In 2014, Congress authorized the Coltsville National Historical Park in Hartford. It would mark the contributions to the firearms industry made by Samuel Colt.
Fast-forward five years to today, and the plans for the park are stalled.
Budget cuts for the Park Service certainly haven't helped — but it's even more complicated than that.
Ken Gosselin has covered this for The Hartford Courant, including in an article this week.
Ken Gosselin, Hartford Courant: The authorization — it did happen, yes, that Congress authorized. But there's a two-step process authorization, and then establishment.
And that is kind of the period that we have been in in the past five years.
Prior to the authorization, it took more than a decade to even get to that point. So it has been a very long process to get to there.
And now it has been yet another five years. And we're not even to the end line, goal line, yet.
Carrie Healy, NEPR: What has been so difficult about getting this to an actual national historic park?
I think there's a couple of things. First of all, it's not what you normally think of as a national park.
I think most people have in their mind a national park is like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone, or a place like that.
What you have here is really an urban park — and it's in the middle of Hartford in an industrial area. It's not typically what you would think of as a national park.
So on the list of priorities, maybe it doesn't fall high on the list.
But another thing that has kind of gotten in the way is: this park is in an area that is also privately owned and being redeveloped. There is this line to be walking, between "we're going to have a park here," but "we're also going to have apartments and commercial space and other areas."
So to try to put that all together is kind of a complex thing. That has kind of slowed things down.
But most recently, the past couple of years has been: where are we going to put the visitors center? And at first, if you're familiar with Colt, having ever gone by on the highway —
There's that blue dome...
The blue dome — that's it, exactly. That has really been a symbol for Hartford and its industrial roots, which were very strong at one point. So the first thought was, "OK, let's put it in that building, and have tours going up to the dome."
But then it kind of came around that, well, where we don't really want to redevelop that building, which has happened, and get tenants in there, and have it be a viable building.
So then the next next thing was, OK, let's move it to these old — they're called brownstones — and they're very low. They're one-story buildings, and they're the oldest on the property. But the problem there has been, to figure out there's a lot of old property lines that run through here, I think I described as "a crazy quilt." Tere were just so many things to kind of figure out who owns what, and where, and such. So that has taken up time as well.
But that was kind of cleared up. And the developer of the apartments and commercial space kind of did all that, and gave it to the Park Service back in March.
And now it's just been sitting with the Park Service, and no real time frame as to when they might say, OK.
And again, that private developer is going to be donating — they're not even, you know, selling or anything. They're donating these buildings. And so it's been sitting.
Sometime around March was also when Kelly Fellner was named the Park Service superintendent for both Coltsville and the Springfield Armory National Historic Site. What does she say about the challenges that lay ahead for this project?
She has said that it's with the Park Service. She doesn't really have a good sense. She has talked with the folks, and this is being hammered out and thought about in Washington, D.C. And she doesn't really have a firm time frame as to when something might happen.
The last thing that she'd heard — I spoke with her last week — that it may be next year. But this "maybe next year" thing has been going on for quite a while. And so always seems to be getting pushed down the road.
