Plans to be developed for riverfront placemaking project

NEW LONDON – The New London Common Council approved spending $25,000 to have Ayers and Associates design conceptual plans for a riverfront placemaking project in an area south of the Wolf River, generally bounded by the river, W. Wolf River Avenue, N. Pearl Street, and Smith Street.
The approval came at the council’s June 16 meeting and passed by a 9-1 vote. Ald. Tim Roberts voted against the approval. The funds will come from the city’s Economic Development Assigned Fund balance.
The placemaking design project was discussed at the May 26 New London Economic Development Committee meeting. At that meeting, Chris Silewski, principal landscape architect with Ayers and Associates, told the committee that most of the time would be spent on “developing a strong implementation strategy.”
When asked what the best strategy would be to solicit input from the community, Silewski said, “It’s always best to have representation from a committee to a smaller level, so that we can focus on particular issues and then move those up to the committee initiative with a narrow focus as much as possible.”
He added that early in the process, there should be recommendations from city staff that can be brought to the committee.

For community input, Silewski recommended that the project not be designed by community engagement, but to seek verification from the community that the committee is headed in the right direction.
“In this particular scope of work to be more inline with showing them (community) one or two options of physical designs and then one or two options for them to choose from of different placemaking images,” Silewski said.
Ald. Tim Roberts said he thinks the city has “already kind of had public input. We’ve been talking about this for years. We went with a survey for the community, so there’s been that public input.”
He added that he liked the idea of a sub-committee being formed.
“The one concern I have is, if we do this (design conceptual plans) will we have the funds to build it?” Roberts asked. “I don’t want to throw more money at this and then, ‘Ok, let’s talk about it for another five years.’ That’s my concern with all of this. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this. Is there the funds to do it?”
Committee Chairperson Ald. BaLynda Croy said without a finished landscaping design concept, the city would not be able to apply for grants for the project.
“There’s grants out there, we’ve already missed out on a few of them for placemaking because we don’t have this portion done,” Croy said.
Hoerth added that a design needs to be completed before the final cost of the placemaking project can be determined so planning can take place to fund the project.
“Typically, most of these grants need to be shovel ready, so we need to have it in a shovel ready sense to be able to jump on it to take the opportunity for these grants,” Hoerth said.
Since the property where the placemaking project would be completed is in a tax incremental district (TID), Hoerth said TID funding could possibly be used to fund the project.
Croy said if the city doesn’t move forward with the placemaking project now, chances are the city will eventually forget about it.
“It’s either support it, or we’re done talking kind of situation,” Croy said. “Because we all know our capital projects and we know that money is not there for, you know, a riverwalk at this point.”
Hoerth reminded the committee that the city has been “very successful at leveraging grants.”
Silewski said the final plan developed by Ayers would be a plan that is a “phased approach.”
“The phased approach we put in place gives you a bunch of different funding mechanisms to lean on,” Silewski said.