[acornsower]

Bridgeport has had moments of brilliance in its developmental history (the same can of course be said for Hartford, Waterbury, and New Haven). Retaining the services of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1867--fresh on the heels of their triumphs of Central Park in New York and Prospect Park in Brooklyn--to design Seaside Park, first major waterfront park in America, was one of those moments. The layout of the Washington Park neighborhood in 1850, with its first-in-the-nation setback requirements, architectural review, and streetscape control, was another. And then the construction of Seaside Village, Lakeview Village, Gateway Village, and five other planned residential communities during World War I--the first flowering of the Garden City movement in the United States--was certainly a third.

For the extraordinary amount of money it has cost the taxpayers of Connecticut and the amount of tax abatements that have been granted far into the future, Steel Point should have been another landmark design of national significance. I dare say it falls far short.