ANSONIA — Residents said a recent playground fire highlights the safety concerns they face every day in the city’s north end.

“I have a tenant that has a young daughter, and we don’t even allow her to go out there, because we’re nervous. It’s not the same neighborhood,” said Candy Clark, a lifelong neighborhood resident.

Police said the Gatison Park playscape on Fourth Street was intentionally set on fire Oct. 3. Two 19-year-old men were arrested. 

The playscape was installed in 2025 using a $100,000 state grant.

City officials hosted a forum at the Ansonia Senior Center Oct. 20 to talk about rebuilding the playground and to hear concerns from the neighborhood.

About 40 people attended.

Suggestions for improving neighborhood safety ranged from increasing police patrols in the area to beautifying Gatison Park when the playscape is rebuilt.

Clark said she welcomed an increase in police presence after the fire happened. However, she said that presence is going away.

“The north end needs some love, and after the fire, we did see the police department doing whatever they could, but that has died down since then, and I’m a little concerned about that,” she said.

Harold George Beall, a public works employee who organizes annual trips to Quassy Amusement Park for kids on the north end, said solving crime problems isn’t as simple as increasing the number of police.

“The police are at that park. They are. This crime happened at 3 o’clock in the morning. There’s no way we were going to prevent that,” Beall said. “It didn’t happen at 6, it didn’t happen at 8, it didn’t happen when people were hanging. You understand what I’m saying?”

Beall said resources would be better spent on improving the park for the future.

“We still need some work. We make the park better and more inviting to our community and others, and it will weed out the bad,” Beall said.

Many of the speakers came around to the same theme – that having more watchful eyes throughout the neighborhood would reduce crime incidents. Clark said that could start with neighbors sitting on porches and getting to know the children of the area.

“We need to get the buy-in from the children. They need to be able to trust us,” Clark said.

Alderman Tyler Kennedy, whose ward is based in the north end, agreed.

“It is our responsibility to go out there and be like, ‘pick up your trash,’” Kennedy said.

Kennedy, who said he knew the two teenagers charged in connection to the fire, said he believes they fell through the cracks.

“What happened in Gatison Park was highly inappropriate. Those kids made bad decisions, though. I can look at every single person in this room and we’ve all done the same,” Kennedy said.

Alderwoman Jacquelyn Daniels, who represents the first ward alongside Kennedy, said the same.

“They live here. They’re part of the community. It’s unfortunate that they fell through the gap,” Daniels said.

Where Can Teens Go?

Residents said the park has long been in a condition of disrepair – including trees hanging over the basketball court, bumps in the court’s surface, and grass shooting up through the walkways – and said that kids don’t have enough spots to safely hang out after school.

“They want to go outside, and we don’t have many areas that we can do that,” said Clark.

State Rep. Kara Rochelle, who represents Ansonia and part of Derby, pointed to other places where children and teenagers can go. She said resources available to teenagers include the Boys & Girls Club’s free teen program on weekday evenings, and, during the summers, a state-funded youth employment program.

Clark said programs like the free teen program are useful – if people know about them.

“I wish I would have known about that, because I would have been a barracuda out there talking to the kids that I give popsicles to, to try to get their buy-in,” Clark said.

She said it takes nudging from parents and trusted adults to get teenagers to attend those programs.

Teenagers “don’t even want to walk up the hill,” Clark said. “But that comes from us, of us training them to say ‘Come on, let’s go. You need to do that, or you need to participate in those programs.’”

Diane Stroman, a member of the city’s tax board and former executive vice president at TEAM, Inc., added that teens in the area need more public transportation options.

The State Of Gatison Park

City officials provided an update on the state of the park during the meeting.

Ansonia Mayor Frank Tyszka said the current rebuilding cost estimate is between $109,000 and $119,000. While insurance could cover some of that, the city will need to pay at least a $10,000 deductible, Tyszka said.

He said he’s also been in talks with United Illuminating about installing brighter lights in the future, and that he’s asked the department of public works to trim some trees in the area.

“You will see people from public works this week and the end of the week, and you’ll see UI there, putting in the new lights,” Tyszka said.

Dan King, a former first ward Alderman who now sits on the tax board, said that the version of Gatison Park which was built last year fell short of community expectations. He said the issue was a lack of funds from the start.

“What people wanted, number one, was a new playground. The other thing was security concerns: Lights, better benches, trees, maybe a camera, something along the lines of that. The money ran out. It wasn’t enough,” King said. “It’s silly, but $100,000 is no longer a lot of money. That playset cost $82,000 and it was gone within minutes.”

He said the city is in bad financial shape, with some departments held to flat funding in the current budget, and that a fundraiser might be needed to pay the deductible.

“It all comes down to money. The short answer is we need money. So if anybody has any ideas for fundraisers, anybody they’d like to approach, local businesspeople, interested in helping us? That’s what I’d like to see,” King said.

What’s Next?

Maurice Levey, a businessman who runs the Mister Freeze ice cream truck around town, said he was skeptical as to whether the meeting would lead to any real change.

“I love meetings like this because it’s always a starting point. I hate meetings like this, because people leave and there’s nothing that happens. That’s the majority, what happens most times,” Levey said.

He said future meetings should be organized with actionable goals in order to make sure things get done.

“To constantly have meetings to come and talk about something, or to have meetings where people can puff their chest out or say what’s right and wrong, is irrelevant. Because nothing is solving the problem,” he said.

Tyszka and the current Alders in attendance said one idea is to start holding regular ward meetings again. That’s a step which has been talked about in recent months, but ward meetings throughout the city haven’t happened in years.

Another idea, suggested by Levey and other speakers, was to form a committee of interested residents to move forward on goals relating to Gatison Park and north end improvements.

One such organization, the Friends of Gatison Park, was previously formed but does not appear to have met in recent years. The group was also referenced in a previous meeting regarding Gatison Park’s future in 2024.