Sidewalk Improvements Coming To Waterbury’s West Main Street

There's some good news coming for pedestrians in the congested West Main St/Chase Parkway/NVCC area of the city, Waterbury has just received a Community Connectivity Grant from the State of Connecticut, according to Waterbury Mayor Neil O'Leary, and the almost half a million dollar grant's funds will be used to build sidewalks connecting the Chase Parkway/NVCC area with the CVS/Starbucks portion of West Main St.

Currently, the sidewalk is non-existent on the North/West side of the road. You can see in the above photo, the sidewalk ends right near the vineyard by the Chase Parkway bridge that goes across I-84. There are a few private residences between here, and the Park Road intersection. The sidewalks will be built on the North/West side of West Main Street, between Chase Parkway and Park Road. This will essentially connect the NVCC campus with the medical centers, CVS, TD Bank, Starbucks, Dunkin, and all of the other businesses near the Park Road intersection.

According to Mayor O'Leary, the purpose of the state's Community Connectivity Grant is to make conditions safer, and more accommodating for pedestrians. I can personally attest to the fact that people fly around the corner here in their cars, many times I've seen people trying to stay on that side of the street almost getting hit, this will be a vast improvement for pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

According to Mayor O'Leary, the work is just getting underway, semi-final design of the sidewalks have just been completed, and the project is going to start getting underway by late Summer 2021.