary appraisals, environmental
evaluations and a contingency amount to cover any legal fees.
Phase II of the project begins where Phase I left off -- on Elm Street
-- and continues north down Myrtle Avenue to East Main Street, finally
ending at Lockwood Avenue.
The project's purpose is to extend the benefits of Phase I to
residential and commercial areas in the eastern sections of the city.
Phase II will include exclusive lanes for buses and other high
occupancy vehicles, bus stops and stations with shelter, street
furniture, bike lanes and sidewalks along the corridor. Jim
Grunberger, chairman of the East Side Partnership, said the community
is looking forward to the aesthetic views and reduced traffic
congestion that the project will create.
He said the relocation of businesses and families out of the East Side
Community are tough choices the city must make to ensure its own future
success.
"Ring-roads like the Urban Transitway connect people and make a city
move more efficiently," said Grunberger.
"This kind of smart planning is essential to the future growth of
Stamford."
N O R W A L K
Dock at Maritime Center
Remember the situation in
West Hartford?
Who will pay $104 million in bonds for Waypointe?
NORWALK HOUR
By ROBERT KOCH
May 26, 2008
With the economy hovering in or near recession, some find the prospect
of the city issuing $104 million in municipal bonds for a private,
retail-anchored development in West Avenue a poor choice.
"There's no way I'm going to encumber the city's bonding capacity by
$104 million, when we need two new fire stations (and other
infrastructure)," said Councilman Michael K. Geake. "I was against
bonding $104 million the first time I heard it. And then you get into
the current economy."
Last Monday, Mayor Richard A. Moccia, the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency,
and the city's bond counselor made the case for floating $104 million
in municipal bonds to help pay for parking garages and infrastructure
work related to Waypointe -- local developer Stanley M. Seligson's
planned mixture of new retail, housing and offices for the West Avenue
neighborhood.
Seligson is looking to build up to 350 new residential units, 75,000
square feet of office space and 393,174 square feet of new retail space
in the 19.8-acre area bounded by West Avenue, and Chapel and Academy
streets, as outlined in the conceptual plan approved by the Common
Council.
According to Moccia, the city must choose between stagnation or growth
-- in particular, growing the city's commercial property tax base to
shift the tax burden off homeowners.
Moccia indicated that a severe economic downturn would extend beyond
Norwalk.
"If we're in that type of situation in Norwalk, I have a feeling that
then the whole country is going to be in it," Moccia said. "But what
choice do we have? We sit now with minimal taxes coming in from the
downtown area. And to just let it stagnate further? It just can't be
done."
A $104-million bond issuance, if approved by the council, would be paid
back by parking revenues and a surtax applied to properties within a
special services district, according to a draft master development
agreement negotiated between Seligson, Robinson & Cole (the city's
bond counselor) and city officials.
According to Robinson & Cole and Thomas S. Hamilton, the city's
finance director, risk to the city has been reduced to a minimum in the
agreement. Under one bonding scenario, parking and special services
district revenues would generate $235.7 million over a 25-year period.
Under another, they would net $184.6 million over a 20-year period.
That translates to $4.9 million to $32.8 million more than would be
needed to pay off the bonds, according to Hamilton. He has
characterized the revenue projections as conservative.
Under the development agreement, the bonds would not be issued until
Waypointe was constructed and at least 75-percent of non-residential
space within it -- retail and offices -- was leased and occupied.
Susan Sweitzer, Redevelopment Agency senior project manager,
acknowledges the current economic downtown but points to the 75-percent
occupancy clause and other aspects of Waypointe, which she believes
protect the city. Sweitzer added that occupancy is at least four years
off.
"The recession is not gong to last four years -- no recession has
lasted four years," Sweitzer said.
According to Sweitzer, the lease arrangements which Seligson plans to
secure with tenants ensure occupancy. Seligson, as the property owner,
must pay the property taxes and special services taxes, regardless of
whether the space is occupied or vacant, Sweitzer said.
According to Sweitzer, parking revenues pose the "soft side" of the
revenue stream.
Last Monday night, Tony Doumlele, a Norwalk resident and taxpayer,
handed members of the Common Council's Planning Committee a spreadsheet
comparing the proposed bonding amount for Waypointe to that approved
for Blue Back Square, a similar mixed-use development in West Hartford.
Norwalk officials have used the development as a model for Waypointe.
According to Doumlele, per-capita debt associated with Waypointe would
run $1,600 over the life of the bonds, as compared to $592 per-capita
for West Hartford residents. Further, Doumlele believes Norwalk would
get fewer "public" improvements from the municipal bonding than West
Hartford has received. Municipal bonding for Blue Back Square is paying
for a library expansion, the town hall and other improvements, he said.
Doumlele, to be sure, praises Hamilton's and Robinson & Cole's work
negotiating the draft master development agreement for Waypointe. He
simply believes that more research is needed on the revenues.
"No one can forecast the future with full accuracy, so I think these
comparisons with actual (revenues) -- what's going on in the Norwalk
garages and West Hartford -- would be very informative. And that hasn't
happened yet," Doumlele said. However "this backstopping that they
talked about. I think that's a good idea."
According to Sweitzer, the city is working to insert language into the
agreement that would extend the time period of the special services
district, if parking revenues don't suffice in repaying the bonds.
Douglas T. Adams, Seligson's vice president of development, described
the 75-percent occupancy clause as "one of the most important aspects"
in the financing structure.
"The city doesn't have to float the bonds until the developer has
delivered. A large portion of the income to pay the bonds is from a tax
which is paid regardless of the economy. There's no relief for that,"
Adams said. "It is additional risk for the developer. But that's the
business we're in and a risk we're willing to take."
Moccia, while labeling Doumlele's numbers as "a little bit
disingenuous," used them several weeks ago when speaking about
Waypointe. In the worst-case scenario, where the project tanks and
there's no incoming revenue, taxpayers would foot the bill for about
$80 per year, he said.
Speaking to The Hour recently, Moccia said he arrived at that figure by
dividing Doumlele's $1,600 figure by 20 years -- the possible bond
issuance. Moccia finds the prospect of a default unlikely and the cost
acceptable.
"If you get the worst-case scenario, everything bad happens, it's still
only going to cost $80-a-head over 20 years for a new downtown area.
It's $80-a-year for 20 years," Moccia said. "Everyone developer in this
country right now is facing uncertainties. We all know that. But you
cannot base your decisions solely on the point that they're might be an
(economic) downtown."
Last Tuesday, Moccia announced the formation of a four-member committee
to review the draft master development agreement and present its
recommendations to him by June 30. Committee members have backgrounds
in law, financing and commercial Real estate.
The committee will invite public comment on the draft agreement -- not
on the Waypointe project -- on June 4 at 6 p.m. in Room A300 of City
Hall, 125 East Ave. On June 11 and June 14, committee members will meet
with the negotiating team, including Robinson & Cole
representatives, to ask questions about the document. All of the
meetings will be open to the public.
A N D O N
A M O R E C L A S S I
C N O T E . . .
"About Town" attended both Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams plays
over the years here.
Shakespeare developer choice on hold
CT POST
RICHARD WEIZEL
Article Last Updated: 06/24/2008 12:59:29 AM EDT
STRATFORD — When Ed Goodrich ran for mayor nearly three years ago, the
lifelong Stratford resident vowed to restore the long-vacant
Shakespeare theater to prominence as a renowned showcase for classic
Bard productions. Goodrich didn't make it to the mayor's
office. But he came to Town Hall Monday night, in full
Shakespearean garb, playing the role of a far more powerful political
leader — Julius Caesar — to convince the Town Council to select a
developer who will revitalize and operate the theater with Shakespeare
as its main attraction.
Adorned in a white toga, sword and leafed garland head dress, Goodrich
led about a dozen protesters, also dressed in Shakespearean costumes
and carrying placards, in front of Town Hall prior to a special council
meeting. The meeting was scheduled for the council to select one
of three finalists, or a combination of two, to restore the
long-shuttered Elm Street theater, which closed in 1989.
"To Be or Not To Be?" one of the signs said, carried by Janet Baxter,
dressed in a colorful court jester's outfit.
"Lack of Planning Will Kill Shakespeare Again," another placard stated.
Then, just as the meeting was starting, Goodrich led his followers into
the council chambers, as startled members of the council and a large
gathering of residents stared in amusement, some laughing, others
applauding.
"We want the council to unconditionally ensure that a developer will be
selected who will provide a real Shakespeare theater again," Goodrich
said, on his way into the meeting. "We are trying to show how important
it is that the council doesn't select a developer not completely
devoted to Shakespeare."
But that's exactly what some council leaders tried to do, leading to
heated debate and drama worthy of a Bard play.
Council Majority Leader Michael Julian, R-1, whose district includes
the theater, made a motion for the panel to select William J. Hanney,
owner and producer of Theatre By the Sea in Wakefield, R.I., who would
produce musicals, modern shows and concerts, but no Shakespearean
presentations. Julian, however, said the contract with Hanney
would include a provision that Shakespeare and other classical plays be
performed, and that right of first refusal to provide Bard plays at the
theater be presented to Frank Tobin Enterprises, of Los Angeles, which
would rely heavily on both Shakespeare and other "classical theater."
Tobin, who is strongly supported by Goodrich and his supporters, has
proposed a regular Shakespeare theater festival season from April to
November featuring experienced Bard actor Randall Duk Kim. The
plan would also include an academy for actors in training and outreach
programs in theater and the arts for local schools.
"I have been to Theater by the Sea and believe that Bill Hanney is the
right guy to undertake restoring the Shakespeare Theater, just as he
did at a closed-down theater in Rhode Island," Julian said. "The
productions are first-rate and I am convinced this is the right way to
go."
Council Minority Leader Alvin O'Neal, D-2, said he also supported
approving an agreement with Hanney. But Councilman Gavin
Forrester, D-3, said the council could not make a decision Monday night
because a long-awaited study on the cost estimates to restore the
theater prepared by BL Cos., had not yet been presented to council
members. Town Attorney Richard Buturla then advised the council
the document — which consists of two volumes of about 1,000 pages — was
ready for distribution.
Forrester countered that the panel would "certainly need more time than
we have tonight to review the document and make an informed decision."
Glancing at the document, Forrester said the $2.5 million approved by
the council for the theater's restoration appears to be "significantly
less than what it would take to restore the theater."
In the document, Forrester said, different plans to restore the theater
range from $6.8 million to $19 million.
"I think before we even consider whether to agree to a contract, we
have to know which plan we are going with, and how much of his own
money the developer would be willing to put toward the restoration,"
Forrester said.
Councilman Joseph Kubic, R-9, agreed.
"Nobody wants to see this project move forward more than I do," Kubic
said. "But we get this voluminous report dumped in our laps tonight and
are expected to take it all in?"
Kubic made a motion to table the selection of a developer for two
weeks. The motion passed 7-2 with O'Neal and Councilwoman Emma Brooks,
D-4, against.
Meanwhile, Goodrich and his followers were at least happy the vote had
been delayed.
"If the motion made tonight had passed there would have been no chance
to see accomplished what we believe is in the theater and town's best
interests — that the developer be someone to bring Shakespeare back to
the Shakespeare theater," Goodrich said. "At least now, we still have a
chance."
The other finalist, Koerner, Kronenfeld Partners LLC, failed to raise
$1 million for theater repairs by a June 30 deadline a year ago and
lost a contract for redeveloping the property.
Not just a beach. Or a
rollercoaster.
Take the 'D' Train - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_%28NYCS%29
Richie Andrusco in "The Little Fugative" - getting lost
or running away story. Coney architecture worth preserving? Its
history?
Saving Coney Island
NTPOST
By JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN
Last Updated: 5:53 AM, July 4, 2010
Posted: 12:47 AM, July 4, 2010
Has Coney Island finally been saved from decades of dereliction? From
the crowds mobbing the beach for the Fourth of July festivities you’d
certainly think so. Coney’s beguiling combination of participatory fun
(such as Nathan’s hot-dog eating contest) and old-time spectacle (like
the Burlesque Circus) is unmatched anywhere else in New York.
Its real showpiece is the gorgeous beach. Manhattan artist Simon
Levenson, who has been painting and photographing Coney for several
years, points out that “if you remove the beach from the neighborhood,
it becomes the visual equal of Santa Barbara’s or East Hampton’s.”
Yet while the beach is breathtaking, most of its nearby man-made
structures are small, gloomy and ramshackle. What is to be done? Some
Coney Island advocates thought they had a solution: Landmark as much of
the neighborhood as possible to restore Coney’s essence.
Two important Manhattan cultural institutions — the Municipal Art
Society and the New York Landmarks Conservancy — joined with devoted
neighborhood missionaries to urge the Bloomberg administration to carve
a historic district out of the amusement area. The immediate danger in
early May was that Thor Equities, a real estate company that owns
several buildings on Surf Avenue, had announced that they would begin
demolition.
Despite the threat, the Landmarks Preservation Commission quickly
declined to designate the district, saying the buildings had been too
altered, and therefore failed to meet their criteria.
Thor CEO Joe Sitt, who calls himself a preservationist, agrees, saying
that his company “stayed away from all historically significant
properties” when buying land in Coney. He adds that when Thor sold a
chunk of land and air rights to the city for $97 million in December
2009, “We kept only those sites that the city wanted to see developed.”
In some ways, both sides — advocates and developer — are right. Coney
has to stay special or die — and that means calling on the best of its
historic heritage. So much has been wantonly destroyed — the Giuliani
administration, for example, demolished the privately owned Thunderbolt
roller coaster in Steeplechase Park in 2000 without bothering with a
hearing — that Coney fans are rightly apprehensive about any further
destruction.
Yet the disputed Thor-owned buildings — Henderson’s Music Hall, for
example, or the Bank of Coney Island — charming and retro though they
are, are surely not worthy of individual landmark designation. The
Renaissance Revival Coney Island Theater Building, now known as the
Shore Theater, might be a good landmarks candidate, but it’s one of the
few.
The truth is that New York’s landmarks laws and regulatory apparatus
weren’t really set up for a place like Coney Island.
Carol Clark, associate professor of architecture planning and
preservation at Columbia University, suggests that the city look
instead to “neighborhood conservation ordinances,” used by about a
hundred cities across the country. “These ordinances aren’t as
restrictive as ours,” Clark says, “and are particularly useful in
recognizing and protecting vernacular housing or neighborhoods, like
Coney, with a distinct physical character.”
In cities ranging in size from Dallas to Cambridge, Mass., conservation
districts protect traits such as architectural style, neighborhood
densities, building heights and setbacks. But they do not emphasize
preserving individual structures as they were originally built. Rather,
conservation strives to maintain a district’s special sense of itself.
Modern buildings developed in a style that honors history.
Coney has been battered near unto death over the decades by nearly
every urban ill — drugs, violent crime, graffiti, filth, vacant lots,
sheer ugliness, you name it. Having overcome so much, today it has
another moment in the sun. Yet its future is murky. A historic
conservation approach that allows residents and owners to balance
Coney’s vitality and funkiness with its need for investment and change
could help it stay Coney — except prosperous.
Julia Vitullo-Martin is director of
the Regional Plan Association’s Center for Urban Innovation.
Council
Approves Deal to Upgrade Coney
Island
NYTIMES
By Charles V. Bagli
July 29, 2009, 4:08 pm
Updated, 4:40 p.m. | A new Coney Island moved closer to reality on
Wednesday afternoon as the City Council approved the Bloomberg
administration’s ambitious plan to revive the seafront district once
known as the world’s largest playground. At the same time, the
administration moved closer to a deal with a key landowner there.
It has been an expensive and bruising victory for Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg, whose administration wants to establish a 27-acre
entertainment district between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk, with 9.4
acres devoted exclusively to freak shows, arcades, roller coasters and
other rides. New zoning would allow high-rise hotels on Surf Avenue and
4,500 apartments north and west of the amusements.
The Council voted in favor of the mayor’s plan, 44-2, with one
abstention, on Wednesday afternoon, even as city officials put the
last-minute touches on a deal with Joseph J. Sitt, a developer who has
been at odds with the Bloomberg administration even has he spent over
$90 million buying property in the area.
Negotiations with Mr. Sitt’s representative, Jesse Masyr, went on until
11 p.m. on Tuesday and through the Council meeting on Wednesday.
Under the tentative deal, according to officials and executives
involved in the talks, the city will buy six of Mr. Sitt’s 10 acres,
leaving the remaining property on Surf and Stillwell Avenues for him to
develop.
Critics of the city’s plan, including the group Save Coney Island and
the Municipal Art Society, contend that it is flawed because the
amusement district is too small and would be overwhelmed by
development. Although the city’s new zoning for the area prohibits
housing in the amusement area, critics complain that it would allow for
up to four 27-story hotel towers along the south side of Surf Avenue,
including one in front of the historic Wonder Wheel. and, they contend,
encourage developers to demolish landmarks like the Nathan’s hot dog
stand.
In the Council’s vote on the mayor’s plan, Tony Avella of Queens and
Charles Barron of Brooklyn were the no votes. Councilwoman Rosie Mendez
of Manhattan abstained.
Editorial: NYTIMES
A Plan for Coney Island
July 13, 2009
At some point, New York City will have to stop the long, slow,
perpetual dying of Coney Island. It’s not dead yet, of course:
landmarked rides like the Cyclone rumble on, and a few funkily
indestructible carny attractions survive, along with the boardwalk, the
hot dogs and the sea and sky. There’s a nice ballpark. But Coney
Island’s real grandeur was lost decades ago. The area is shot through
with empty lots, cracked pavement and weeds.
This is the year the place could get moving again, if the City Council
approves an ambitious redevelopment proposal from the Bloomberg
administration. It calls for revitalized year-round amusements, badly
needed apartments and new retail and commercial development. Coney
Island is not just a decrepit carnival — it’s a community starving for
civic amenities, affordable housing and jobs, all of which could
flourish amid the tacky splendor of a reborn seaside paradise.
The plan is headed toward a final vote this month. The hurdles are
significant, including a standoff between the city and a developer,
Joseph Sitt, whose company owns about 10 acres in the heart of the
area. Mr. Sitt paid $93 million for those acres, undoubtedly
anticipating that zoning changes would lead to a nice profit. The city
offered $105 million, but he rejected that fair price.
The city wants to buy out Mr. Sitt and rezone the nine-acre outdoor
amusement district as parkland. That would powerfully deter future
administrations from damaging this civic treasure, since only the State
Legislature can undo parkland zoning. The Council should approve the
new zoning while also improving the plan.
We like the Municipal Art Society’s idea of doubling the size of the
amusement area and removing hotels from the south side of Surf Avenue.
This way, when visitors get off the subway, they will meet sunlight and
open air, not a high-rise barricade.
We hope the Council steps up and gets the job done. Much depends on
Domenic Recchia Jr., Coney Island’s councilman, who has been skeptical
of the city’s plan while stoutly defending the interests of landowners,
like his friend Mr. Sitt. Mr. Recchia should know as well as anyone
that empty lots, rusting amusement rides and nonexistent apartments and
jobs are a horrible fate for Coney Island. The sooner the city seizes
the chance to turn it around, the better.
Visions
of a Circus at Coney Island
NYTIMES
By Glenn Collins
April 30, 2009, 9:54 am
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus A rendering of the
proposed circus complex that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey
Circus would create at Coney Island, under a plan supported by the
Bloomberg administration.
No, this is not the artistic rendering of a future Renaissance Faire at
City Hall Plaza or some Bryant Park fashion-week event. It is the
advance view, to be unveiled Thursday, of the new tented circus that
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus will bring to Coney
Island on June 18.
A press conference on the site, near Surf Avenue and West 21st Street,
is to reveal that the new circus by the ocean — to be called “The Coney
Island Boom-A-Ring” — will import an entire complex of big-top
activity: a 2,300-seat air-conditioned yellow-and-blue main tent
(currently being transported on a container ship from England), as well
as food-court tents and animal open-house and performers’ tents — the
better to exhibit the show’s seven tigers, seven dachshunds, three
elephants and 29 performers (there will be 81 more backstage workers on
the show).
Recently Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the arrival of the
Ringling touring show — called the Gold Unit, and distinct from its two
touring shows for large arenas — as an ornament to his redevelopment
plans for Coney Island. To revive the neighborhood’s historic amusement
and entertainment area, the city is shepherding a plan through the
public approval process that would establish a 27-acre entertainment
district with 9.4 acres devoted exclusively to arcades, freak shows,
roller coasters, Ferris wheels and other rides. There would also be
hotels and 4,500 new apartments.
The circus, then, will be its symbol. “Usually when we have an opening
night at Madison Square Garden, it’s all about us,” said Stephen C.
Yaros, vice president of event marketing for Ringling in the northeast.
“But this opening night in June will be a celebration of Coney Island.”
He explained that aside from the estimated $10 million the circus is
projected to pump into the local economy over 12 summer weeks, “there
will be grassroots educational and library and community outreach
efforts,” Mr. Yaros said, “and we will be hiring local contractors to
clear the site, and our circus people will be living there.”
Of course, Thursday’s announcement will be all about circus, too: not
only the hoopla of political speeches (Brooklyn politicians and
development officials are expected to participate) but also the
ballyhoo that only a circus can bring: clowns. A ringmaster. Clowns. An
elephant. And, of course, animal-rights protesters, who have announced
their opposition to the show.
“Ringling is excited because we’re making a long-term investment in the
community,” Mr. Yaros said. “We’re hoping for a three-to-five-year run
in Coney Island by the sea.”
Stamford Government center a smaller version - the birds love it!
Green Roofs:
Are They Worth the Expense?
NYTIMES
By Kate Galbraith
May 19, 2009, 9:23 am
Chicago Dept. of Environment
The green roof atop Chicago’s City Hall is blooming, but other cities
think the concept is too costly.
Richard M. Daley, the mayor of Chicago, told a panel at the Harvard
Club of New York on Monday that he aims to make his city the “most
environmentally friendly city in the world.”
A key part of Mr. Daley’s vision involves “green roofs” — the idea of
putting plants, and even a few trees, on top of buildings. Chicago
already has more than 600 “green roofs,” the mayor said — including one
over its City Hall, which even has a couple of beehives.
As well as giving workers from surrounding skyscrapers something
pleasant to gaze at, green roofs help keep the city cool, and also
filter stormwater so that it does not overwhelm drains.
New York has a few green roofs, but it has not prioritized them in the
way that Chicago has (or Toronto, which is thinking of making green
roofs mandatory for some new buildings).
The reason is cost, said Carter Strickland, a senior policy adviser in
New York City’s long-range planning and sustainability office. “We
found that street trees are more cost-effective than green roofs,” he
told the panel.
New York City is also emphasizing “white” or “cool” roofs, with the
ability to reflect rather than absorb the sun’s heat. Green roofs, said
Mr. Strickland, might cost $25 to $30 per square foot. A “cool” roof,
he said, would cost “a fraction of that.”
There are other impediments in New York — including a tough permitting
process. Miquela Craytor, the executive director of Sustainable South
Bronx, said that it took her organization two years to install a “green
wall.”
And implementing Mayor Daley’s vision in New York, beehives and all,
would face an even more fundamental hurdle, according to David Yassky,
a New York City council member: “It’s illegal now in New York City to
keep bees,” he said.
Mr. Yassky added that he hopes to change that through legislation.
SOURCES
Only
open in full until January 2011
No Museum Left Behind
The relocation of
the Barnes Foundation to downtown Philadelphia is fueled by ignorance
and avarice, not altruism.
Weekly Standard
BY Lance Esplund
May
25, 2010 (May 31, 2010, Vol. 15, No.
35)
Merion, Pennsylvania
Moving through the Barnes Foundation, you feel immersed in a
complete work of art, as you do when deep in the nave of a Gothic
cathedral. The Barnes seems wonderfully timeless and out of place. The
world and the works of art are in sync. Mature trees can be viewed
through tall windows—the arcs of their branches echoing pictures’
arabesques. The only sounds are of the occasional bird outside, the
measured movements of a handful of visitors, the creak of old parquet
beneath your feet. Artworks flirt and flit. Parts of paintings, like
flashes of jewels or glimpses of flesh, pull and lure you from one to
the next.
No matter how much you know about the Barnes Foundation—no
matter how often you’ve been told that it houses the most important
collection of Impressionist, Postimpressionist, and early Modern art in
the world—nothing, especially its deceptively small scale, prepares you
for the experience inside the museum.
First, there is the artwork itself. The catalogue is
staggering. Albert Barnes acquired Old Master paintings by Canaletto,
Goya, Hals, El Greco, Titian, and Veronese and important examples of
ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Medieval, Native American, African, Near
Eastern, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern art. Then there is the
collection of Modern European works. One of the largest in existence,
it includes pictures by Chagall, de Chirico, Daumier, Dufy, Gauguin,
Klee, Marquet, Miró, Pissarro, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon,
Rouault, Signac, and Sisley. Barnes bought 11 works by Degas, seven by
van Gogh, six by Seurat, four Manets, and four Monets. He purchased 18
Rousseaus and 46 Picassos. Barnes acquired 21 pictures by Soutine (whom
he discovered). And it is no exaggeration to say that if you have not
been to the Barnes, you have not seen Matisse, Cézanne, or,
especially, Renoir. The collection holds 59 Matisses, 69
Cézannes, and a definitive 181 Renoirs. Barnes loved Renoir’s
miraculous late nudes—paintings whose rotund volumes and luminous flesh
are as erotically charged as those of Rubens and Titian. And at the
Barnes Foundation, where Rubens is stationed next to Renoir, who is in
earshot of Matisse, Titian, and Bonnard, such comparisons are
self-evident.
Yet the magnificence of the foundation is much greater than
the sum of its masterpieces. The installation puts the nature and
language—the very life—of art above any single work. Packed
wall-to-wall, the collection is hung salon-style, without regard for
the trappings of -isms, periods, or styles. Barnes, who oversaw every
detail of the museum’s creation, intermixed the past with the present
and organized pictures and objects visually and thematically into
ensembles. He created an environment that erased the business-as-usual
distinctions between classical and primitive; ancient and modern; among
applied, decorative, and fine arts. Paintings, drawings, and prints
elbow one another as if to stand out from the crowd. And they are
surrounded by other captivating objects, including ironwork, textiles,
pewter, pottery, African masks, Navajo rugs, turquoise jewelry,
medieval carvings, illuminated manuscripts, early American furniture,
and American folk art—yet another of Barnes’s pioneering enthusiasms.
Here, in this living museum where plastic formal values are made
paramount, nothing is supplemental or taken for granted; everything is
in chorus and plays its part.
Albert Coombs Barnes (1872–1951) believed that the chief
value of a democratic society is that it enables every individual the
unique opportunity to better himself culturally and spiritually. He
thought the key to self-awareness is the study of art, philosophy,
music, and literature. Driven by his love of art and ideas, he created
a new species of museum. Barnes was not interested in amassing an art
collection to bolster his ego or to impress his friends. Although he
collected a wide array of art and artifacts, he was not interested in
creating an encyclopedic or national collection like that of the
then-burgeoning Metropolitan Museum of Art. And although he was a
passionate advocate of the European avant-garde (Barnes wrote extensive
critical monographs on Renoir, Cézanne, and Matisse), he was not
primarily concerned, as was the Museum of Modern Art (founded in 1929),
with introducing that group of artists to the American public. Barnes’s
interest was in the living nature of artworks. He set up dialogues
among works of various periods and diverse styles to emphasize
similarities where most museums emphasize the distinctions. Barnes
understood that the ancient Greeks, Titian, Rubens, Renoir, and
Matisse, far from disconnected, are links in the chain.
Barnes wanted people to appreciate how artists think; how
artists are inspired; how art furthers art. He strove to emphasize a
work’s sublime, as opposed to its mimetic, values. In his writings, he
compared learning to see to learning a foreign language and stressed
that through the act of developing our senses, our perceptions are
heightened and our lives made richer. “Vision and intelligence,” Barnes
wrote, “are co-implicative, neither is possible without the other, and
all growth involves their interaction.”
This general principle furnishes us with the clue to
esthetic education. We perceive only what we have learned to look for,
both in life and in art . . . to appreciate [a] painting . . . we
must reconstruct [the artist’s] experience, so far as we are able, in
ourselves. . . . To see as the artist sees is an accomplishment to
which there is no short cut, which cannot be acquired by any magic
formula or trick; it requires not only the best energies of which we
are capable, but a methodical direction of those energies, based upon
scientific understanding of the meaning of art and its relation to
human nature. The artist illuminates the objective world for us,
exactly as does the scientist, different as the terms are in which he
envisages it; art is as little a plaything, a matter of caprice or
uncontrolled subjectivity as is physics or chemistry.
To this end Barnes created an environment where aesthetic
values override all others, where viewers are encouraged to make visual
connections: to discover that a Matisse or Picasso nude could have
walked directly off of a Greek vase. That van Gogh’s immanent
frontality—his volumetric figures held within flat planes of yellow—is
no different from that of a Byzantine madonna held within planes of
flat gold leaf. That, moreover, van Gogh’s nervous, swirling line and
compartmentalized spaces are equally related to early Netherlandish
painting, Japanese prints, and Impressionism. That art, like human
nature, is not linear but cyclical.
Barnes wanted to empower people to experience art—and, by
extension, life—at its most profound levels. In 1930, when Matisse
first visited the foundation, he wrote in his notebook that it was “the
only sane” place to view art in America. That same year, he remarked in
an interview:
One of the most striking things in America is the Barnes
collection, which is exhibited in a spirit very beneficial for the
formation of American artists. . . . This collection presents the
paintings in complete frankness, which is not frequent in America. The
Barnes Foundation will doubtless manage to destroy the artificial and
disreputable presentation of the other collections, where the pictures
are hard to see—displayed hypocritically in the mysterious light of a
temple or cathedral. According to the current American aesthetic, this
presentation seeks to introduce a certain supposedly favorable mystery
between the spectator and the work, but it is in the end only a great
misunderstanding.
But Matisse was overly optimistic. The Barnes Foundation
never influenced other museums and remained a completely unique
institution immune from the postwar homogenization of the American
museum establishment. Over the years, though, it became a target of
that establishment which coveted the art that Barnes had acquired long
before it became fashionable. Now after years of litigation, Albert
Barnes’s intentions have been subverted and his will broken. And the
Barnes Foundation is scheduled to be moved. Galleries have already been
closed. Ground broken. Pictures crated. The thousands of artworks are
all being uprooted from their home in Merion, Pennsylvania, a leafy
suburb 20 minutes from downtown Philadelphia, and transplanted to the
mall on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway next to the Philadelphia Museum
of Art.
Advocates claim the relocation is being done in the name of
progress, conservation, civic responsibility, and convenience. It all
sounds benign enough if you fail to consider that the Barnes
Foundation, unlike almost every other museum in the world, is a rooted
organism. Yes, the artworks will arrive in Philadelphia, but the
museum—the experience of its art—will be irreversibly maimed. And with
its move there will be considerable collateral damage extending to the
broader areas of museum stewardship, museum donors, and the public
trust. Besides violating the legal will and stated intentions of the
foundation’s sole benefactor—who stipulated that no work in his
collection ever be loaned, deaccessioned, or moved from the building he
had designed for it; that no object ever stray, not even an inch, from
the precise spot in which he had personally placed it—the move is an
unforgivable act that disregards the true purpose of museums.
The Barnes Foundation was established in 1922 as a
nondiscriminatory school for art and philosophy. Its two-story
Renaissance-style building was completed in 1925 and, ensconced in a
12-acre arboretum, sits deep within a sloping yard behind a wrought
iron fence, surrounded by lilac groves, formal rose and perennial
gardens, and one of the finest collections of ferns and rare trees in
America. Designed by Paul Philippe Cret, the building is itself a
distinguished work of art. Barnes had commissioned Jacques Lipchitz to
carve eight sculptures and used them for the museum’s exterior.
Enfield Pottery and Tile Works fabricated the entrance to Barnes’s
specifications, incorporating motifs from works in his African art
collection. (While other museums were displaying African tribal objects
as ethnographic artifacts, Barnes, like Braque and Picasso, recognized
their aesthetic value.) The entrance is an eclectic interplay of
Neoclassicism, Primitivism, and Modernism. Doric columns, Arts &
Crafts ceramics, and African-inspired and Modern sculpture—the last,
Barnes well understood, in debt to the former—intermingle. You know
immediately you are entering a world where hierarchies and cultural
identities dissolve and where art, no matter when or where it was made,
is in concert.
The art is installed in a suite of 24 interconnected
galleries of varying dimensions spread over two floors and the refined,
intimate spaces make it as much manor as museum. Picture by picture,
room by room, juxtaposition by juxtaposition, you get to know what
Barnes was trying to convey about the nature of art. Though
sequentially numbered, the galleries are in no discernible order. And
there are no distracting wall labels. If you are interested in who,
what, where, or when, each gallery is equipped with laminated
photographs of its walls, each labeled with names, dates, titles, and
provenance.
It is the Main Gallery—the central trunk and heart of the
Barnes—from which all the other galleries are fed and grow, literally
and metaphorically, across disciplines and time. Though the largest
room at the Barnes, the Main Gallery is small by modern museum
standards, only 53 feet long and just over 22 feet wide. Yet its
vaulted ceiling, which rises 33 feet, gives the space the loftiness of
a cathedral. And its installation is built upward and across like a
stained-glass window (specifically a Tree of Jesse, one of the most
constant subjects of Western art, linking the Barnes to both Chartres
and the Sistine Chapel). Barnes envisioned the museum as a family
album, in which artworks relate to one another like sisters, brothers,
and cousins. Familial resemblances are emphasized, without ever
detracting from the individual work of art. Barnes understood that
artists are inspired by numerous impressions from disparate sources. In
his museum, one does not receive a lesson in art history; rather, one
joins into a meditation on art.
Entering the Main Gallery you are confronted with pivotal
paintings by the two pillars of 20th-century art. A Rose-period
Picasso, Composition: The Peasants (1906), hangs between the
windows to your right. In soft pinks, powder blues, and warm grays, it
alerts us to the predawn of Cubism. Its faceted figure grouping of
oxen, a girl, and a man with a basket of flowers on his head feels like
a bas-relief. These are not just peasants but as much Greek god and
goddess strutting through the plane as a single organism.
Near the Picasso, between the windows to your left, hangs a
Moroccan-period Matisse: Seated Riffian (1912). Nearly
abstract, in dazzling, saturated hues, the painting’s jewel-like colors
and the figure’s majestic pose equally suggest a precious gem and the
portrait of a king. The painting’s transparent, light-filled curtains
and vertically striped planes, resembling the mullions, curtains, and
glass of its neighboring windows, appear to punctuate the architecture
of the Main Gallery. The Matisse and Picasso—changing peasants into
deities, ruffians into royalty, and walls into windows—attest not only
to the transformative power of painting, but to the transformative
power of this museum.
Above the two paintings, as if anchored by and unfurled from
those below, is Matisse’s Dionysiac mural The Dance
(1932-33), spanning more than 45 feet across three lunettes.
Commissioned by Barnes in 1930, it is among Matisse’s greatest and
largest works. Matisse took into consideration that The Dance
would be experienced alongside very specific paintings and views of sky
and garden seen through the windows (which were often left open during
spring, summer, and fall). The painter allowed nature’s greens to
complement painted pink, for blue sky to speak to sky blue, and for The
Dance, as graphic and bold as it is, to blend with spring’s
rapture and the blaze of fall foliage. Matisse formed beings that merge
woman with goddess and succeed in transforming gallery into spiritual
setting. The mural is a celebration of art that, moreover, unifies
nature, artworks, and architecture at the Barnes Foundation.
Moving laterally—a combination of thrust and counterthrust,
of anchor and loft—The Dance’s eight large, soft-gray female
nudes spread across the three lunettes like acrobats. The nudes appear
to billow and bulge within the vaulted arcs of the architecture. They
are goddesses, caryatids, and flying buttresses. They are grounded,
held to the walls, by flat, sharp-edged planes of black and blue, and
they are aerated by planes of pink. The nudes swell into ecstatic
volumes and tumble through the arches across the upper wall, opening
the architecture and penetrating the dome of the ceiling. It is as if
they have fallen from the sky and been caught in the gallery’s net.
They are the soul of the Barnes collection and the engine that animates
the whole installation.
Matisse observed of his mural that “from the floor of the
gallery one will feel it rather than see it, as it gives the sense of
sky above the green conveyed by the windows. . . . [The great hall]
is a room for paintings: to treat my decoration like another picture
would be out of place. My aim has been to translate paint into
architecture, to make of the fresco the equivalent of stone.” Barnes,
who had given Matisse complete freedom to paint the lunettes however he
desired, at once knew the significance of The Dance: “One
would call the place a cathedral now,” he told Matisse after the mural
was installed. “Your painting is like the rose window.” Matisse agreed
and added that The Dance “is like a song that mounts to the
vaulted roof.”
Facing The Dance are 11 paintings by Cézanne
and 22 by Renoir, mostly the latter’s pearlescent late nudes—as soft as
feathers, as iridescent as gems, as weighty as great oaks. Crowning a
dozen paintings on the east wall, including a Tintoretto, a Corot, and
a work attributed to Chardin, is Cézanne’s monumental Large
Bathers (1900-05). This painting, summoning equally the Parthenon
and Poussin, is somewhere between procession and pastoral. Its eight
luminous female nudes, an animated and restless frieze, bathe and towel
themselves in a dappled blue-and-green-shaded glade. Looking back and
forth between the frieze of eight figures in Large Bathers
and the frieze of eight above in Matisse’s The Dance, it is
nearly impossible not to feel that the bathers and the dancers are
related—implying before and after, immersion and emancipation, rest and
flight.
The connections are ever apparent. Corot, Courbet,
Impressionism, and Cézanne freed Matisse and Picasso to reinvent
the art of the 19th century for the 20th century. But Modernism’s
roots, Barnes understood, go much deeper. As a beginning painter,
Matisse made his first copies in the Louvre of Chardin. And, as Barnes
himself wrote, Picasso’s Composition: The Peasants was a
reinvention of El Greco’s faceted, fractured space—that El Greco was a
spur to Cubism. Renoir brings us full circle. Though initially seduced
by Impressionism’s miraculous pyrotechnics, Renoir eventually saw it as
a “blind alley.” He sought to reinvest Impressionism’s atomized light
with the structure and geometry of the Old Masters. Looking back,
specifically to Rubens, Renoir opened the doors for Cézanne’s
own return (through Poussin) to the cube, the cone, and the sphere—the
building blocks of Cubism, which shattered Renaissance space and led to
Modern abstraction.
Renoir, although he was too grounded in his love of the
female form to become an abstract artist, sympathized with the aims of
Kandinsky. Renoir, too, dreamed of dispensing completely with the world
of things in his pictures. He relished the complete freedom of
abstraction (and he understood his role, as well as that of Picasso and
Matisse, respectively, in the movement toward nonobjective painting).
But Renoir recognized also that the fruits of abstract art belonged to
the next generation. Late in Renoir’s life, Matisse visited him. “In
all truthfulness,” Renoir told the younger painter, “I don’t like what
you do. I’d almost like to say that you are not a good painter, or even
that you are a very bad painter. But one thing prevents me from doing
this: When you put black on the canvas it stays in its plane. . . .
So, in spite of my feeling, I think that you are most surely a
painter.” Barnes’s installation, especially his pairings of Matisse
with Renoir and Seurat with Cézanne, acknowledges and reiterates
the language and interconnectedness of art—the links between Renoir and
Rubens, Matisse and Renoir, Picasso and El Greco.
On the other end, the west wall, among an ensemble of smaller
works by Cézanne, Corot, and Rousseau, are two further
monumental paintings: Cézanne’s Card Players (1890-92)
and, hanging directly above it, Seurat’s large Models
(1886-88). Together they demonstrate how specific pictures appear to
have been made in answer to one another—as if in a magical world of
call and response—and set in motion an idea that radiates throughout
the whole of the collection. Barnes lays out the story of Modernism
here. He reminds us that Seurat’s Pointillist, neoclassical haze;
Renoir’s love of mass, shimmer, and curve; Chardin’s plainspoken
volumes; Cézanne’s fractured though solid geometries; Picasso’s
ruptured plane; and Matisse’s spare, buoyant eroticism are all
interrelated and interdependent.
The Card Players depicts three men at a
table, while a man and a child face us and observe the game. It
combines multiple genres: The picture’s tabletop is both still life and
landscape; the figure grouping, like a mountain, evokes
Cézanne’s paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire; and the wall holds
its plane yet opens into sky-like airiness. And the whole elevates a
card game to the level of history painting.
Cézanne is the father of Modern art, and, at the
Barnes, he is repeatedly given pride of place. More viscerally than any
other Modern painter, Cézanne got at the existential nature of
seeing. He refused to ground us in a single fixed viewpoint, instead
exploring relationships, relativity, and the act of seeing—of changing
focus and location—as much as he explored the objects he depicted. In The
Card Players, Cézanne continually moves our point of
view and depth of field, creating shifting spatial pockets that force
viewers to bounce constantly from location to location, from viewpoint
to viewpoint. Cézanne breaks down forms into tessellating,
anxious geometries—the building blocks of pictures. His works link the
shivering, fiery contours of Renoir and the twinkling Pointillism of
Seurat to the planar faceting and pared-down geometry of Cubism. Like
Seurat, Cézanne got solid form one step closer to abstract
flight.
Seurat’s Models pays homage to the nature of
picture-making—a bountiful theme taken up by artists as diverse as
Velázquez, Vermeer, Braque, Klee, and Balthus. Seurat depicted
three nude models in a studio interior. On the left of the painting,
leaning against the studio wall, and providing backdrop and window, is
Seurat’s now-famous landscape A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of
La Grande Jatte (1884-86, Art Institute of Chicago). Cluttering
the studio are parasols, clothes, and still life objects—props
recognizable from many Seurat paintings. The central nude is life-size.
She faces viewers and, with a tilt of her head, seems to contemplate us
as much as we contemplate her. The other two models, flanking her, are
seated. One, adjusting her stocking, is in profile. The third has her
back to us. Bridging landscape and interior, she actually leans into
the space of La Grande Jatte. Together, they suggest the
Three Graces—another ageless theme, oft engaged—but also an artist
pondering the same model in the separate states of posing, dressing,
and undressing. The standing nude is the muse of the Main Gallery at
the Barnes. She links picture, subject, and viewer.
Like the figurehead of a ship, she pulls the entire interior
forward, warping the perspective of the room and reiterating the
artifice of painting and the flatness of the canvas—as a picture
unfolds within a picture; and the nature of picture-making unfolds
within the great hall at the Barnes. The Seurat and the Cézanne
appear to spill out of and support each other. In the Barnes’s hanging,
Seurat’s central nude seems to have grown straight out of the pyramidal
base of the Cézanne. Taken as a pair, the two paintings, broken
down into primary elements—color, line, simple geometric forms, genres,
and layered metaphoric themes—present to us all the necessary
ingredients of painting. At the Barnes, it is impossible not to feel on
some deep level that all of the artworks are instrumental; that,
despite their relative merits (some works are, of course, stronger than
others), they form a choir in which all voices contribute to the
greater song of art.
A medical doctor and chemist, Albert Barnes made a
fortune marketing Argyrol, a breakthrough antiseptic drug. At the
beginning of the 20th century, he began collecting Modern European
paintings—works that very few people then acknowledged as art.
Initially, he sent his friend and former classmate the painter William
Glackens to Europe to buy pictures for him. In time, empowered by his
newfound love of Modern painting, he went on his own buying sprees at
galleries and auction houses. Barnes frequently traveled to Europe,
where he got to know Leo and Gertrude Stein, who introduced him to
Picasso. He avidly collected Matisse, Cézanne, and Picasso long
before the scandalous 1913 Armory Show introduced the European
avant-garde to the United States and caused these artists to be branded
charlatans and degenerates.
Barnes had been inspired by the ideas of William James and
John Dewey—whose lectures on scientific education Barnes attended at
Columbia University in 1918. Barnes and Dewey became friends who shared
and furthered each other’s ideas and philosophies. Dewey stressed the
importance of learning by doing and of education as a means of
investigation and inquiry. Education did not, in Dewey’s estimation,
amount to the acquisition of facts but to the strengthening of one’s
perceptive and cogitative skills. Barnes applied Dewey’s methods to
looking at art, his study of which was grounded not in theory but in
everyday experience. Dewey, in turn, learned from Barnes how to look at
art, both ancient and modern, and was applying Barnes’s perceptions
when he developed the philosophy he put forth in Art as Experience
(1934), a book dedicated to Barnes. Dewey held that aesthetic
experience and life experience are inseparable and cultivate one
another:
In order to understand the aesthetic in its
ultimate and approved forms, one must begin with it in the raw; in the
events and scenes that hold the attentive eye and ear of man, arousing
his interest and affording him enjoyment as he looks and listens: the
sights that hold the crowd—the fire engine rushing by; the machines
excavating enormous holes in the earth; the human-fly climbing the
steeple-side; the men perched high in air on girders, throwing and
catching red-hot bolts. The sources of art in human experience will be
learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects
the onlooking crowd; who notes the delight of the housewife in tending
her plants, and the intent interest of her goodman in tending the patch
of green in front of the house; the zest of the spectator in poking the
wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and
crumbling coals. These people, if questioned as to the reason for their
actions, would doubtless return reasonable answers. The man who poked
the sticks of burning wood would say he did it to make the fire burn
better; but he is none the less fascinated by the colorful drama of
change enacted before his eyes and imaginatively partakes in it.
The foundation has its origins in a free lending library of
Modern literature at Barnes’s factory, where he also first exhibited
his art collection. He cut the work day to six hours and utilized
paintings as discussion topics during seminars he initiated for his
employees (educated or not; black and white welcome), to help them
comprehend art, literature, and aesthetics. Barnes’s classes on how to
approach art, which stressed that the art of the present was
inextricably linked to that of the past, eventually attracted people
from outside the factory. In 1922, Barnes was granted a charter for an
educational institution, and he named Dewey as the foundation’s first
director of education.
When Barnes opened the doors of his foundation in 1925,
besides more than 700 European and American pictures, his collection
included a substantial assortment of African tribal art—a relatively
little known and unexplored subject to which the Barnes Foundation
would devote the first book of its kind, Primitive Negro Sculpture
(1926). Barnes was a strong advocate for civil rights. He collected and
supported the work of African-American artists and donated money to
Lincoln University, a small African-American college. He invited black
students to see his art collection, and black choirs to sing in his
galleries, making connections between African art and African-American
music. And he was instrumental in recording and preserving the
spirituals of the Deep South, which he had loved since childhood.
Barnes believed that the black spirituals, born out of slavery, were
the supreme American art form, “because they came out of the soil and,
like the greatest artistic achievements of the Middle Ages—the
Cathedrals—they are an outgrowth of community life inspired by
religion.” In 1929, when his education program was in full swing,
Barnes sold his company (characteristically just three months before
the Wall Street stock market collapse) and devoted himself fulltime to
the foundation.
Barnes expounded his ideas in essays and in his books,
particularly The Art in Painting (1925),
and to read his writings is to be amazed again and again by this
medical man’s visual intelligence and his insight into the intentions
of artists. But Barnes’s brilliance played itself
out best in his collection’s installation. Here his insights take on a
living form.
Standing in the Main Gallery, and looking into the adjacent
Gallery VII, you have a perfect sightline to a racy Courbet Nude
(1864), the central painting among a grouping of a dozen works on the
east wall. The Courbet depicts a woman seated on the ground in a
landscape. Like the seated model in Seurat’s Models, she is
either pulling on or pulling off her stocking, and, like Seurat’s
standing female nude, she eyes us from across the room. She is exposed
and vulnerable, like the nudes in Cézanne’s Bathers.
And, like those in Matisse’s Dance, she is lost in ecstasy. A
charged intimacy shines forth from both the sexual exposure of her pose
and the boudoir-scale of the gallery, from which she seems to call.
Facing us with her legs apart, she has one foot crossed over her raised
knee. Her body, burning red at its center and around the edges,
levitates slightly above the ground, as if she were offering herself
and rising toward us. Both to emphasize and relieve the erotic tension,
Barnes introduced other elements into the ensemble. Among them,
directly below the Courbet, is a Pennsylvania-German chest of drawers.
Painted on the face of the chest are tulips and an inscribed heart,
which mirrors the exact size and shape—an inverted heart—of the Courbet
nude’s buttocks. And flanking the chest is a pair of andirons, which
lend to the nude and to her sex the quality of a glowing hearth.
Such associations, interactions, and extended metaphors can
be found in every gallery at the Barnes. In a Braque still life in
Gallery X, impastoed pears echo the impastoed thighs in an adjacent
Matisse odalisque—fruit and flesh become interchangeable. In Gallery
XII, a painted rooster on an earthenware jug calls our attention to a
prancing horse on a beach in a Prendergast seascape. In Gallery XIII,
the spindles in the back of an early American chair splay like the tree
branches in a Cézanne landscape. In Gallery XIV, a
Pennsylvania-German dower chest, decorated with flora, sits below and
anchors a large Rousseau jungle scene. Both landscape and chest appear
to have come from the hand of the same painter. And in Gallery XV, a
Tanagra figure moves like a Lipchitz nude, and an ancient terra cotta
bird and the plump bowls of Greco-Roman vases echo the rotundity in the
swollen hips and thighs of a Renoir nude.
Hands are the overarching theme of a whole wall of works in
Gallery XVI. The grouping includes landscapes by Derain and Claude;
Spanish, German, and Flemish religious scenes and portraits; Egyptian
relief carvings; and a vitrine filled with dozens of Greco-Roman vases
and figurines. In the Claude—the largest work on the wall—a tiny
figure, her hand illuminated like a twinkling star against the darkness
of the landscape, points upward. That hand calls attention to the hands
in every picture and object in the gallery, directing you on an
unexpected journey. The supplicating hands in an Egyptian relief
flutter in the plane, rippling the stone like water and alerting us to
the swirling grain of a maple end table. The Egyptian hands, though
abstract, are as expressive, active, and pictorially dominant as the
hand of the Christ who blesses us in a 15th-century German Resurrection
or the hand of Saint Catherine, who blesses Pope Gregory XI. In the
corner of the next room, Gallery XV, the prominent, bright hand in a
19th-century American Portrait of a Man, seeming to have just
been released by that in an Egyptian carving, leads you onward.
Barnes, moreover, orchestrated the artworks to intermingle
with hundreds of meticulously placed pieces of old ironwork. At the
foundation, the blacksmith and metalworker are honored alongside the
weaver, potter, sculptor, and painter. Attached directly to the
galleries’ walls, among and between the pictures, are a plethora of
keys, locks, hinges, latches, door knockers, hooks, handles, tools,
pulls, weather vanes, and kitchen utensils. There’s a giant key hanging
above Claude’s Pastoral Landscape, which may have originally
been a shop sign. The ironwork provides a teeming garden of
filigree, curlicues, curves, and crenulations—an endless interplay of
decorative shapes and symbols. Climbing like vines and flames (like van
Gogh’s cypresses), they unite (and reiterate) the undulations,
arabesques, movements, and rhythms in the art and architecture. They
alert us to what’s going on inside the pictures’ ornate frames; and
they connect artwork to artwork—zooming and darting our eyes around,
among, and through compositions, as if the good doctor were right
there, directing our eyes with a pointer.
The ironworks add levity. They energize the galleries and
activate pictures with accents, ribbons, flourishes, and bows. Some
pieces appear to shoot outward from the canvases like roots, stalks,
fireworks, or signal flares. -Others appear to jiggle and dance. Some
are as regal as coats of arms. In one gallery, a lock and a very
phallic key are suggestively placed next to a nude. At times the
ironwork pieces top ornately gilded frames like preposterous plumage on
overstuffed hats; they act as tongs or pokers ready to pinch and prod;
and on occasion they resemble those disembodied canes that reach out
from behind vaudeville curtains to pluck unsuspecting actors from the
stage.
Above a Renoir nude in Gallery V is a piece of ironwork that,
cross-shaped and comical, resembles an abstract wiry figure with arms
outstretched and wiggling fingers. Renoir’s nude has lowered her towel
to reveal her bare behind; and the ironwork figure appears to be
calling attention to her disrobing. On the same wall is Gerard David’s Crucifixion
with the Virgin, St. John, and the Magdalene (c. 1485). Christ’s
crucified outstretched arms mimic those of the abstract metalwork
figure. We are alerted to the formal dynamic tension—the vertical and
horizontal extension—in both works of art. And the disembodied
metalwork figure emphasizes Christ’s own forward suspension in the
painting. Directly below the Crucifixion, sitting on the
floor, is an early American spinning wheel. It has the proportions of a
child: Its cogwheel resembles a large head, and its supports resemble
arms that extend upward—echoing the arms of Christ in the David.
Suddenly, we are aware of every form that reaches upward in the
gallery, including the splayed paws in Soutine’s Flayed Rabbit (c.
1921), a painting whose metaphor, plainly obvious in context, is that
of the crucifixion.
In 1923, Barnes showed 75 of his School of Paris works at the
Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. They were ridiculed, and the
vitriolic reception gave Barnes a deep distaste for the academic
establishment and well-heeled Philadelphia society. He became very
particular about who entered his collection. Barnes once told an
interviewer: “The students have to be in earnest. Prestige doesn’t
count. Ph.D. or Harvard are zero to us. If the student doesn’t have the
interest or the ability, he is dead as far as we are concerned, and
gets the gate.” Barnes enlisted his dog, Fidèle-de-Port-Manech,
as his personal secretary. He wrote letters in her voice in answer to
all written requests for entry to the Barnes Foundation.
Fidèle’s responses, each signed with a paw mark and full of
references to “my master,” are hilariously condescending. Among those
turned away by the pooch were T.S. Eliot, Meyer Schapiro, and Le
Corbusier. And once you got in the door, Barnes might be posing as a
janitor scrubbing the foyer floor. If he heard you ridicule the art,
artists, or installation, you too got “the gate.”
For years, most Philadelphians couldn’t have cared less that
they were unable to set foot in the Barnes. But money changes
everything. When Impressionist and Postimpressionist art became
fashionable and acceptable in America, and the financial value of the
Barnes collection (conservatively appraised today at $20 billion to $30
billion) became widely known, a move was set afoot to open it to the
public and, eventually, to bring the collection to Philadelphia.
Barnes’s untimely death in a car accident in 1951 left
control of the foundation to Violette de Mazia, his most trusted
disciple and coauthor on many books, his widow Laura, and Lincoln
University. But in 1952, the Philadelphia Inquirer and its
publisher, Walter Annenberg—who maintained a life-long animus to the
Barnes and whose own foundation is playing a key role in the removal of
the collection—filed suit in his managing editor’s name, challenging
the Barnes’s bylaws and regulations, as well as its tax-exempt status
as a public institution. Albert Barnes had been in battle with the Inquirer
for decades but now was unable to fight back. A thorough investigation
into the foundation was undertaken, art “experts” were consulted, and
in 1961 the doors of the Barnes were forced open. It was decided that a
public institution could not be limited to a selected and restricted
few. Hours were extended and 200 people were to be allowed in per day.
Already, Barnes’s devotees, who immediately understood that the
foundation was in danger, protested with a flyer that began: “NOTICE TO
THE PUBLIC: DESTROYING OUR EDUCATIONAL FACILITY IS NOT BUILDING OUR
CULTURE.”
Once the public had access, the public began complaining.
They did not want to check their coats and bags. They wanted tours,
postcards, and catalogues, as well as labels and spotlights for the
pictures. They wondered why children under 12 were not admitted.
Journalists complained that no color reproductions of works in the
collection were allowed to illustrate published articles on the Barnes.
(Although color printing was continually improving, well into the 1960s
black and white reproductions—which did less than those in color to
distort the true nature of works of art—were preferred by scholars. And
Barnes held to the belief that paintings needed to be seen in the
flesh.) De Mazia tried to keep Barnes’s wishes.
When de Mazia died in 1988, all bets were off. In 1990,
Richard H. Glanton, counsel to Lincoln University, took over as the
foundation’s president. He diversified investments, raised the
admission price, and changed policy so that the galleries could be
utilized for social gatherings and parties. He tried to deaccession
works to pay for operating costs and to bolster the endowment—an act
forbidden not just in the Barnes Foundation’s charter but to all
museums under the tenets of the American Association of Museums.
Glanton was not granted permission to sell works, but he had
successfully changed the Barnes from an educational institution into a
marketable commodity.
In 1993, the exhibition “Great French Paintings from the
Barnes Foundation,” accompanied by a lavish color catalogue, opened at
the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Although it went against
Barnes’s will, the show was justified as raising money for needed
repairs and to strengthen the endowment. The larger purpose, according
to its catalogue, was to reach “everyone to whom the paintings in the
Barnes Foundation have been a legend—unattainable—and for every devotee
of great art and beautiful books.” The exhibit traveled to Paris,
Tokyo, Fort Worth, Toronto, and Munich, with its last stop—supposedly
because the Barnes in Merion remained “unattainable” to
Philadelphians—at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
When the foundation reopened in 1995, it had audio guides and
a gift shop that sold coffee mugs, T-shirts, color reproductions, and
jewelry. A gallery referred to as the “Dutch Room,” housing decorative
arts, had disappeared and an elevator taken its place. With increased
visitors came pollution and traffic. The Barnes’s neighbors
understandably complained: Tour buses blocked their driveways; fast
food wrappers littered their lawns, which were trampled by
tourists. Glanton embarked on rounds of endless
litigation—including suing the Barnes's neighbors for racism (Glanton
is black). In the end, nearly $6 million of the Barnes’s endowment was
spent on attorney fees. The Barnes was suddenly broke. When
Glanton was not reelected, a new president was instated. Admission fees
were again increased; a parking lot was added; 1,200 visitors were
allowed in per week. But those in charge were truly only interested in
the final solution.
And all the while the Barnes’s enemies and detractors—led by
Pennsylvania governor Edward G. Rendell, then-Philadelphia mayor John
Street, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Lenfest and Annenberg
Foundations, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art—kept after it. They
were willing to offer the Barnes aid, but only after it had become a
Philadelphia tourist attraction. In 2002, the Barnes filed a petition,
granted in 2004 by Montgomery County Orphan’s Court Judge Stanley M.
Ott, to move the collection to Philadelphia. Lincoln University was
bribed out of its inherited responsibility with state funding. Although
the advocacy group Friends of the Barnes Foundation (barnesfriends.org)
continues to mount a strong opposition, the odds are against them. The
final victory of Philadelphia’s establishment over Albert Barnes is in
sight.
The art dealer Richard L. Feigen, who was dismissed from the
Barnes Foundation’s art advisory committee by Glanton in 1991 because
he refused to support the deaccessioning plans, eloquently summarized
the deceptiveness of the Barnes move in the Art Newspaper:
One could wonder whether the only reason not to homogenize
the Frick Collection into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Gardner
Museum into the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Phillips Collection
into the National Gallery of Art, is that they have endowments large
enough to keep predators at bay. . . . The arguments for this foolish
project are specious. The present Barnes building could easily be made
more accessible. Hours could be extended. Shuttle-buses could run
continuously from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a short 4.6 miles
away. . . . Insufficient effort[s have] been made to tap private
resources for the old Barnes . . . to sell the redundant real estate
of Barnes’s valuable farm, its 19th-century American pottery collection
or unrestricted paintings in the offices, which have been appraised at
more than $30m. Despite its claims that the Barnes had run through its
money and had to be “saved,” the establishment did not really want to
“save” it, only steal it.
The building in Merion, which will remain open through June
2011 (though its entire second floor will close the first of January),
is slated to become an archival center. The new Barnes is scheduled to
open in downtown Philadelphia by 2012. Rebranded as the Barnes
Foundation Art Education Center, it will not follow the museum’s
original footprint. It will be bigger—able to accommodate a projected
four times the number of annual visitors, roughly 250,000 people. While
the new Barnes’s galleries will supposedly replicate the scale,
proportion, and configuration of the existing galleries, it will be
through a Frankenstein’s monster-like revivification. And though almost
all of the artworks are to be reinstalled as they were in Merion, there
are exceptions. The greatest casualties are those objects and pictures
on the balcony and in the stairwell. These include Matisse’s Fauvist
masterpiece The Joy of Life (1905-06), one of the most
important works of Modern art, fully equal to MoMA’s famed Picasso Demoiselles
d’Avignon. Barnes positioned The Joy of Life directly
above the stairwell landing (midway between the first and second
floors), where it ingeniously emphasizes the painting’s pivotal
place—linking the arabesques of Ingres to the free line of Kandinsky—in
the movement from representation to abstraction. It also prepares you
for the glorious view of The Dance from the second-floor
loggia. In Philadelphia, The Joy of Life, along with other
misfit works, will be moved—like an addendum—to a new second-floor
gallery just off the balcony.
The new Barnes will also provide a substantial increase in
space for programs, classes, seminars, traveling exhibitions, and
special events; an auditorium, indoor and outdoor gardens, a fountain,
and a restaurant; a larger retail store and increased parking, as well
as expanded space for conservation, research, and administration. Three
of these new large rooms will be wedged between suites of galleries in
the museum. On the west side will be two classrooms, one per floor,
which will each separate three galleries from those in the central
museum. On the east side will be a three-story indoor garden performing
the same feat of dislocation. These classrooms and garden will compete
with the scale of the Main Gallery and disrupt the original flow and
sightlines between galleries—Barnes’s spectacular and well thought-out
views that lure and entice you from, for example, the forms in a
particular Cézanne in one gallery to those in a particular
Cézanne or Courbet or Renoir in the next; from lemon yellow to
cobalt-violet; from hand to hand and from nude to nude; from fruit to
breast; flower to figure; curve to curve to curve. Such experiences are
being sacrificed for retailing opportunities and visitor amenities.
Nothing could be further from what Albert Barnes started his foundation
to achieve.
For while the Barnes Foundation may be accepted and its
pioneering collection desired, it is still not well understood. One art
critic told me that during a sponsored press trip to the Barnes to
promote the 1993 traveling exhibition, critics from major publications
stood around giggling, bewildered by and ultimately dismissive of the
installation. An art historian who has not been to the Barnes told me
that she had heard the installation was “a distraction from the art.”
These are the types of arts professionals—the philistines and
academics—whom Barnes wanted to keep out of his museum.
It is such people who are hell-bent on turning museums into
shopping malls with ease of access to the “customer.” Through
homogenization and expansion, they have already ruined once-great
institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and
the Morgan Library. There is a belief that getting more people in the
door is a museum’s prime function. As early as the 1930s, Barnes warned
about individuals who supposedly are on the side of art but who
“mistake the husk for the kernel, the shadow for the substance.”
Unfortunately, these are increasingly the people in charge of our
museums. Barnes gave life to a unique institution, and its present-day
stewards should be obligated to follow the ethical oath of others
(medical doctors and art conservators among them) entrusted with the
care of the living: First, do no harm. The relocation of the Barnes is
disguised as altruism, but it is fueled solely by ignorance and avarice.
Museums are peculiar places. While the great national
collections and the vast universal museums are essential to a country’s
cultural life, so, too, are its small, idiosyncratic venues. But with
every renovation, museums are becoming less peculiar. Initially “Wünderkammer”
or “cabinets of curiosity,” museums have existed for barely 400 years.
Repositories of art and artifacts, they bring us riches from ancient
civilizations and faraway lands. But they are much more than
collections of cultural fragments, and their role is greater than that
of simply caretaker. Museums are accountable also as caretakers for our
relationship to art.
Art evolves as we evolve. And as art evolves so, the argument
goes, must museums: No Museum Left Behind. Museums are the principal
nurturers of our engagement with art, dictating not only what art is
but also the environment and decorum surrounding it. And art is
dependent upon the life we allow it. Before the museum, there was no
such thing as art: statues, fetishes, masks, and pictures were tools
and never meant to be elevated to pedestals. The primary weakness of
the museum is that through its displacement of objects from their
original contexts, things are disavowed of their functions and
disempowered of their magical properties. Statues become sculptures,
crucifixes become compositions, and portraits become pictures.
But this weakness can also be a strength. In the museum, the
crucifix—out of context and freed from its explicit functions, symbols,
and metaphors—can operate on a universal level: It is allowed to speak
not just to or for Christians but to all—and to other works of art. In
the museum, the crucifix, just like the totem, the fertility figure,
the landscape, the nude, and the abstract painting, communicates to us
as an expression of universal values. In art, spirituality is not
denominational but expressed through plastic form.
This is what Albert Barnes understood and advocated. His
foundation is a modern temple of aesthetics. Artworks exist
outside—above—their specific movement, mythology, time, and place. Each
piece is a gateway into an exploration of the language of art; the
subject is secondary, even tertiary, to its function as a vehicle for
life. The formal tension in a crucifix—that tension between flying and
falling; between being held to the earth and being liberated or
weightless; that tension between the comfort of gravity and the ecstasy
of release—in terms of art and in terms of human nature is universal.
At the Barnes, Matisse’s Dance, Gerard David’s Crucifixion,
and an ancient Egyptian wall carving—in which a goddess is bound within
the malleable plane—all explore and express similar dynamics.
Artworks still have power. But that power hangs in the
balance. Recently, museums have come to resemble entertainment
complexes. They are all expanding, and they are all starting to look
the same. In predictable, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses fashion, the
architect Renzo Piano, who butchered the Morgan Library, is now
designing the expansion of the Gardner. But bigger isn’t always better.
Museums are living institutions. They flourish in variety. If we
persist in homogenizing these institutions at the present rate, it
won’t be long before all that remains of the Barnes Foundation—and
perhaps the collections of New York’s Frick, Washington’s Phillips, and
London’s Soane—will be a catalogue in the way there remains a catalogue
of the John G. Johnson Collection (which the Philadelphia Museum of Art
absorbed against the dead benefactor’s explicit wishes nearly a century
ago). What’s next: Will the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Governor
Rendell, and the Pew Family Trusts bring Falling Water to the mall on
the Benjamin Franklin Parkway?
Although there are exceptions, most recent museum renovations
and expansions have been more about the ambitions of museum directors,
the egos of patrons, and the self-centered expressions of A-list
architects than about serving the needs of art. Museums increasingly
attempt to attract viewers through every avenue but that of art;
through movies, restaurants, classes, gift shops, parties, pop-cultural
exhibits, and interactive computers. One of the technological amenities
the new Barnes will provide is an introductory film about Albert
Barnes. But everything important about Barnes he said himself in the
creation of the galleries on North Latch’s Lane. The uprooting and
maiming of the Barnes Foundation is emblematic of a great tragedy:
progress overrunning great works of art. Its destruction is no
different from the destruction of a Gothic cathedral.
Much more than a museum is being ruined in Merion. A lifeline
is being severed. The importance of the Barnes as an educational
institution—as a place where artists, as well as the public, can learn
to see in a way not encouraged at other museums—cannot be overstressed.
It was at the Barnes Foundation, which I first visited as a painting
student 25 years ago, that everything my teachers had been saying about
the interconnectedness of art finally began to make sense. The Barnes
Foundation is not just another way to look at art; it is the way
artists look at art.
To move the Barnes collection is to inflict havoc on a
distinctive museum experience, one designed to get us closer to the
minds of art’s makers. To invite in all of the available 21st-century
museum amenities and distractions (merely because we can) is to kill
the essential spirit of the Barnes. Great museums succeed when they do
more than make the old new, the past present. They succeed when, by
taking us deep into works of art, they take us deeper into ourselves.
This is an experience—a union between art and audience that is
spiritual in nature—that Albert Barnes knew had to be nurtured. Like
any spiritual encounter, it cannot be bought, sold, or stolen. But it
can be destroyed.
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WIKIPEDIA sources:
Barnes Museum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_C._Barnes
"Art of the Steal" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Steal_%28film%29
Another view - http://www.barnesfriends.org/downlload/historic_preservation_121307_robert_zaller_lecture.pdf
