Petition looks to save Bridgeport's iconic candy cane smokestack
An online petition is hoping to save Bridgeport's iconic candy cane smokestack before it is scheduled to be demolished in April.
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An online petition is hoping to save Bridgeport's iconic candy cane smokestack before it is scheduled to be demolished in April.
"I always know where Bridgeport is because of the smokestack," said Harrison Gordon, a lifelong Bridgeport resident who started the petition. "You see it on businesses, you see it in art, it's all around the city, it's not just some power plant on the water, it is really the face of the city."
Since the petition was started the day after Thanksgiving, over 1,400 people have signed it.
"When it comes to these kind of things, especially in Bridgeport, people don't really take the initiative, because they feel like it will be wasted, and so what I wanted to do is make sure that people could feel that their voice was actually going to matter," Gordon said.
But Bridgeport City Councilmember Jorge Cruz, who represents the area where the smokestack is, says there are other voices.
"With all due respect to Harrison, and all those who want to keep it, I'm saying 'knock' that sucker down,'" Cruz told News 12 while on his lunch break.
He says for people who have lived in the South End neighborhood, the only thing the smokestack represents is years of pollution.
"I call it the killer smokestack," Cruz said. "That smokestack did not have empathy how it effected peoples' lives, so why should I have any empathy for it?"
However, Gordon says keeping the smokestack is a way to remember the industrial past and pollution.
"It will not allow us to forget the injustices that it imposed on the people of the South End and Downtown, because it will always stand there as a reminder," he countered.
Once demolished, the plan is for the 33-acre site to be re-built with housing, restaurants, shops and hotels.
While the developers told News 12 they would not be commenting on the future of the stack, Cruz says they told him it would be too expensive to maintain it.
Gordon argues that keeping it would help make the new development unique.
"You want to have a destination," he says. "Once you consider the economic value of the stack in driving tourism, in driving shopping, that could potentially offset the costs."
Gordon is hoping to continue gathering signatures and having conversation, hoping to get enough people talking about the stack's future, that the developers will delay the demolition and take a step back, allowing them to have community conversations, and do economic feasibility studies, before making a final decision.
