On the site of a defunct power plant, city officials want to build a multimillion-dollar park with an outdoor aquatic center. While some residents are in favor, many are left asking: Who wants this?
English Station
An eyesore. An icon. A cause for “serious pain in the community.” This is how New Haveners describe English Station, a 97-year-old power plant in the Mill River District, between Wooster Square and Fair Haven. In the fall, the city announced plans to demolish the plant. In its place? Officials want an outdoor pool.
The English Station site, located on Ball Island, is currently blocked off to the public due to the presence of cancer-causing contaminants. Last July, city officials revealed their vision for the island’s restoration. Their tagline: “Mill River Park: From Abandoned to Amazing.”
The 8.6-acre development would feature New Haven’s first public outdoor pool, including a lazy river and waterslides. The city says that the park would provide much-needed access to swimming and green space.
However, some take issue with the plan. “They need jobs and affordable housing. Anything outside of that is not responding to neighborhood interests,” Anstress Farwell, the president of the New Haven Urban Design League (UDL), said of Fair Haven residents.
Outdoor pools in Northeastern cities are typically only open during the summer, meaning the proposed pool will be closed for most of the year. But more concerning to residents is the city officials’ lack of transparency around the cost of the plan. Even more, last summer, the city was unable to open three of its five indoor pools due to maintenance funding shortages.
The city does not yet own the English Station site, and it is contaminated with carcinogens like asbestos and PCBs. In 2016, a partial consent order tasked United Illuminating (UI), the com-pany which operated English Station from 1929 to 1992, with cleaning up the site within three years, but the work has stalled over the past decade.
All of this has left neighbors wondering: Why does the city want to build a pool over a polluted property they don’t even own? “I won’t even pretend to speak for them. I have no idea,” said Lee Cruz, chair of the Fair Haven Community Management Team.
The city has held five public meetings to discuss the proposal. In a phone interview, Mayor Justin Elicker said that officials have tabled at community events and issued a survey that hundreds responded to. “Many individuals from the community are enthusiastic,” said Elicker. This spring, I sat down with eight New Haveners—professors, public officials, and organizers—to talk about the future of English Station. All of them want to see the desolate waterfront transformed into a thriving community center. Few agree on how exactly we can get there. Here are some of their visions.
What do New Haveners want for English Station?
Some want anything but a pool.
“The logical next step is to put a pause on this roulette of acquiring the property for purposes of building a pool, acknowledge that we don’t know what the cost will be, and we don’t know what all the risks are.”
“We never once heard anyone in our community meetings say that a pool was what they needed. Never once.”
“I’ve seen great proposals come into committee: art museums, ways to retrofi t the building. I just don’t think we’ve explored the options enough.”
Some think English Station is an architectural icon in New Haven that should be preserved—Elihu Rubin, Yale Urban Studies professor, called it “a cathedral to electricity.”
“Not everyone looks at a power plant and thinks it’s beautiful,” he said. “I personally believe it has the potential to house new uses.”
“It’s a gorgeous, towering building,” he said. “My dream scenario is that the building is preserved and reused.”
In March, Elias, the Ward 1 Alder, voted yes on a proposal allowing New Haven to acquire English Station, by use of eminent domain—governmental power to acquire private property for public use—if necessary. He’s skeptical of the pool proposal, but his priority is to get the site cleaned up.
“If that is not going to happen without the building being demolished, I can accept that.”
Other residents have their hearts set on the park and pool plan.
“Community partners could run ‘Learn to Swim’ boot camps,” she said. “That gives all residents of New Haven, not just the kids who already know how to swim, the foundation they need
to create a safe environment around water.”
“It’s really important that we, wherever we can, create more open, more green space in that part of our city.”
“We either want to invest in those neighborhoods, or we don’t. If we do, then we should look for reasons to say yes, not reasons to throw up roadblocks and obstacles.”
Mill River Park Concept Plan. Credit: City of New Haven
Why a pool?
New Haven doesn’t have a public outdoor pool, and Fair Haven lacks park space. Proponents of the city’s plan want to fix that.
“Fair Haven has more percentage of land dedicated to parking lots than it does to parks and schoolyards combined,” she said.
Anna, whose work at the URI focuses on urban forestry, emphasized that as summer heat becomes more extreme, people will need access to canopy and water more than ever. Designs for Mill River Park include forested paths and a waterfront promenade lined with trees, with the pool and lazy river at its center.
The waterfront in Mill River is one of the least forested parts of New Haven. Map: Tajrian Khan
“It’s not just some mediocre park but a destination that will really attract people.”
Proponents also say that the project would expand swimming access in a working-class, predominantly Black and brown neighborhood. Drowning rates for Black people under age 30 are 1.5 times higher than for their white peers; access to public pools and swimming lessons would reduce that disparity.
Map of New Haven demographics according to the 2020 U.S. census. Each dot represents five people. Select neighborhoods are highlighted. Map: Tajrian Khan
“There are so many children and adults in New Haven who don’t know how to swim, particularly Black and brown kids.”
“We can always use more affordable housing. Obviously, our education system could always be better. But the logic there seems to be: Until all these other problems are solved, poor Black and brown kids don’t get a place to swim. And I’m just against that.”
In February, Mark published an op-ed in The New Haven Independent titled “Let’s Go Swimming: An Argument For Building A Public Pool At English Station.” He wrote that the pool proposal was “one of the best ideas” the Elicker administration has ever had.
Elicker emphasized that it would be difficult to find a more ideal location than Ball Island for a public park and pool: it is central, next to a bus line, has ample parking space, and holds potential to revitalize an under-resourced neighborhood.
“They historically have seen a large, blighted, ugly, and polluted building, and have a beautiful waterfront that can be converted into an incredible asset for the community,” said Elicker.
Mark is not only content with the administration’s support for swimming but also with the funding situation: “They have private philanthropy outside that’s helping to fund it.”
How would we pay for this?
In January 2025, seven months before the Mill River Park proposal was made public—when the project was still “in an early stage of planning and review”—David Yassky, the president of the Roxanne and Henry Brandt Foundation wrote to Elicker about their enthusiasm for the park and pool project:
“As one goal of the Roxanne and Henry Brandt Foundation is to expand access to swimming, we were delighted to learn that your initial proposal includes a swimming pool,” Yassky wrote to Elicker. The Brandt Foundation, a multibillion-dollar non-profit based in New York City, was “prepared to consider con-tributing up to $10 million to completing a park along the lines you proposed,” Yassky wrote.
Currently, building the park and pool is estimated to cost the city $25 million. Before any construction can take place, however, UI, the utility company that formerly operated English Station, is responsible for cleaning up the site to an industrial standard for $30 million.
Still, after UI’s industrial remediation, the city must clean up the site to a park standard, which would cost $1 million to $5 million on top of the $25 million construction estimate, according to a city spokesperson. That estimate also excludes the cost of acquiring English Station.
“Who’s going to pay for it?” he said. “The funding stream is not clear. There are too many question marks.”
“The donor is going to want to have a voice and a vote at very fundamental levels of a project supported by philanthropy,” he said. “It’s kind of like the tail wagging the dog instead of the other way around.””
The Brandt Foundation would contribute a “significant amount of funds to help us reduce the overall cost of the project,” Elicker said. “We’re very grateful for that offer.” Lee, however, worries that a private donor might have too much influence over the project.
Who gets a say?
Between July 2025 and January 2026, engineers and economic develop-ment administrators held five meetings around New Haven to discuss the Mill River Park design so residents could voice feedback about the city’s plans. Some said the meetings felt like advertisements for the pool plan.
“This was kind of spoon-fed to the neighborhood,” he said. “This is not what we need right now.””
Anstress, who leads walking tours of the Mill River District water-front, thinks the interests of the community most affected by the pollution should come first.
“We’re looking for meaningful employment and career development. After decades of pollution and abandonment, that is what is owed to this neighborhood, not a swimming pool.”
Elicker notes that the city has incorporated many suggestions from resi-dents after community meetings, tabling, and surveys for the park plan, including sports fields, boating access for kayaks and canoes, and more naturescapes. “We’re continuing to collect feedback and alter the design based on that feedback,” said Elicker.
For Mark, skepticism is no reason to stall an ambitious plan for New Haven.
“There’s always expense. There’s always uncertainty. That is the nature of urbanism,” he said. “But if you want to have a great city, sometimes you move ahead anyway.”
Repurposed South Street Station in Rhode Island. Credit: ArtInRuins
What about the building?
Many people “resent English Station,” Elias said. But he also thinks the plant is an “iconic New Haven landmark,” and he’s not alone. Elihu, Yale Urban Studies professor, believes the station is an “orienting feature” in the New Haven skyline. “It helps stitch Fair Haven back to downtown visually,” he said.
New Haven can look to surrounding cities for inspiration: A historic power plant in Providence was redeveloped in 2017 into office space and educational centers for several local universities. Another decommissioned power plant in Brooklyn was reborn as Powerhouse Arts, a hub for artists and large-scale art production.
If nothing else, at least its brick walls could be preserved as an architectural scale sculpture, Elihu hopes.
“The turbine halls have beautiful, highly glazed brick and terracotta finishes designed to survive extreme heat and humidity,” she said. “We have no serious doubts that the building can be cleaned up and reused.”
“I believe in the potential of preservation and adaptive reuse to anchor you in place in a way that is satisfying, even if the uses are completely different from the original ones.”
“I like to say that this building, and many other buildings like it, were built to the glory of God. Like churches. The people that were designing and building them were thinking, ‘this is going to be here forever.’”
Although there is optimism about the plan, many New Haveners I spoke to are still skeptical. The latest news on English Station came this March, when the Board of Alders approved the city’s plan to acquire the site by a 17–5 vote. But even if the city successfully acquires the site, will they follow through with their plans? No one really knows the answer.
“It’s important for our community to not just sit by and hope that some-thing nice will go there,” Elicker said. “That hasn’t worked for decades and decades.”
For now, the power plant still looms over the neighborhood—its smokestacks rising above salt piles, scrapyards, and a derelict water-front. Change is closer now than it’s been before, but it seems like it will be a while before anybody is swimming on Ball Island.
An English Station plan in Elihu’s office.
