NEW HAVEN – Almost a century ago, noted architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., creator of New York City’s famous Central Park, was hired to produce a ‘green’ vision for New Haven.

In a 1910 master plan for New Haven, Olmsted recommended “connecting parkways” or greenways that would link larger parks and recreation areas, making them more accessible for Elm City residents.

Time and again, from the turn of the century, through the 1920s when land was deeded for the East Shore Park and the East Shore Parkway, to the latest Comprehensive Plan of Development and a region proposal, there has been a reference to a trail or parkway through the New Haven Harbor area.

The South Central Regional Council of Governments in 1998 even adopted a plan for a detailed Harborside Trail ring that would go through the port connecting Lighthouse Park in New Haven to Savin Rock in West Haven, many sections of which are already in place.

A .9-mile-long trail hugging an edge of the East Shore Parkway in the port, which parallels Connecticut Avenue, with a lightweight pedestrian bridge over Alabama Street, was estimated to cost $1.3 million eight years ago.

Now a land use strategy plan aimed at maximizing the commercial use of the port has proposed bumping the trail out onto city streets and a busy intersection with heavy truck useage and a highway entrance.

For trail advocates, this is a break with past promises. For the businesses in the port, it’s a matter of safety and land use priorities where space is at a premium.

“I think this is just a subversion of all the years of work that people have done on this,” said Chris Ozyck, who has been advocating for community trail projects for a decade.

The Port Authority, which was put together in 2003 to advance marine and industrial uses in the port, will discuss the proposed land use plan at its metting Thursday, but not take a vote on it.

At issue is the best use of the 13.9 acres of East Shore Parkway in the port, which is owned by the city, but would be turned over to the Port Authority.

It is now leased as a laydown area for dry goods coming into the port, a use that would probably continue there, but in a more organized fashion.

Environmentalists say the businesses could use 90 percent of this, with a 20-foot segment saved for the port connection on the Harborside Trail.

Mike Piscitelli, assistant city planner, said they want to take all recent comments on the plan into consideration before adopting it, including Ozyck’s points and the views of Magellan Terminal to expand the district lines.

As city planners, Piscitelli said “we take this responsibility seriously. We want to make sure it (the trail) actually works and people will use it. But we have to do it safely and we have to do it in a place that works for all parties.”

“It’s a matter of getting the right balance,” Piscitelli said of activities in a harbor that is the highest volume port on Long Island Sound, supports 10,500 jobs and economic activity of more than $1.5 billion a year.

The perspective of the stakeholders changes drastically depending on their interests.

Ralph Gogliettino, president of Sea Support, a security consultant firm and longtime tenant at the port doesn’t see the appeal of a trail that will intersect an area that can have heavy truck usage, depending on how many ships need off loading.

“Whether it is fenced or not fenced, a trail more or less encourages the public to come down here and that is a real detriment to security as far as I’m concerned,” Gogliettino said.

As for vehicular traffic, he recounted incidents of 40-foot H-beams falling off trucks and goods slipping off forklifts in his two decades at the port.

As proposed by Ozyck, the trail would be located off the roadway and built up four feet, possibly with capped sludge taken from the harbor when the city next has to dredge. It would be protected with a fence and plantings, which could be watered and maintained with treated water from the nearby sewage plant.

“There would be a contrast between the green and lush trail and the port, which is going to be highly organized and structured. It is an incredible opportunity to educate people about infrastructure and the economy, business and jobs — everything the port authority says it wants to do,” Ozyck said.

On the other hand, David Shuda, president of Coastline Terminal, is concerned with the lack of space to expand his business.

“It is hard to support not using any portion of property within the port district for those purposes. Property is gold in port related businesses. You never have enough of it,” he said.

Like Gogliettino, he talked about mixing bicyclists with truck traffic. “I just view it as an accident waiting to happen,” Shuda said.

Ozyck has taken a few dozens walkers on Saturday trips through the port to show how the COG plan would work, as opposed to diverting the trail out of East Shore Park over wetlands and private property to Woodward Avenue and then Forbes Avenue before reaching the Tomlinson Bridge.

Through the port, the trail would be away from the road with a bridge over the only street intersection at Alabama and Stiles streets, avoiding vehicular traffic. The contrast with a walk along Woodward and Forbes avenues and on a bridge over Interstate 95 was stark on two visits, with heavy traffic during the week and on a weekend.

Piscitelli said he wasn’t convinced that the trail couldn’t work if diverted to city streets, which it does at other intervals.

He said they would have consultants, PB America, come back and specifically look at the trail issue.

Ramped up federal security requirements are already in effect after 9/11 for the Gateway and New Haven Terminals along Waterfront Street, which are gated off to the general public, while there is a perimeter fence behind oil storage tanks throughout the port.

Ozyck said having a fenced trail and an alert public keeps the area safer, which will continue to be open to the public in any event to access such businesses in the port as Colony Hardware.

“There is no way you can say people on bikes are more of a threat than people’s back yards with overgrown brush or the highway system where people can do something and get away with no oversight,” Ozyck said of I-95 and the Tomlinson Bridge that abut the port. The petroleum holding tanks are also within yards of homes on side streets off Woodward Avenue.

A big question for Piscitelli is the rights of ways for United Illuminating and PSEG through East Shore Parkway and if that would mean more bridges for the trail.

Piscitelli said the land use plan will act as a framework for the authority, particularly for parcels of land that may come on the market and should be bought for port use.

Ozyck sees the trail as part of a bigger network, namely the East Coast Greenway from Maine to Florida and locally, the Shoreline Greenway from Hammonnasset in Madison to South End Avenue in East Haven, adjacent to Lighthouse Park in New Haven.

Jack Wood of Branford, who is working on the Shoreline Greenway, walked the port trail in New Haven and found it much better than using Woodward Avenue.

“What we are concerned with, is not losing a decent connection to the East Coast Greenway,” said Wood of the port walk.

©New Haven Register 2007

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