Students in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning are taking on one of Hartford, Connecticut’s most contaminated properties and envisioning what could one day become a model for urban revitalization and environmental recovery.

Image

The 33-acre former scrapyard off Flatbush Avenue in the city’s Parkville neighborhood has been vacant since 2011, its soil laced with pollutants and its boundaries hemmed by a highway, train tracks and the Park River. The property was used for metal salvage and waste storage for generations.

Now, 10 teams of LARP seniors have been hired by the city’s Planning & Zoning Division to envision a cleaner, greener future for the land. Their semester-long studio, titled From Scrapyard to an Urban Landscape of Recovery, asks students to create design proposals that balance ecological restoration, community use and economic opportunity. 

“The students are taking the first step in the process of transforming this site for a future that serves the community,” says Frank Sleegers, professor of landscape architecture who co-teaches the course with doctoral student Michael Amato. “On the other hand, they are discovering what abandoned space can offer now. There is richness in the spontaneous vegetation, graffiti art and vacant architecture or leftover structures that we found on our discovery tours. These elements can be incorporated and adapted as an underlying framework and base layer.”

The site’s contamination issues stretch back more than a century. Fifteen years after the state identified environmental violations at the site, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency intervened in 2006 citing the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Asbestos and other pollutants are also present at the site, which the city acquired as part of a tax foreclosure in 2021.

Image

More recently, Connecticut officials have moved to accelerate remediation. This year, Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration approved $5.4 million in state borrowing to fund cleanup and redevelopment efforts at the site.

The property’s redevelopment could connect Parkville’s growing food and arts district with residential neighborhoods and regional transit lines, including the nearby CTfastrak busway and Hartford Line and Amtrak rail service.

During a midterm studio presentation, the LARP students outlined their early concepts to a panel of faculty and community leaders. Some designs emphasized public access to nature, featuring meadow boardwalks and botanical gardens. Others proposed mixed-use development with affordable housing, event spaces or educational centers.

Several teams reimagined a sprawling Interstate 84 exit ramp slicing through the property as a boulevard, transforming an asphalt barrier into a tree-lined connection between the site and the surrounding neighborhood.

“This project is a culmination of years of study and practice in our technical skills, but also in working collaboratively – always producing projects that are far beyond anything we could make as individuals,” says Liana Rosenblum, a senior majoring in landscape architecture. “We are energized about working in the field and inspired about the impact we have when we work together.”

For Josye Utick, chair of Hartford’s Planning and Zoning Commission and one of the guest jurors, the students’ creativity stood out as both ambitious and grounded in local context.

Image

“It’s a huge site that they’re addressing, with a lot of huge issues in a city with a lot of huge, complex things to contend with,” Utick says. “It’s exciting to see, and I appreciate the level of thoughtfulness and care that the students are taking to approach this.”

Utick, who also teaches architecture at the college level, says she admires how the studio links classroom theory with real-world urban design.

“I think it’s a fun and interesting bridge between theory versus practice,” she notes. “Don’t be shy of kind of proposing some fantastical things, just to plant ideas and seeds in your head because who knows what happens with future technologies.”

The students’ task goes far beyond drawing plans. The site presents daunting environmental, economic and logistical constraints – from contamination to flooding to limited road access.

Sleegers says the course encourages students to think beyond aesthetics – to engage with the realities of equity, public health and climate resilience. Parkville, home to about 6,000 people, has long faced environmental burdens, including poor air quality and limited access to open space. While the students’ work is academic, Sleegers says such exercises help inspire real-world possibilities.

The students will continue refining their designs through December, when they’ll share final proposals with city stakeholders.