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| Main Street 1963 |
Vacant Lots and Broken Dreams:
Urban Renewal in Willimantic Connecticut
Richard Baber
Part 4
In the early mourning of Valentines Day 1968 a report came into the fire department of an explosion at the Sherwin-Williams paint store on Main Street It was investigated but nothing was found but within hours, fire had erupted with 40,000 gallons of paint providing the fuel for one of the most extensive fires in the history of the city. After a day the fire was extinguished leaving four buildings gutted and several others smoke and fire damaged including the First Babtist Church. . In all nine businesses were effected: The Prep Shop, Sherwin-Williams, The Lincoln Shop, Mustard Insurance Agency, Superior Electronics, Church- Reed, The Country Shop, Gay's Florist and Archembeault's Barber Shop. Twenty families were homeless. The even served as a springboard for the urban renewal proponents to pressure HUD to approve the grant application. Mayor Stanley Kososka in response to the event stated "the ruinous fire that ripped through two downtown blocks ... could have been avoided by faster federal action on a request for urban renewal funds. We have a overcrowded situation with people living in obsolete and dangerous structures.
Coincidentally, these building were in the target area, prompting a renewed effort to get the program off the ground. Although funding did not arrive for another year, the city took action. Petitions were signed and plans evolved. A badly deteriorated building at 14 Union St.,also in the target area, was condemned and razed. The last remaining of the Holland Silk Mill building on Valley Street was acquired along with the Amvets building. These were demolished and a new state courthouse was built in there place.It did not seem to matter that the new building occupied only a fraction of the parcel cleared for it. People saw old, obsolete buildings replaced by newly constructed ones, and there was beliefs that things were changing.
On June 25, 1969 it became official. In a telephone conversation with WRA commissioner Earl McSweeney, Lawrence Cox of HUD confirmed the approval of a grant reservation for $6,155.000 which represented 75 per cent of the estimated cost along with $277,000.00 planning advance. The grant approval was contingent on the state and municipality committing to the remaining 25 per cent share of the cost Urban renewal had come to Willimantic. To the people that had made it happen, this meant the acquisition and the demolition of every building within the already defined target area and the rebuilding a new prosperous Willimantic. Blinded by the promises of a healthier community, it is likely that few people took a hard look at the proposal and the potential consequences.
The first activity was to conduct a search for a full time, community development professional to administer the program. On September 9, 1969 , Betty Lou Williams was selected by a vote of the WRA commissioners to assume the position of executive director effective October 1, 1969. If Byran & Panico were the architects of Willimantic's urban renewal project, then Betty Lou Williams with a single minded sense of purpose, administered the plan and oversaw every detail. Her credentials as executive director of Rockville urban renewal efforts seemed respectable on the surface. One wonders however if it made a difference to if they knew she earned the moniker "Bulldozer Betty for her indiscriminate clearance of Rockville's architectural past
In 1970 and 1971 the groundwork was laid for executing the project. Windham Heights was completed: it was a privately built apartment complex in anticipation of the need for low-income, subsidize housing which would result from urban renewal. This gave the WRA the compliance they needed with the HUD requirement that replacement housing be available for displaced people.. In 1971 a public referendum was held for the final approval of the urban renewal project and overwhelmingly passed as did bond issue to cover the city's contribution to the cost of the project. On February 15, 1971, the loan and grant application was formally filed for The Central Business Renewal Project, Conn R-119. An examination of the application reveals that it closely adhered tothe Byran & Panico recommendations of 1965. A study almost casually drawn up at a cost of a couple thousand dollars with very few changes, the primary design for an eleven million dollar project that forever altered the city.
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