STATE SENATOR
Marilyn Moore
DEPUTY PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE
HONESTY & INTEGRITY
- Representing
- Bridgeport,
- Monroe,
- Trumbull
BRIDGEPORT—Senator Marilyn Moore (D-Bridgeport) and Senator Ed Gomes (D-Bridgeport) today welcomed a $200,000 state grant that will help to remediate and redevelop blighted properties in Bridgeport and put them back into productive use.
The grant, being awarded to the Bridgeport Economic Development Corporation (BEDC), will be used to create a comprehensive implementation strategy to remediate and redevelop the Bridgeport Brass Project Area. The Bridgeport Brass Project Area is located in the geographic center of the city along the Pequonnock River, approximately one-third of a mile north of Bridgeport’s central business district and intermodal center, and it provides the opportunity to optimize transportation and waterfront access and site use.
“Investments in brownfields have a positive impact on improving the economic development opportunities in local communities. Bridgeport will benefit greatly from the remediation and redevelopment of the former Bridgeport Brass Company.” Sen. Moore said. “We’ve already started to see some redevelopment of these abandoned sites along the Pequonnock River, and this grant will continue these improvements.”
“This plan will hopefully allow us to safely clean up and reuse the Bridgeport Brass area so that the residents of Bridgeport can once again enjoy a safer, healthier community that is also aesthetically pleasing,” Sen. Gomes said.
Governor Dannel P. Malloy announced today that Bridgeport is one of six communities across the state receiving a total of $1 million in brownfields grants. The funds are being awarded by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development through the recently launched Brownfield Area-Wide Revitalization Grant program. This is the second round of grants being awarded under the program. Created in 2015, the program encourages communities to consider areas such as neighborhoods, downtowns, waterfront districts, or other sections with multiple blighted properties and develop strategies to assess, clean up, and reuse the parcels for business, housing, and public amenities that will generate jobs and revenues and revitalize the entire area.
Since 2011, the state has invested $225.6 million in 170 brownfield projects located in 72 municipalities across the state. For every $1 of state investment in a brownfield project, $11.41 has been or will be invested by non-state partners.
A brownfield is defined by Connecticut General Statutes as “any abandoned or underutilized site where redevelopment, reuse or expansion has not occurred due to the presence or potential presence of pollution in the buildings, soil or groundwater that requires investigation or remediation before or in conjunction with the restoration, redevelopment, reuse and expansion of the property.”
Bridgeport was once a major industrial center and communities were built around industry as walk-to-work neighborhoods. Most of these industrial sites are now unused or abandoned. In 2009, there are over 400 potentially contaminated sites in the city, ranging in size from less than one quarter of an acre to 40 acres. These sites pose potential health threats to the community’s sensitive populations.