Casting for river ideas
The Hartford Belle, a sightseeing boat on the Connecticut River provides an attraction for the riverfront. It’s one of several potential ideas for the Susquehanna’s banks that area officials saw.
HARTFORD, Conn. – Turns out if you build it, they won’t come – unless they have something to do.
It’s a lesson the Riverfront Recapture nonprofit group working to reinvent the riverfront in this capital city imparted on Luzerne County representatives who visited on Friday.
That point wasn’t lost on Jim Brozena, director of the county Flood Protection Authority. “The secret of these things is obviously in the programming,” he said.
If fact, “the whole point” of bringing the roughly two dozen officials, including state Rep. Eddie Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, to the banks of the Connecticut River was to get other county agencies on board, he said.
With riverfront renovation a high-profile focus in the county, local officials were looking for good ideas to incorporate and problems to avoid. They found both in a project that has many similarities to the projects slated for the Susquehanna River.
The majority of Hartford’s river walk is a three-mile loop that uses two bridges to cross into East Hartford and features an amphitheater, boathouse, various launches, a garden walk and a sculpture tour. There’s also a series of bike-trail loops, a landscaped promenade and extension plans for towns north and south of the project.
Begun in 1981, the renovations were designed to reconnect the residents to the river, which had been isolated from the city by flood walls and segregated by an interstate highway. The key was the promenade, a park-like walkway that bridges the highways and connects the downtown business district to the river walk.
But the main attraction, according to Riverfront Recapture, is the programs they provide. Offering more than 20 free events, including boat races and music festivals, throughout the summer season, the revitalization group attracts people from far beyond its regional borders and well after the business day ends. The group logged more than 900,000 visitors last year, according to Joe Marfuggi, the organization’s president and chief executive officer.
Dean Coogan, a project manager at a corporation downtown, might soon add himself to that number. Though he’s worked downtown for years and spent many lunch breaks on the promenade, as he was doing on Friday, he’s only once ventured farther, he said. That was enough to sell him.
“It’s great because it was quieter, you saw less people, and it was a great change in setting,” he said of the garden-like walkway.
Coogan said he’s now considering stopping by after work sometime and is looking at the list of events.
That’s the kind of interest Riverfront Recapture is seeking from city workers who previously ignored the river, said Marc Nicol, the group’s director of park planning and development. And they’re constantly revamping to keep that interest.
“What we’re discovering is the project will never be done,” he said. “People are always coming up with new ideas.”
