Construction hasn’t yet begun at Batterson Park
New completion target is 2025 for renovation announced in 2021
In March 2021, officials from New Britain, Farmington and Hartford announced a planned $10 million makeover of Batterson Park, the nearly 200-acre summertime swimming spot that has been shuttered since 2015. The park was slated to reopen as early as mid-2023.
But nearly two years on, renovation work hasn’t begun, and Hartford officials say the new completion target date is 2025.
“The city is still moving forward with Batterson Park’s renovations,” Thea Montanez, Hartford’s chief operating officer, said last week.
So far, the city, which owns the park that is located in Farmington and New Britain, has completed a water quality investigation, solicited design work, done operations planning and “selected demolition,” the city said in its weekly e-newsletter.
But it’s unclear whether demolition work has already been done.
“We aim to make the park available this summer for limited and passive use,” Montanez said. “To meet that goal, the city is in process of contracting with a demolition contractor to remove two structures on site that have been professionally evaluated and deemed structurally unsound.”
The newsletter to residents says “Full design and renovation of the park will not be complete until 2024, but we aim to make the park available this summer for limited and passive use.” Montanez and Akash Kaza, communications director for Mayor Luke Bronin, confirmed that date was an error.
For decades, Batterson Park was a popular summertime oasis for residents of Hartford and the surrounding area — an accessible alternative to Connecticut’s shoreline, especially for the many city residents without cars.
Facing budget constraints, Hartford scaled back on maintenance and by 2015 shut down the park entirely, leaving it to vandals and the elements in the meantime.
The $10 million in state funding, secured chiefly by House Speaker Matt Ritter, is intended to clean up the park’s 165-acre pond, remove invasive plants, truck in more sand for the beach and replace the decrepit, vandalized concession building and bath house.
Harford public works department was to lead the renovation, then New Britain and Farmington were to join the city in maintaining the park, along with the nonprofit Batterson Park Conservancy, established five years ago by neighbors and friends of the park.
But in July of 2022, the city ordered the conservancy to cease its fundraising and other activities on behalf of the park and barred members from the property with the threat of litigation. At the time, Bronin said, “This particular organization, while it includes some very passionate people, just turned out not to be the right one to support the work and ultimately ensure the sustainability of the park for many years to come.”
Construction that was scheduled to begin in the fall of last year did not. With funding secured a year prior, Montanez told the Courant in September 2022, “While the planning and design work is moving forward, construction will not begin this fall.”
Batterson Park Conservancy
The Conservancy was spearheaded by New Britain residents Neil Connors and his wife, Allison Cappuccio. Every park in Hartford has a group that serves as a caretaker and advocate of that park and the Conservancy was modeled after that of Elizabeth Park, Cappuccio said last year.
“That’s where we came on, is that nobody was advocating for Batterson,” Cappuccio said. “It represents 25% of Hartford’s parklands, and nobody was advocating for it.”
Connors is afraid that remains true.
Despite the disbanding of the Conservancy, Connors is pressing ahead with a core group of six to 10 advocates to recruit new board members from Hartford, Farmington and New Britain to provide the public with transparency around proposed renovation work.
Connors, an attorney, said that after reading the city’s ordinance on parks and recreation, he is confident that continuing his grassroots conservancy is within his legal rights.
“The city has ordinance 26-2, which pertains to the use of park organizations,” Connors said. “The policy reads that any group using the name of a city-owned park must be nondiscriminatory and that membership must be open to all residents. They revoked our
conservancy without citing any reasons. As far as I’m concerned, we are within our scope and meet those qualifications.”
Connors said that he and others will continue to advocate and operate under the conservancy.
“The main thing we are pushing for is a limited-use opening to just get this place safe for people to utilize this year,” Connors said.
But he said he is hesitant given the city’s prior stalling on renovation work, and disagrees that only two properties need to be demolished.
“If you go there for five minutes you will immediately determine all the buildings need to go,” Connors said. “Why not go out and demolish all the buildings in one go? It seems to me it would be more cost effective.
If you wanted to film Season 2 of the apocalyptic show ‘The Last of Us’ then Batterson Park’s abandoned structures would be a great place. It’s that bad.”
The city said demolition of the two structures is set to begin soon and in the near future the team managing the project will hold meetings for the community in order to share the design plans and progress related to this historic park.
The city has hired contractors CSG Group and FHI Studios to manage the project.
“I’m hopeful,” Connors said. “But let’s wait and see.”