It was hard for Tracey Sutton to get through a sentence without welling up. “I don’t want to start crying,” she said, fighting back tears.
Sutton, the president of the Tenants Association at the Thames River Apartments, the public housing complex off Crystal Avenue, was overcome with happiness at the opening day of the sparkling Front Porch Early Childhood Resource Center inside Building A.
“This will do so much to help,” Sutton said. “I hope everyone understands we need to come together as a community.”
Dreamt up two years ago by the New London Housing Authority, Front Porch is a nonprofit that will fund programs at the Thames River complex, perhaps the most talked about, but least visited, dwellings in the city.
According to Elaine Maynard-Adams, the chair of the Front Porch Foundation, the name occurred to her while holding meetings on summer nights on the front porch of her home.
“Porches are places where families gather and meet and greet others,” she said. “This is history, it really is.”
Lisa Sullivan, the executive director of Front Porch, said the center “is the most positive thing that’s happened at Thames River in a long time.”
In addition to the Community Room, Front Porch also helps run a food pantry, with 6,500 pounds of food, at Thames River as it does in the six other NLHA complexes.
Sullivan said the pantry is open twice a month, and it provides the more impoverished residents with a chance to choose what they need, instead of just accepting “gift baskets.”
Front Porch took a room that, according to Sullivan, was unused except for storage space, and revamped it.
“We think it looks really fabulous,” she said.
The Community Center, with its brightly colored walls and new toys for the complex’s children, will serve as a place for residents to receive information about services and programs, such as nutrition advice and lectures by the New London Police Department.
William Edwards, the city’s crime prevention officer, said the center should “have a calming effect” on the complex.
“There is no stuffiness here,” he said.
Edwards said the NLPD looks forward to running programs in the room.
“It is a less intimidating environment,” he said.
Capt. Margaret Ackley of NLPD said “only good” can come out of Front Porch.
“Lisa Sullivan’s efforts are contagious,” she said. “The program says that the rest of the community cares and wants to help.”
Front Porch, the NLHA hopes, will also help to change the image of one of the more infamous properties in southeastern Connecticut.
Plans are in the works to open a Boys and Girls Club of America chapter in Building C.
“This is fabulous,” said Joe Abrams, the executive director of the NLHA. “Not long ago there was talk of demolishing Thames River, but now we are doing things they would not imagine.”
Razing the complex that was opened in 1969 as part of New London’s urban renewal project has been on the city’s political carousel, most recently brought up by Democratic freshman Councilor Michael Buscetto III.
Buscetto has been in communication with the city’s lawyers hoping to convince the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency that owns the buildings, to dispose of the property.
“I’m exploring options,” Buscetto said. “These are nice things that are happening and I support them, however, there are a lot of difficulties.”
Abrams said the NLHA has brought about changes in its properties such as hiring a full-time manager and instituting a more professional work environment.
“We said, ‘Why not manage these buildings?’” he said.
Buscetto said the complex is difficult for police to patrol and many of the problems with crime the complex has experienced for decades have not changed.
“I’d like to find a better place for the residents there to live,” he said.
And, according to Sullivan, that’s what Front Porch wants for the tenants at Thames River Apartments.
“We want this to be a stop on the way to self-sufficiency,” she said.