BRIDGEPORT — “They don’t make things like this anymore,” Margaret Judge said as she looked up at the high ceilings in the auditorium at the old Bassick High School.
The city resident and president of Stratford Historic District Association joined several other members of the Bridgeport community for a tour of the now-empty buildings Saturday with the developer who is proposing to build apartments on the site. The school was relocated last summer to its new South End campus.
New York City-based Kiumarz Geula, who owns several other prominent properties in Bridgeport, is the developer.
People on the tour said they want to see more of the project’s space devoted to community resources. Geula said there is a plan to turn the theater and gymnasium into a community theater and community center, respectively.
The plan, according to Geula, is to demolish the building closest to Clinton Avenue, then turn the building with the entrances lined with columns behind it into apartments. New buildings would be constructed on both ends of that building for housing and include community or commercial entities on the ground floors, he said.
Vanessa Liles, president of the West Side/West End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, took part in the tour. She walked through the empty halls of closed lockers and poked her head into some of the empty classrooms.
Liles said she was more worried about how the auditorium and gym were going to be used, rather than preserved. She said she wanted more space for people to gather as a community and lamented the fact the neighborhood does not have a community center.
“This needs to be a space where the community, young people and families can feel like there’s a safe place for people to be,” Liles said.
She suggested using some of the building for artist spaces or resources for senior citizens.
“The neighborhood right now doesn’t have an anchor,” Liles said. “It doesn’t have something that is signature.”
Liles said she wants the city to “see itself as beyond the brokering of the deal,” and to set specific goals and wants for development.
Tanner Burgdorf, executive director of the nonprofit Groundwork Bridgeport, also took the tour. He said he could imagine the building being home to a “hub of nonprofits.”
“Imagine the good that would bring if small nonprofits had a place where they could get affordable rent for their office space,” Burgdorf said.
This story includes previous reporting by staff writers Brian Lockhart and Jessica Simms.
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