As Norwalk continues to grow, efforts are being made to ensure that the Wall Street area not only benefits from the rising population and increasing number of visitors to the city, but can also contribute toward driving those numbers. The area was once the heart of one of the five separate municipalities that joined together to form the current city in 1910 but was heavily damaged by hurricanes and flooding in the 1950s and never managed to generate the revitalization seen in South Norwalk.
On June 14, the city sought input from residents in an event at the Wall Street Theater. Garrett Bolella, the assistant director of transportation, mobility and parking for the city, helped organize the event.
“This is just the design kickoff,” Bolella explained. “It’s an open-house style event to really get feedback from the community, so we can go back to the drawing board and come up with actual designs according to community views on things they want to see like railway improvements, intersection improvements, streetscape improvements.”
The theater’s doors were thrown open to the public at 4 p.m. and the attendees were encouraged to move through a series of stations where they could share their views on different aspects of the redesign. Some tables encouraged them to write sticky notes about what most needed to be preserved or changed, while others invited guests to mark up maps of the area to suggest revisions to traffic flow or take surveys about potential redesigns of public space.
Historical pictures of the Wall Street area were on display throughout the space, inviting guests to consider how the area had evolved in the past and if old design elements might be worth revisiting. Local restaurants, including Rebel Daughter Cookies, Sonia’s Kitchen, Café Aroma, Pontos Taverna and Sabor Ambateño Bakery, also offered up free samples for guests.
According to Bolella, the neighborhood’s rich history as a transportation hub where maritime traffic, rail transportation and local trolley service all came together with little planning has caused some of the challenges in redevelopment. For instance, he pointed out that the current traffic flows predate I-95 and the Route 7 connector, which would have been almost impossible to predict.
He also admitted that this was not the first attempt to produce a plan to drastically reform the neighborhood.
“It seems like every 20 years there’s been a new planning study Bolella said. “Starting in 1986, we had a business management plan for the entire district. Then about 20 years later in 2003 we had an area plan that rehashed some of the previous ideas and brought some new ones, then as recently as 2019 there was a new plan.”
Bolella is confident that the cycle will finally be broken. Unlike previous attempts, the city has already secured $3.5 million for construction work that will rehabilitate the intersection of Belden Avenue and Wall Street, which he said may have once been a trolley turn around.
After a musical performance by the Roton Middle School band, the crowd was addressed by Mayor Harry Rilling.
“We’re really excited about this because for decades the Wall Street area has been kind of ignored,” said Rilling. “We’re going to be investing a tremendous amount of money in this area and when you do that you want to make sure you do it right. And in doing it right, we want to find out that the people who live here, the people who walk down the streets, people who drive down the street, what would you like to see?”
State Senator Bob Duff took to the stage to announce the allocation of the $3.5 million in awarded funds to the crowd. He also recalled how excited he had been as a young man to read the proposal for Wall Street’s revitalization that came out in the late 1980s.
“I’m a fifth generation Norwalker, and I hated seeing downtown Norwalk in bad shape,” Duff said when asked what he found so exciting about that original plan. “I always felt and still feel that there is a tremendous amount of potential in this city. We’re meeting a lot of that potential, but this is one area where we need to step it up.”
