Marfuggi, the head of Riverfront Recapture, radiates enthusiasm for big ideas for Riverside Park and Riverfront Recapture. So talking grandiose visions for the mighty Connecticut River with him makes sense.

He and I spent almost two hours walking by the Riverside recently, discussing the future of what both of us consider Hartford's most valuable asset. This conversation between Marfuggi and I is the basis for a three-part series in the 40-Year Plan.

This first installment will cover past and present infrastructure of the park. The second week discusses project financing and the third week is "Dam the Flood!".

When Joe and I met on a sunny day in Riverside Park by the boathouse, he started by explaining the park's history. At 62 acres, it is the biggest piece of land on the Riverfront.

"In the 1890s, it was originally created as a park by the Olmstead Brothers," Marfuggi said.

The trees planted by the famous landscape architects a century ago provide the canopy so many picnickers enjoy today. The Olmstead Brothers design connected the river and the city.

"It was intended for outdoor living for people in the tenements," Marfuggi said.

People in the densely-populated Front Street neighborhoods could walk to the park, tend a veggie garden, rent a rowboat to cruise around a small lake or roll up their trousers and cool off in a wading pond.

The highway and dike severed that link, Marfuggi lamented. But Riverfront Recapture's next step in its quest to reconnect the river with downtown begins soon.

Construction to pave the dirt path between the Bulkeley Bridge and Riverfront Park starts this fall, Marfuggi said. He expects it to take a year, and until the work ends, that portion of the riverfront will be closed to the park's 765,000 annual guests.

When finished, the path will cost about $3.8 million. At some points, it will be terraced into the side of the dike, Marfuggi said.

While the new path will be wide enough to accommodate emergency vehicles, Marfuggi promised that it will maintain its natural feel because the design keeps most of the old-growth trees.

"Trees are valuable," he said. They're pretty to look at and they hold the banks together.

North of the train bridge to Windsor, the trees and forests make the river look and feel like Vermont. Marfuggi envisions the path running continuously from Wethersfield to Windsor.

"First, we have to finish Hartford," Marfuggi said.

The process takes time. Marfuggi has been at Riverfront Recapture for 19 years. He waved his hand and talked about how it took years and years to complete the biggest achievements of his tenure, the ampitheatre at Riverfront Recapture and the connection to Constitution Plaza.

For many reasons, these projects take decades. Obtaining easements from land owners on the riverfront and securing the cooperation of abutting land owners requires months if not years.

The engineering, designing and permitting phases of improvement take three or four years.

"I need to talk to nine agencies to plant a tree," Marfuggi said. "All of them have jurisdiction and all have views about what is suitable and what isn't."

Riverfront Recapture's contract to manage the parks for Hartford and East Hartford means it must receive permission from everyone and their mother.

The Army Corps of Engineers has told Marfuggi his organization cannot employ young artists to paint murals on the massive concrete walls by the Riverfront ampitheatre.

"Paint could obscure a crack or hole in the dyke," he said.

The Corps nixed planting ivy, too, Marfuggi said.

"It could penetrate the concrete in the dyke," he said.

Despite the limits the Corps enforces, Marfuggi bears no grudge against the Corps.

"They're doing their job," he said.

Instead, RR is fancying the property by building a sculpture garden themed around Abraham Lincoln's presidency, sponsored, of course, by Lincoln Financial Group. And it is waiting for the shrubbery to grow in.

All this biding time leads Marfuggi to think in terms of 20- and 40-year plans.

"Baltimore's waterfront has taken more than 40 years," he said. "It is always changing and evolving. People keep coming up with new ideas. It'll never be done."

9/12/05

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Riverfront CEO Joe Marfuggi

"It was intended for outdoor living for people in the tenements"

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"It was intended for outdoor living for people in the tenements"