Hartford’s Batterson Park reopened to the public for the first time in more than a decade on Tuesday, following an extensive $10 million revitalization effort that has effectively turned the property into a sort-of state park.
The park features walking trails, picnic areas, a splash pad and a pond where people can launch their own canoes and kayaks, officials said. In the center is a pavilion with restrooms and space for food trucks to park and offer concessions.
The 260-acre property exists as a political and geographic oddity. A former reservoir owned by the city of Hartford, the park is located outside the city limits on the border between Farmington and New Britain.
That unique situation also created several operational challenges for the park, which suffered from years of underinvestment as well as pollution problems created by its proximity to Interstate-84. By 2015, the park had fallen into a state of disrepair and was mostly closed to the public except for a state-maintained boat launch.
“Every little town’s got to kind of think about their piece of the pie, and nobody was willing to step up and kind of run it or pay for it,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.
“There was nothing you could do there,” Ritter added. “It was overgrown, buildings that were burned. If you saw the images before, it was the perfect casting spot for a scary movie, you know, for a horror film.”
Ritter led an effort in 2021 to commit $10 million dollars in state funding for renovations at the park. However, that effort continued to be stalled by disputes over who would ultimately be responsible for day-to-day operations of the park.
Eventually, lawmakers directed the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to conduct a study on the park’s future which identified a public-private partnership as a potential way to operate the park. In 2024, lawmakers followed up with a revenue stream by allowing Batterson Park to receive funding from the $8-a-year Passport to Parks fee attached to vehicle registrations to support state parks.
As a result, DEEP reached a five-year agreement with Hartford-based nonprofit Riverfront Recapture to operate the park with $800,000 a year from vehicle registration fees. It is one of two non-state parks — along with the Thames River Heritage Park in New London — that receive funding from the program.
Michael Zaleski, the president and chief executive of Riverfront Recapture, said officials decided to go with a “passive” design for the park focused on activities such as jogging, picnics and bird watching. There are no athletic fields, and swimming in the pond is prohibited due to ongoing water quality issues identified by DEEP.
However, Zaleski said the park does feature some more active components, such as the splash pad and playground, that are atypical for state parks. If the park is successful, he said, Riverfront Recapture may look at adding other activities such as boat rentals.
Riverfront Recapture operates four other parks along the Connecticut River, including Hartford’s Riverside Park and Charter Oak Landing.
“At a time, in a place where people say regionalism doesn’t work, this is a testament to the fact that it can, and it can produce something that works for every single one of us, and that brings people together,” Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said at Tuesday’s ribbon cutting ceremony.
Arulampalam’s deputy chief of staff, Christian Corza, said the city also kicked in about $1 million toward the park’s renovation.
As children from the Boys and Girls Club of Hartford took turns racing through the splash pad behind the officials, Charmaine Craig sat off to the side taking in the experience.
Craig is a Hartford city council staffer, who has earned the nickname “tree lady” for her longtime support of tree-planting efforts throughout the city. A native of Jamaica, Craig said she also used to take her three children to have picnics alongside Batterson Park Pond because it reminded her of the beach.
Even for the years when most of the park was closed, she said she would drive to the boat launch to look at the water, which she noted is much closer to Hartford than Connecticut’s larger waterfront parks on Long Island Sound.
“When I drove in, and I saw how beautiful it looked, it was just driving into this wonderful spot,” Craig said upon witnessing the reopened park for the first time Tuesday. “It just brought me to a place where, [I felt] ‘Wow, it is done.'”
The park is open to the public daily from sunrise to sunset. There is no fee for parking or admission, and dogs are allowed on a leash per city regulations.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
