The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Business owner drops plans for Franklin Plaza
City requires fees, supervision for newest park
TORRINGTON — A business owner at the newly completed Franklin Plaza had big plans for the newly developed space behind East Main Street, but city regulations and fees have stopped her in her tracks.
Now that Franklin Plaza is completed, the space is under the purview of the Parks & Recreation Commission. Like any park facility it oversees, establishing rules and policies ensures the safety of those using it, officials said. Reservations are required and organizers and vendors pay fees for their events.
Heather Rems Korwin, owner of Sanctuary Power Yoga, organized Festive on Franklin, a vendor event, in December. She and others involved in the event handled their own advertising, set up the tables and oversaw cleanup, and said she was happy with the turnout. She was working on a seasonal farmers market for the plaza with her own fees and reservation schedule, until she was told by the city that anything done at the venue had to be
done through the city. She withdrew her plans, she said, because it was too expensive.
Korwin said she planned to have vendors pay $175 per space for the farmers market season from mid-March through October, which worked out to about $6 per week.
“All of that came to light after the fact,” Korwin said. “The city didn’t come up with a plan and a fee structure until about two weeks ago with the Parks and Recreation Commission met to discuss it. They hadn’t implemented any kind of rules or fees.”
Korwin said that since the start of the Franklin Plaza project, she and other business owners were told they could use it for free.
Mayor Elinor Carbone explained that the commission had to evaluate the plaza and decide on fees for its use.
“As the city reviewed the types of events that can and will occur on the plaza, it became increasingly clear that each event can and will impact the costs to the city differently,” the mayor said, and detailed the categories for events and what they would require.
A small event that involves no food and/or alcohol, utilities, has limited setup, no cleanup and
limited trash cleanup, can be held with no impact on city services, such as the cost of attendants, trash removal, a police presence. These include exercise or yoga classes, story walks, craft fairs, educational workshops, popup events, and small outdoor performances.
A medium-sized event that involves food, multiple vendors, music concerts and/or performances that require electricity and water, pedestrian traffic, parking
supervision and overtime for city employees to do the cleanup, would require dedicated resources, the mayor said. “The cost of those resources would have to be factored into a user fee for the plaza, just as it is for any other park in the city. If the event is much larger, with food and alcohol, fees may need to be adjusted to include police coverage,” she said.
Korwin said she came to the city with the farmers market proposal
in January.
“Right after the New Year, I wrote and said, ‘hey, this is what I want to do,’” she said. “What they’re saying is all well and good, except I don’t need utilities. At my holiday event, I had one vendor that needed to be plugged in. We were promised all through construction that we could use it for free. So for the city to turn around and say, ‘You have to do this and this and this,’ is unfair.”
Korwin noted that farmers market vendors shouldn’t be expected to pay so much money, and that paying it up front is impossible.
“I’m really disappointed, yet again, with the city, and I’ve been consistently disappointed by the city with the Franklin Plaza,” she said.
Korwin would like to see the city revisit its fees for programs and events that are being planned by businesses like hers.
“My business is focused on revenue, but I’m also in the business of serving the community,” she said. “I do a lot of things for free out of my studio. But it seems like the city is turning from a community space, to something to generate revenue. It’s turned into that.”
She said a farmers market would draw plenty of people to downtown Torrington. “You’d think the city would see the advantages to that,” she said.
Carbone said she understood Korwin’s frustration.
“I know that Heather is disappointed to learn she’ll have to pay a fee for the 29-week farmers market business model she proposed,” she said. “We offered to work with her to reduce the cost of the user fee, by eliminating the need for an attendant during setup and breakdown, thereby reducing the cost to $75 a week. I also offered to introduce Heather to potential sponsors that may be inclined to cover the cost of the event. She elected to cancel the event instead.”
For a wedding anniversary, the traditional gift after one year is paper. Paper is essential. It is fragile. The blank page invites imagination of the future. It seems fitting to repurpose paper to mark the bleak anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus has become an essential part of our everyday lives, and a reminder of the fragility of life. We accommodate it, endure it, and mourn its staggering list of victims.
We are publishing the names of more than 6,510 of Connecticut’s COVID-19 victims on the pages of our newspapers, in a special section titled “Reflect. Rebuild.” that looks back as well as forward. These are names that were officially reported and known to Hearst Connecticut Media. The actual number is more than 7,700. The names appear on our websites as well, but it seems appropriately ephemeral to document these lives in ink on paper.
The list takes up seven pages. It is impossible to contextualize that much loss.
Each December, we feel a familiar pain as we reflexively recall the 26 students and teachers who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown more than eight years ago.
Each September, Connecticut memorializes the 161 people with ties to our state who were killed on Sept. 11, 2001. Those names remain recognizable to many people in the state, particularly in their hometowns.
Even the total number of 9/11 victims — 2,997 — represent less than half of the people we have lost in this state since the coronavirus claimed its first Connecticut life one year ago.
It’s a number that is dwarfing the 2,403 Americans killed in our nation’s “day which will live in infamy,” the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
There are monuments in towns, cities and the nation’s capital to honor our war dead. It’s become somewhat controversial to compare these casualties with those who died as a result of this faceless enemy. Still, it was immediately and universally acknowledged that health care and emergency workers were on the front lines with supermarket employees and others since this battle began.
The breadth of loss has at times seemed paralyzing, turning the more than 520,000 Americans killed into a mirror version of the Unknown Soldier.
Except that they are not unknown. There will never be a monument to collectively record these lives, so we are left to return to the essentials to frame context: arithmetic and paper.
War is an essential as well. We lose when we underestimate the enemy, when we are not prepared for battle. We fared much better when started donning masks, washing hands and striving for social distancing in Connecticut. We suffered setbacks during the holiday season, seemingly due to the yearning to reconnect.
The vaccines give us hope, but we must remain focused, and resilient. Dropping the mask mandate, as Texas is poised to do, is an irrational strategy.
A look over the names in these pages can provide inspiration. You may recognize some. No one should fail to acknowledge the daunting threat of COVID. It has made lives as fragile as paper. And these paper pages are already too many.
It seems fitting to repurpose paper to mark the bleak anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus has become an essential part of our everyday lives, and a reminder of the fragility of life.