My City of Ruins

Growing up in New Jersey, I use the music of Bruce Springsteen to maintain perspective on the world. 

I can recall the realtor driving me over the (old) Laurel Hill Bridge my first weekend after returning from fifteen years in Germany and a lyric from “My City of Ruins,” ‘..the boarded-up windows and the empty streets...’ describing downtown Norwich as I searched for a place my wife and our two children, still in Germany, could call home when they arrived. That was autumn 1991.

Now it’s 2024 and our children are grown, have partners to share their lives, and live far away. We read them when they write, but they don’t live here, because while we’ve progressed as a city, Norwich still hasn’t changed enough to be where they would wish to come home to.  

I can’t pretend to be an expert on Norwich, but I have a theory that we don’t know how we got here, and, more importantly, often aren’t willing to work together to get to where we want to go. 

And part of that is schizophrenia about who we are as a city. Some see us as mixed-use, with elements of urban and rural-and that works if we can craft compromises that benefit the greatest number of residents. 

The ‘nice things’ we all want, good schools, public safety, paved roads, beautiful parks, and modern infrastructure cost money, and when property taxes are raised, homeowners aren’t happy so we start talking about commercial development which is why we create business parks though not necessarily sustainable businesses to fill them. 

The wrangling about a second business park in Occum underscores (to me) the lack of agreement on what Norwich is. Are we a small, (hopefully growing) urban environment or are we a mostly rural community? We need to make up our minds because what we decide to be will dictate how we will continue to grow and develop. Or fail to. 

Many of the comments on social media reacting to the Occum Industrial Center were passionate but were devoid of facts and filled with insults and innuendo denigrating the volunteers who serve on the Commission on the City Plan (and then we wonder why we have so many vacancies on city boards?). 

We are better than this, or we should strive to be.       

Last December, I hiked the open space in Occum. It is hard to believe so much nature is a part of Norwich (except you can hear the buzz of traffic on I-395). I can see why it’s attractive for development (highway access and power lines on site) and Norwich can use the tax revenue. 

But while I understand the benefit, I’m troubled by the cost (in terms of flora, fauna, and habitat for all manner of wildlife). Once open space is gone, it’s gone forever.

We have so many contaminated industrial sites across the city, lining the banks of our rivers that are considered ’too expensive’ to clean up and whose owners walked away sticking us with the check for their greed and avarice. I don’t think progress lies in destroying more green space to build future abandoned sites especially when we could reclaim those we close our eyes to now. 

The Occum Industrial Center may well be a field of dreams, but what if it becomes a nightmare? Once developed there’s no turning back. It’s a question of balance and fairness, both for today and the future. To avoid another My City of Ruins. 
-bill kenny