BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - As recently as 2008, longshoremen at Bridgeport’s Cilco Terminal unloaded bananas bound for cities and towns around the Northeast. Not far away, Derecktor Shipyards was putting the finishing touches on the Cakewalk, a private yacht whose price tag ultimately topped $200 million.
Within a few years, both were gone, taking with them some of the last vestiges of industry on the Bridgeport waterfront.
Today, there’s no shortage of development - planned and actual - along the city’s coastline, but it will not mean a return for manufacturing. Instead, most of the waterfront is planned for recreation, with a promenade, a fishing pier and water taxis taking prominence.
It’s part of a longer pattern. As heavy industry has in large part fled Connecticut and the rest of the Northeast, cities and towns have searched for replacements, both for the economic weight they carried, but also for the physical spaces themselves. Many factories were built on what would otherwise be prime waterfront land, which is burdened today by decrepit buildings marred by pollution.
In Bridgeport, the issue is exacerbated by a lack of dredging. Since 1964, the last time the harbor was dredged, silt has filled in the channel to the point that it doesn’t meet its required 35-foot depth in many places. The lack of dredging leads to trepidation on the part of companies that might move to the harbor, which hurts business, which seemingly reduces the urgency to dredge. It’s a cycle the city has spent decades trying to break.
“Companies say it needs to be dredged,” said Andrew Nunn, Bridgeport’s chief administrative officer and acting director of the city’s Port Authority. “The federal government needs to maintain it. Without that, it limits your choices.”
Peak of industry
Bridgeport, for all its industrial power, was never as dependent on its harbor as some other Connecticut cities. Some of its powerhouse factories that took up prime waterfront real estate, officials point out, could just as easily have been located inland.
Today, shipments of fuel and gravel continue to arrive via Long Island Sound, and in amounts similar to the city’s industrial heyday. “The bulk deliveries of oil and coal are at about the same level that it was,” said David Kooris, director of the city’s Office of Planning and Economic Development.
Redevelopment plans have been based around some fundamental principles, including increasing access to the water for a population long cut off from its greatest resource, and doing so in a way that doesn’t harm the environment. Hurricane Sandy, in 2012, gave new urgency to those efforts, with disaster prevention taking new urgency.
For nearly all its history, much of the Bridgeport waterfront has been taken up by public spaces in the form of Seaside Park, which takes up the longest stretch of coastline, and Pleasure Beach. Add to that the Black Rock neighborhood, which starts at the city’s western border and features high-priced homes and a promenade, and most of the city’s Sound-fronting land is set aside for residents or recreation.
Black Rock Harbor is still the scene of some industry, with an asphalt plant and fuel tanks, but is mostly characterized by boat slips, not factories.
Gaining access
The skyline-dominating Harbor Station power plant, which brings in coal from Indonesia, is among a number of waterfront businesses that uses the water but could function elsewhere without it, officials said. “The ability to load and offload on the Sound is a bonus,” Nunn said.
Between Seaside Park and the power plant sits the former Remington Shaver site, which has been the site of manufacturing for more than a century. From 1900 to 1929, the Locomobile factory on the property manufactured early cars - first steam-powered, then with internal-combustion engines.
The site today has a well-formed plan, with a developer in place and public funding set aside for a high-rise apartment complex. It’s one of the few developable waterfront sites of its kind left in Fairfield County, though its industrial legacy makes it a challenge.
Continuing around the coastline, the Steel Point peninsula, currently in the midst of a billion-dollar-plus redevelopment, was for decades the scene of a power plant and a residential neighborhood. Its most prominent water-dependent feature was a marina. When the current development is finished, the peninsula is supposed to feature a wraparound promenade, and the main retail tenant, Bass Pro Shops, will take advantage of the water for fishing and boating.
Across the Yellow Mill Channel, the former site of Carpenter Technology’s steel plant has been designated for retail, with the first grocery store in that section of the city planned to open in coming years.
The former site of the Cilco Terminal, once home to the banana boat, will soon be the home of the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry Co., which provides regular service to Long Island. The Derecktor site is the subject of interest for an unnamed out-of-state company, but industry does not appear to be in its future.
Years ahead
City officials acknowledge the path the waterfront has taken toward recreation, but insist that industrial use must be among the options available in coming years. Shipping, which has largely abandoned smaller ports like Bridgeport, could again be an important industry, officials say, and the ever-larger ships bringing goods across the oceans are the reason.
The nation’s true deep-water ports today are scrambling to accommodate what are called post-Panamax ships, which will fit through an enlarged Panama Canal starting in 2016. Because so few ports will be able to handle them, a secondary market could emerge, Nunn said, with the huge ships potentially docking in the Sound and smaller barges bringing goods into shore.
“We feel like we’re poised to take advantage of this new cargo structure,” he said.
But dredging is key, and for the first time in years, city officials are confident it will happen soon. Problems in years past over what to do with the dredged material appear to have been solved.
Of the state’s three deep-water ports, Bridgeport has always been the lowest priority, officials say. New Haven, with its much larger importing industry, commands plenty of attention, and New London, with the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and General Dynamic Electric Boat factory, will always be accommodated. Bridgeport has no such calling card.
Today, the priority is to keep options open. “We want to take the site-by-site success we’ve achieved and make it more inclusive,” Kooris said, saying a mix of uses is as valuable along the waterfront as it is in a neighborhood.
Nunn, citing new parks and other access points, including a fishing pier at what had been a burnt-out bridge, said residents had for too long been cut off from the Sound. “We’ve seen the value of being able to get to the water,” he said.
___
Contact Hugh Bailey at hbailey@ctpost; 203-330-6233; @hughsbailey.
___
Information from: Connecticut Post, https://www.connpost.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.