Bridgeport, Connecticut

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, the Partnership agencies are working together to help the community achieve its environmental, social, and economic goals. In 2009, Bridgeport received an EPA Environmental Justice Showcase Community Grant, which led to many improvements in the distressed East End and East Side neighborhoods, including a new fishing pier and renewed access for residents who had been unable to get to the waterfront. In 2010, Bridgeport received $11 million in TIGER multimodal transportation funding from DOT to build and upgrade roads around the East Side’s Steel Point Peninsula to prepare for redevelopment.Bridgeport is also a partner in the New York-Connecticut Sustainable Communities Consortium, a large stakeholder group of city, county, and regional representatives that received a 2010 HUD Regional Planning Grant. As part of this grant, the consortium is studying the feasibility of opening Barnum Station, a proposed rail station in Bridgeport’s East End, on a cleaned-up brownfield. The city hopes the station will anchor its East Side redevelopment plan, leading to new business investment; mixed-use, transit-oriented development; and affordable homes.“The Partnership’s efforts have helped further a vision of the future of Bridgeport to become New England’s greenest city,” says Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch. “By the federal government coordinating resources and technical expertise, we have a chance of realizing a vision such as the Barnum Station project.”