Public Realm

Public Realm
Elevating Stamford Downtown’s public realm – including parks and open spaces – is critical to meeting the needs of current and new residents, visitors, and investors. We plant throughout the public realm year-round and light them for the holidays. We fill the public realm with people for our events. But most important, our public realm serves as an oasis within the hustle and bustle. Throw a Frisbee or throw a snowball; we invite you to have some fun in our parks and open spaces. So cut through a park on your way here or there, or simply find a place to just sit and relax.

Stamford Downtown undertakes a variety of programs to ensure Downtown’s public realm is a welcome setting that offers up the highest quality user experience for residents, workers, and visitors alike.

Daily Environmental Maintenance
Our team of dedicated Environmental Maintenance and Hospitality Ambassadors hit the streets before most people wake up to start the daily duties of pick-up trash, power-washing removing gum and the occasional graffiti to keep the streetscape well-maintained and inviting. When the basics are completed, they embark on special projects like painting the bases of the street poles. The Environmental Maintenance Team utilizes hand-held, digital devices to document street-level physical conditions which are then communicated to respective property owners or the appropriate municipal department via the City’s FixIt Stamford app, to ensure timely repairs. Hospitality Ambassadors offer daily pedestrian patrols, liaison with local businesses, act as eyes on the street for the Stamford Police Department and engage with local social service providers. We’ve heard from Downtown patrons that this looks like a place that people care about. It’s true! We do!

Snow Removal and Winter Storm Response Program
Stamford Downtown’s Snow Removal and Winter Storm Response Program ensures a clear pedestrian path in front of each building during snow events of two inches or greater. In every such storm event, the Environmental Maintenance Team works alongside Stamford Downtown’s vendor to clear approximately 38,000 linear feet of sidewalks, approximately 150 curb cuts connecting sidewalks to crosswalks, and bus shelters and fire hydrants.

Social Service Outreach
Stamford Downtown partners with Pacific House to engage with individuals facing homelessness, food insecurity, mental health challenges, and/or drug addiction and then to connect these individuals with available housing and mental health service providers. Stamford Downtown also collaborates with DOMUS to engage with high-school age youth to provide these youths with constructive activities and to de-escalate altercations. Stamford Downtown continues to build its working relationship with non-profit organizations serving vulnerable populations. Stamford Downtown is a member of the Coordinating Council of the Open Doors of Fairfield County collaborative. Together, these providers offer a continuum of care including mental health treatment, job and housing placement, and emergency shelter and subsidized affordable housing options.

Public Realm Beautification
Stamford Downtown implements a year-round program to transform public spaces with elite landscape and maintenance. The program encompasses:
• Twenty landscaped areas including gardens in five public parks garden beds (Latham, Kiwanis, Columbus, Heritage, and St. Johns),

• Seventy-five planters concentrated along downtown’s pedestrian corridors, and

• More than two hundred hanging baskets.

• Three pollinator gardens within these planted areas that were created by Stamford Downtown in partnership with the Stamford Pollinator Pathway.        

• Stamford Downtown’s scope of work includes planting, watering, fertilization, disease prevention, maintenance, and replacement of any diseased plant materials within these gardens, planters and hanging baskets.

• Holiday and Winter Lighting Program

• Stamford Downtown’s Holiday and Winter Lighting Program continues its emergence as an icon of cold-weather nights. Stamford Downtown again oversaw installation of winter lighting of the great Oaks at Columbus Park and in front of Ferguson Library as well as dozens of street trees around Columbus Park, along the northern portion of Atlantic Street, Bedford Street and throughout Latham Park. The Columbus Park tree alone requires over 53,000 multi-colored lights. The installation of the winter lighting requires 263,000 light bulbs, three weeks, and a crew of twelve technicians. 

Public Realm Enhancement Plan
Stamford Downtown create a Public Realm Enhancement Plan to generate a prioritized inventory of those public spaces (including parks, plazas, sidewalks, and spaces between buildings) that could best benefit from enhancement. This plan was also to include the conceptual designs for three of the highest-priority spaces that will either a) mitigate unsatisfactory conditions, b) elevate great aspects of the public realm to exceptional, or c) create a moment of surprise that enhances the urban experience. These projects will combine leading edge, Creative Placemaking concepts, including but not limited to, landscape or eco-design, public art, lighting/projection art, and/or new site amenities.

Urban Forestry and Green Infrastructure
Stamford Downtown has taken a leading role in nurturing the health of the tree canopy throughout downtown. A robust tree canopy helps counter the ill effects of climate change while improving the pedestrian setting. In 2023-2024, Stamford Downtown and City of Stamford began to implement the recommendations of a recently completed analysis of downtown-based tree beds and trees. In the Summer 2023, Stamford Downtown and the City of Stamford implemented a pilot program that expanded, then planted new trees in, beds located in the vicinity of the intersection of Washington and Main so these beds may comply with the City’s recently adopted Street Tree Manual. Stamford Downtown also worked with Stamford Pollinator Pathway to train student volunteers from Future5 to water and care for these trees. Over the past year, the City of Stamford received a $1.0 million grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create a city-wide inventory of the local tree canopy based on the downtown model, to purchase and install trees throughout Stamford and to train a Green Economy workforce.