Milfordroadcuts through library parking lot, but a new plan could reroute Shipyard Lane
Jul. 30—The hazard: the harbor, Wilcox Park and Fowler Field and the library are all accessed via Shipyard Lane, which connects to New Haven Avenue near where it becomes Broad Street. It is also known as Route 162. But the third-of-a-mile road is "unsafe," according to state Sen. James Maroney, a Milford Democrat and one of the primary initiators of the plan, which includes about $1.5 million in state funding from the State Bond Commission.
The road snakes from the New Haven Avenue connection through the library's back parking lot with Fowler's athletic fields and pavilion on one side and the library's back door on the other. Then it turns again past Hotchkiss Bridge toward the harbor's north parking lot and boat ramp and Wilcox Park. It continues to the Elton Street and Harborside Drive intersection.
The parking lot, Maroney said, is a lousy thing to run Shipyard Lane through. It has crowds emptying their vehicles to go to the ballfields or the library, plus pedestrians coming off New Haven Avenue or the walking bridge, and the area near the bridge lacks a sidewalk and has a motorists' blind turn nearby.
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"If you are heading for the library or the fields, you have to walk in the middle of a road from the walking bridge," Maroney said. "It is unsafe as well with the fact that a lot of people who go there [to the library lot] who might be coming from out of town don't realize that that is an active road and cars are going straight through that area of the parking lot."
Milford Chief of Staff Justin Rosen agreed that the lot area is unsafe for pedestrians.
"The primary reason for doing this is safety," Rosen said.
Maroney suspects that the traffic flow in the area is so lacking because it was done piecemeal over many years, seemingly without an overall plan.
"I think that a lot of things just came about as they were needed," Maroney said. "I don't have all of the historical knowledge on that, but that area was at one point the end of the harbor and it was filled in where all of the fields and the tennis courts are now."
The lot, lane and sidewalks are also a collection of too many impervious surfaces to be that close to the harbor. Oil, antifreeze and other automotive byproducts can flow into the water from the lot or the road pretty easily, Maroney said.
So the city is working with an architect finalizing a design that would, among other things, reroute Shipyard to avoid the right-turn into the library parking lot and instead continue northward between the baseball diamonds and basketball and tennis courts before turning east in a gentle curve that connects Shipyard Lane almost perfectly into the marina parking lot, according to preliminary drawings of the plan.
The area seaward of the library parking lot, which is now Shipyard Lane will become a walking path running from the lot to the harbor along the shoreline. The path is a continuation of Phase I. Grass and other greenery will be added for beautification and to filter sediments and runoff from the lot, Maroney said.
Signs and other new features will also be added to the athletic fields to offset another fault in the area's present design — none of the fields have "a presence" on New Haven Avenue. Nor is there much behind the library that announces the athletic fields and pavilion to those who get there, Maroney said.
That's the plan at the moment. The three-member Founders Walk Phase II Committee of Maroney, Republican former Alderman Connie Gaynor and Richard Jagoe, who was a member of a previous committee to improve school athletic fields, is meeting with stakeholder groups next month to finalize the design.
"I think it is going to come together great. I think we picked a good team. They are looking at every detail from storm water to taking into consideration things like the library requesting a book drop-off area in their parking lot," Gaynor said.
The committee has already met with the Oysterfest Committee, baseball league and Milford Recreational Department officials to fine-tune the plan, Gaynor said.
The project will need some state wetlands permit approvals before construction can start. As a city project, it doesn't need city planning approvals, Maroney said.
Rosen expressed hope that the project could be out to bid for construction and maybe back by October, and Maroney said it was likely that construction would begin in the spring. Rosen doubted that the present drawing of the new walking path would survive. It has an undulating shape and some previous viewers of it prefer something straighter, he said.
Much rides on the success of the project, Mayor Richard Smith said.
With Eisenhower Park, the athletic complex behind the library is probably Milford's largest and most used recreational area, with its pavilion getting almost as much use for entertainment as the fields do for sports, Smith said.
"When we look at Milford as a whole, it is one of the most varied and utilized areas in the city," Gaynor said. "This is a central hub for people who for many generations have lived here and will continue to live here."
