Debate rages over future of Bridgeport land
BRIDGEPORT — With warmer weather on the way, the Reservoir Community Farm in the North End will soon be green and active.
But will the 2021 growing season be its last, at least at that location? That debate, simmering for a few years, is coming to a head.
Run by the Bridgeport-based Green Village Initiative, the 8-year-old farm’s lease for 1.5 acres of municipal property at Reservoir Avenue and Yaremich Drive expires in March 2022.
And activists and elected officials from that neighborhood have for some time been pressuring Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration to instead build a library there.
“That’s one of the main reasons why we supported Mayor Ganim,” Steve Nelson, a North End community leader, said, referring to the incumbent’s 2019 reelection. “He promised he would support us and make it happen . ... (Neighborhood) kids have no access to a library. They have to go all the way downtown or to Madison Avenue.
“We’re under the understanding it’s (the lease) not going to be renewed and they’ll (Ganim’s administration) put that land aside for us to get this library,” Nelson said.
Neither Ganim’s office nor Bridgeport’s economic development department, which leases the farmland, returned multiple requests for comment this week.
The initial lease agreement was struck with then-Mayor Bill Finch, who had made environmental and conservation efforts a hallmark of his administration. The farm offers affordably priced fresh produce and youth programs.
Though nothing formal has been announced, the farm’s managers said they are concerned about its future. In mid-February, Eleanor Angerame, Green Village Initiative’s executive director, attended a City Council teleconference to complain about what she characterized as a behindthe-scenes campaign to oust her organization.
“We were alarmed to discover plans already in place ... to convert the urban farm site and green space into a public library,” Angerame, who could not be reached for additional comment, told council members.
She told council members that the Reservoir Avenue community was being unfairly put in the position of having to choose between efforts to address “food insecurity and illiteracy.”
“We seek more open and transparent communications from you,” she said. “This is a pattern.”
In 2018, Nelson and other leaders in the Reservoir Avenue area made a controversial effort to change the two-way Yaremich Drive to a one-way street. After the change was approved by the city’s police commission, the farm, some residents and businesses complained it was done without their input, and in early 2019 convinced the commission to reverse its decision.
The City Council without fanfare last year set aside $2 million in the five-year capital plan — the budget for large infrastructure projects — for a “new North End/Reservoir Avenue library branch.”
But Jim O’Donnell, the public library board president, in an interview this week said although the garden land would be “an ideal location,” nothing has been decided and that the board would want the neighborhood to reach a consensus.
“We don’t want to force a library into that neighborhood. No,” O’Donnell said. “Everybody needs to be on the same page.”
O’Donnell acknowledged that “it makes sense to have one (a library branch)” around Reservoir Avenue and the board updated its master plan to reflect that need. He suggested a library and the farm could potentially co-exist on the same property.
But, he emphasized, the library board is focused on the ongoing, $13.5 million effort to complete three other new libraries: An East Side branch that opened two years ago but still needs a second-story renovation; a Newfield library in the East End scheduled to open this spring or summer; and an upper East Main Street building planned for the former location of Hibachi Buffet and FitzWilly's restaurants.
“We have three irons in the fire,” O’Donnell said. “We’ve got to finish what we’ve got on our plate now before we can take on some more.”
Nelson in an interview this week said, “We don’t want to be against healthy living and healthy food . ... We all want to try to make this work.” He said it may be possible to build a library branch and keep the farm, or find another location for the latter.
But Nelson also acknowledged the feeling he and some others in the area share — and that had been expressed during the fight over making Yaremich Drive one-way — that the farm was never supposed to be a permanent fixture.
“Mayor Finch’s administration allowed them to temporarily go into that property . ... What the garden has done is ‘dug in.’ That’s not their land to be dug in on,” Nelson said.
“That’s our prime land in our neighborhood and we feel we can get a better usage (from it). The garden’s only open four or five months out of the year.”
The Rev. Sara Smith sits on Green Village Initiative’s board of directors. She said the questions surrounding the farm’s future are “a big deal” for her and her fellow board members.
“It seems to me a library is good. So is the Reservoir Farm,” Smith said. “They are both for learning. To elevate people. To educate.
“We can figure out a way to do both. Surely we can,” Smith continued. “I just can’t imagine it’s ‘either, or.’ ... We just have to get the folks to take the temperature down and let’s talk.”