Around the State: Bridgeport

Around the State Bridgeport.  After what seems like years of relentless decline, several redevelopment projects are currently underway in downtown Bridgeport. The Arcade on Main Street and the Bijou Theater on Fairfield Avenue, both of which are on the National Register and both of which are currently being renovated, represent a different era in American architecture and a different relation to urban life than we see in much of the commercial and domestic developments that have spread across Connecticut’s landscape over the past fifty years.             In contrast to the dizzying effects of contemporary mall architecture, the Arcade, built in 1889, with its glass skylight and Victorian wrought-iron detailing, dazzles its visitors without confusing them. The openness of the ceiling to the sky and of the front archway to the street signal an investment in permeability and openness to the city and its street-life, rather than a desire to shut it out.            At the Bijou Theater, built in 1909, an upstairs ballroom, at various times referred to as Colonial Hall and Quilty’s Ballroom, provides a similar space for circulation. Like the Arcade, the ballroom has two floors and a balcony, as well as large windows that allow for plenty of natural light and views of the street. Combined with the ground-level movie theater, it promotes a vision of urban life in which dance and theater and social interaction are not activities to be sequestered from each other and from the city in general, but which mutually reinforce one another.            The similarities between these two buildings constructed 20 years apart are not coincidental. In both, it is ultimately the city which facilitates the social interactions and exchanges which take place within their walls. They demonstrate a belief that cities, despite their density, can and should be clean, pleasurable, and safe.            This image of an integrated, mixed-use, walk-able urban center has inspired the two developers, Urban Green Builders (UGB), which is overseeing the Arcade restoration, and the Kuchma Corporation, which is responsible for the Bijou. Both stress the need for combining residential and commercial space, combining historic restoration with new development, combining old buildings with new technologies, combining transportation strategies, and also bringing together people of different income levels and different races.            These projects represent a vastly different vision of Bridgeport’s future and how that future will be achieved from the proposed Steel Point redevelopment, in which an entire neighborhood was cleared to make way for new construction—construction that has yet to take place. Rather than treating the city as a blank canvas, UGB and Kuchma are trying to transform the downtown building by building, block by block, working almost entirely within the existing historic, architectural and social fabric of the city. Both seem to have a genuine respect and appreciation for the historic resources in the downtown area that lie at their disposal, many of which are crying out for restoration.            For UGB, whose ‘greenness’ is derived from their re-use of old buildings, their use of geo-thermal heating and cooling systems (which after a shaky winter, finally appear to be up and running), and their commitment to walk-able urban environments that have access to public transportation, the renovation of the Arcade into offices, apartments, studios, shops, and even a specialty grocery, constitutes phase II of its five-part redevelopment plan along Main Street. Their Bridgeport projects to date, which include the Citytrust complex and 144 Golden Hill Street, have used both New Market Tax Credits (NMTCs; designed to encourage mixed-use development projects in qualified low-income communities), and Federal Rehabilitation Investment Tax Credits without which the projects would not have been possible, according to Lisa Slocum, a consultant for UGB.             Phil Kuchma, who has converted the upstairs ballroom of the Bijou into office space for Antinozzi Architects and is currently finalizing the deal on the downstairs movie theater, which he hopes will be made into a venue for independent films, was also involved in the conversion of Read’s Department Store into Artspace and Sterling Market Lofts (see CPN May/June 2005), a project which, despite certain failings, he nonetheless credits with ushering in the new era of downtown redevelopment. Although the Bijou will not in the end use historic tax credits, his other restoration projects on Bijou Square will, and all have been the beneficiary of NMTCs.             While the ultimate impact of these two projects is still uncertain, it is heartening to know that these two developers are invested not only in the long-term success of their respective projects, but also in the successful transformation of the downtown as a whole into a model of vibrant urban living, something which a generation of Fairfield County residents have generally sought beyond Connecticut’s borders. Hopefully, their approach will mean a more integrated and less segregated future.—Hallock Svensk