With the highly educated and well-to-do embracing Southwestern Connecticut’s environs, it is high time to capitalize on this
collective brain power and look around. Urban sprawl and poor planning are causing and have been causing traffic bottlenecks on major through-fares heading north and south, east and west; even back country roads once considered “short cuts”. Does it make sense to tear down everything in sight to build strip mall after strip mall on Route 25, for example? So many cars on a simple two lane road with traffic lights ad nauseum makes for a trying, bumper to bumper rush hour commute.

It is high time to make adaptive reuse a concept for the masses. Look at Bridgeport, for example, the once glorious manufacturing capital, whose golden era has long since drowned in its present reputation as a polluted City, both politically and environmentally. The State’s best example of Art Deco architecture sits shyly on the corner of Main and John Streets – for years on end going unnoticed in a downtrodden and crime ridden city-scape. Finally, in the past five years or so, the City has sold off foreclosed properties to ambitious developers who are currently clamoring to get their hands on even more of the
historic properties. The Citytrust building has been rehabbed into a mixed use project, offering ground floor retail and 118 for-rent residential units. Hooray for the Park City and its vision.

The bottom line is that by taking existing properties and turning them into an interesting alternative to the strip mall, a lovely aesthetic can be maintained, while saving historic structures. Big box retail is a snore! Look around Manhattan or Los Angeles and it’s easy to understand how and why boutiques thrive – they create an amazing diversity in product that’s never the Gap or Ann Taylor. What is it, then? It’s one off product that allows individuals to foster identities apart from the masses. And this brings us back to the theme of adaptive reuse – individual and eclectic all the while keeping the thread of history alive and the ubiquitous strip mall dead.