Mayor Offers To Help Jensen Park Residents
Mark Boughton, the Mayor of Danbury, Connecticut, is offering to help with the flooding problems at Jensen’s Lakeview Mobile Home Park. The senior citizen residents are frustrated over recent flooding in the park following recent rainstorms.
The problem is the poor drainage at the mobile home park, which sits next to Lake Kenosia, says the Mayor. The current location of the park would never be allowed today.
The options the city is looking at include building a catch basins and a retention pond, which is the only affordable alternative, or building a seawall, which would cost around $15 million. Another option would be to put the homes on stilts, which would cost about $15,000 per home.
“We’re trying to see if, instead of the Cadillac or Mercedes plan, we can get the Chevy plan” said the Mayor. He is also working to get funding for a more in-depth review by the Army Corps of Engineers to explore other options.
The city also recently agreed to allow the park to connect to city sewer, and the infrastructure has begun to be laid.
Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:
Here’s another example of the new attitude that cities have towards parks. Ten years ago, the city would have condemned the park and told everyone to move out. Now they are holding “town hall meetings” to work with the park owner and residents. It’s an incredible improvement in relations, and shows the growing respect that cities have towards this type of affordable housing.
This is also another example of the dangers of flood plain. Imagine how hard it would be to sell this park until the flooding issue is fixed – and it might take a decade. If you want to keep an exit strategy at the ready at all times, floodplain can really throw a monkey wrench into it.
April 9, 2010 1:13 pm