Choice, Chance and Change

Please consider joining me this Monday evening at City Hall in Council Chambers at 6:30, BEFORE the regular City Council meeting. I wouldn't ask if it wasn’t important because you have demands on your time and attention. It’s the third and final presentation on the Chelsea Harbor/Downtown Mobility Study. 

I know, you just read the title and snorted probably more derisively than dismissively but you're wrong. After three-plus decades of living here, I'm as weary and wary as you are of poems, prayers, and promises involving downtown that end up as nothing more than brave words. This time is different and this time different is better.

If you haven't yet, check out the website. As you'll read, the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments (SCCOG) and the City have partnered with VHB, a consulting firm for this study. It's a key component in Norwich's efforts to provide safe and accessible streets for all including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit users of all ages and abilities.

I attended the first presentation at Otis Library in late October with about sixty or so other wide-eyed hopefuls and had hoped for even more people at a session held a month ago in City Hall that offered an update and a progress report. Bygones.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step, but we expend so much energy arguing about why we cannot undertake an action, often choosing sides and attacking one another, that we never even try to put on our shoes and thus remain rooted in place. And then complain  'Nothing ever changes.' 

We take comfort in the unhappiness we create. Even after all my years of living here, I'm still impressed (and more than a little depressed) with how often and facilely we play the victim card. News Flash: No one can make you a victim without your consent. Silence equals consent so speak up and speak out. 

I was and am impressed by the audacity of the study's vision, fueled by an optimism I fear not very many residents of Norwich have (but should) combined with a core conviction that while by ourselves we cannot do everything if we are together we could do something. In this case, that something is to start the resurrection and resuscitation of an urban core that has been allowed to decay and descend into growing disrepair for (I'm only guessing now) at least half a century or more.

We've all witnessed proposals for Chelsea more times than any of us can count (I also liked the Utopia adventure the best). But those in the past were designed by private real estate owners or transportation design engineers looking to inflate real estate prices though rarely values, or to move vehicles as rapidly as possible from Point A to B. 

The Chelsea Harbor/Downtown Mobility Study. is resident-centric. It’s not a ‘build it and they will come’ vision but rather, ‘Here we all are in the same device, let’s make it better.’ As you'll learn Monday night at the presentation, three options are being proposed (but my heart beats fastest for The Rose Bridge because it does the best job of drawing the RITC, Thayer’s Marine, and The Marina, closer together to Chelsea with enough additional greenspace to offer venues for events that have traditionally competed for use of Howard T. Brown Park). However, come, listen, ask questions, and make up your own mind.

You're asking 'Where's the money for this pipedream?' That's an excellent question and part of the answer as I understand it, is the project can be piecemeal, as funding and material/approvals permit, and as wants/needs and desires develop. Isn't it time we stopped wishing great things would happen in Norwich and started making them happen for ourselves?

The presentation is this Monday at  6:30 PM in the City Council Chambers. Please attend and remember The Three Cs: Choice, Chance, and Change. You have to make a choice to take a chance if you want to change. 

See you Monday.
-bill kenny