The Riverside Apartments are slated to get new security cameras and a makeover this summer.
The Ansonia Housing Authority — using a $225,000 federal security grant — will install brick and iron fencing around the apartment complex, and install 24 video cameras and more lighting to the site, according to housing authority director James Finnucan.
“It will make it a safer place,” Finnucan said. “That’s the intent.”
Hidden Corners
But there have been serious flare ups in the past two years. There were two murders and two shootings there in 2009.
The Housing Authority and police department say the layout of the complex — horseshoe formations with the backs of the buildings facing the street — makes it hard to patrol the neighborhood.
“You have a lot of corners, a lot of hidden corners,” Police Chief Kevin Hale said Friday.
“It’s what makes it so difficult to patrol down there,” Hale said. “A lot of areas, you don’t have visual access.”
The cameras should help, Hale said.
The Plans
To Design LLC, a New Britain engineering firm, has designed the plans — which call for new sidewalks, driveway improvements, new parking spots and new walls and fences.
The Housing Authority wants to make the parking lot entrance one-way, with an entrance near High Street.
Cameras would sit atop an entrance gate, recording those who come into the apartment complex. Other cameras would be dispersed throughout the complex, including on rooftops.
The Ansonia Police Department and Housing Authority authorities will have access to the videos, Finnucan said.
More lighting will be installed as part of the plans, too, Finnucan said.
Hale said the site improvements will also help the department prevent crime in the neighborhood.
“Look at the place before — it was wide open,” Hale said. “There were many many ways to come in and out.”
That’s already being changed. Fences have been installed, and the new plans will make the driveways more narrow and upgrade outer fencing.
The Ansonia Housing Authority has approved plans to tear down seven of the 11 buildings in the near future — and all the buildings eventually.
In September 2009, the first two buildings came down, but plans for the future demolitions have been stalled. Click here to read a previous story on that issue.
