STAMFORD, Conn. (AP) - When Jorge Chiluisa first came to Stamford to work in 1990, his boss at GE Capital told him and his colleagues not to walk through Mill River Park.
“He said it was dangerous,” Chiluisa said. “We were all young and liked to go downtown to the bars after work, and he wanted us to be safe.”
Mill River then was stagnant, with car tires and shopping carts visible in the mud. The park was rundown, a home for drug dealers.
“My boss told us to stay on the sidewalk when we were walking to the train, and don’t go in that park,” Chiluisa said.
Twenty-eight years later, Chiluisa, a Milford resident who now works as a finance executive with Siena Lending Group on West Broad Street, makes it a point to walk through the park on his way to and from the train station.
It goes much farther than that.
On nice days Chiluisa takes a break from work and heads across the street to the park.
“I take a half-hour nap,” he said, laying a beach towel on the grass one sunny afternoon last week. “I have a love and a passion for nature, and this park is beautiful. Being here is good for your mental health.”
Chiluisa said he appreciates the attention to detail in Mill River, now in the middle of a renovation first planned in the 1920s, when city officials envisioned a New York-style “central park” for downtown. Work didn’t begin, however, until 2009.
“I like how they created highlights with the gardens and the pathways and the bird feeders. I like how they used granite and didn’t skimp on materials,” Chiluisa said. “They really thought the design through.”
He likes it so much that he introduced himself to the landscaping contractor he saw working in the park a couple of years ago.
“I asked if I could hire her to come and do my house, and she did,” he said.
He’s become a champion of Mill River Park, urging his co-workers to visit.
“I say to them, ’How can you be so close to it and not take advantage?’” Chiluisa said.
It may require an adventurous spirit, because the park is still a work in progress. On the Washington Boulevard side, large mounds of dirt are piled beside a chain-link fence. They’ve been there since work began last year on the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Ice Skating Center and Fountain.
The fountain is set to open July 1, and the ice rink the weekend after Thanksgiving, said Dudley Williams, president and CEO of the Mill River Collaborative, the public-private partnership that was charged 15 years ago with creating a world-class park downtown.
“Unless you get out of your car and walk, you won’t see the beauty of the park flying down Washington Boulevard,” Williams said. “So people might think the whole thing is still under construction.”
The city was supposed to remove the mounds by the end of June, but weather and other complications will delay it, Williams said. The deadline now is Aug. 1.
“That will be a big step for us,” he said. “After years of what may have looked like moving dirt around, we are in a period where we are making significant progress in things people can see - the carousel, the fountain, the rink. The park now is a lot more accessible and there’s a lot more activity.”
The carousel is booked weeks in advance with children’s birthday parties, he said. The fountain, with programmed water sprays and colored lights, had a successful test run during the collaborative’s May 3 gala, a fundraising effort that exceeded expectations, he said.
“It’s a space that didn’t exist 10 years ago, and a public venue in infinitely better shape than it was,” Williams said.
It just needs discovering.
Rachel Bacon, a 15-year-old freshman at the Academy of Information, Technology & Engineering, the city’s magnet high school, found it one day last week, when classes ended early. She was lying on a shaded bench.
“This is my first time here. I didn’t know about this park. I just moved downtown,” Bacon said. “It’s pretty here.”
She was waiting for her classmates, Janelis Vargas, 16, and Esther Jung, 15.
“I live close by, so I’ve been here before,” Vargas said.
So has Jung.
“It’s a nice place to sit or walk. I like the flowers and the river,” Jung said.
Nhial Roth was walking with his 4-year-old son, Buomkuot, who was pushing his 2-year-old brother, Met-Tang, in a stroller. The family lives on nearby Tresser Boulevard, where daytime traffic - horns beeping, engines revving, brakes squealing - is relentless.
“The park is a good, quiet place to relax,” Roth said.
Park-goers are drawn to the river. A man and his friend walked to the end of a path made of slabs of natural stone and leaned over a spot where the water runs in gentle rapids.
“I could listen to that sound all day,” the man said.
That’s exactly the point of the park, which in colonial days was the site of industrial mills, and later was a perpetual source of downtown flooding.
Because of that, the river was dammed and walled in, which almost killed it. The park, neglected for decades, was known only for its cherry trees, planted by a Japanese immigrant and downtown restaurant owner to thank Stamford friends for their support during World War II, when his native and adopted countries went to battle.
The collaborative is busy at work, spending $2 million in fiscal 2017-18, 85 percent of it on programs and capital expenditures, and the rest on fundraising and administration.
About $640,000 of that came from city taxpayers, according to the budget, and the collaborative raised most of the rest from individual contributions - the names of donors are etched on stone pathways and other structures in the park. The remaining portion came from state and federal grants, corporations, and foundations.
The rink will fit 150 recreational skaters at a time - it’s not for hockey, Williams said - and will be larger than the one in Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Another project planned for this year is a renovation of the old playground, which will get a splash pad and picnic area.
The Whittingham Discovery Center - with environmental science classrooms, a rooftop for star-gazing and offices for the collaborative - is expected to be completed in 2020.
A project to extend the west side of the park from Tresser Boulevard south to Richmond Hill Avenue is expected to begin later this year, and there are plans to extend the east side of the park from Main Street to Richmond Hill.
Fundraising is underway to create parkland out of the parcel at 1050 Washington Blvd. and to extend the greenway along the river north to Scalzi Park on Bridge Street.
“Having quality green space downtown is a wonderful thing - the more people who know about it and begin to enjoy it, the better,” Williams said. “We look forward to seeing the number grow.”
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Information from: The Advocate, http://www.stamfordadvocate.com
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