By Brian Lockhart,
Staff Writer
June 5, 2026
Brian A. Pounds/Hearst Connecticut Media
BRIDGEPORT — The green, undeveloped Pleasure Beach peninsula separating the harbor from long Island Sound looks particularly inviting on a hot day, when the sun and heat reflect off all the industrial and commercial buildings occupying much of the mainland shoreline.
But while public access to that isolated strip of sand and lush vegetation was restored in 2014 under then-Mayor Bill Finch, the attraction has had operational problems and more limited use under Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration. It was shuttered last summer due to a tick infestation, though is set to reopen this July Fourth weekend.
Now city officials are in talks to make the site someone else’s responsibility, possibly selling Pleasure Beach to the Aspetuck Land Trust or providing that environmental nonprofit with a conservation easement to help manage it.
“Aspetuck is interested in preserving land in Bridgeport. Aspetuck’s mission is to protect land and connect people to nature,” said the organization’s executive director, David Brant. “This property represents a tremendous opportunity to do both things.”
He gushed about his own experience visiting the property: “I want kids and families to feel what I felt when I was out there. That you’re out in this windy expanse and it feels like your 1,000 miles away from Bridgeport on some Caribbean island.”
But Brant and Joe Gresko, a state representative from Stratford who works part time in Bridgeport’s sustainability office, emphasized no final decisions will be made without input from impacted residents on the East End and East Side. The peninsula stretches into the water off of the East End.
“This isn’t pre-decided,” Gresko said. “We need to know what locals think. We need to know what locals want.”
Deborah Sims is vice-chair of the East End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, one of several such NRZ’s around the city that weigh in on land use and redevelopment matters.
“The big thing for me is access,” Sims said. “Community first. … It can’t become a small little private island our kids and families can’t play on.”
Brant said that is not the intention should Pleasure Beach be added to Aspetuck’s portfolio of real estate around Fairfield County.
“This is a natural asset that everyone needs to be connected to,” he said. “We would work night and day to try to connect people to that natural resource … to spend a day at the beach or go on a nature hike and learn about the owls and piping plovers out there.”
Such was the goal when the Finch administration reopened the peninsula a dozen years ago. In its heyday, the property was a summer playground with an amusement park, linked via motor vehicle bridge to the mainland.
Gradually the attraction fell on hard times and in 1996 the span was mostly destroyed by fire, limiting access to anyone willing to take a long walk along the shoreline starting in Stratford. That was during Ganim’s first tenure as mayor from 1991 to 2003.
Elected in 2008, Finch, well-known as a “green” mayor who prioritized nature and conservation, spent several years and several million dollars to reopen Pleasure Beach for swimming, tanning, walking and fishing. Though much was left wild, by 2014 specific areas were cleaned up for public use, with a concession stand, bathrooms and a fishing pier installed. And, rather than restoring a bridge, water taxis were purchased to shuttle visitors back and forth.
Ganim waged a comeback and ousted fellow Democrat Finch in 2015. And over the ensuing years the city has made significant reduction in operations at the attraction: It opened later in the summer; the once-daily hours were reduced to weekends and holidays; and concessions were eliminated along with a leased mainland parking lot.
Whether because of those changes and a lack of promotion, or simply due to waning public interest, or both, attendance plummeted from the initial “tens of thousands” of beach-goers Finch had boasted about to just 3,007 in 2024.
Meanwhile nature has started to reclaim the peninsula. A tick infestation delayed 2023's opening, and cancelled last year’s season. City officials at the time also blamed a “significant increase” in protected birds' nests, the presence of fox and coyote populations and ongoing beach erosion.
Last summer, Ganim’s communications director said the closure was “not a step toward permanent shutdown but rather a strategic pause.”
Danielle Wedderburn had also said the administration would be looking at how to “invest in long-term, scalable solutions” to combat the ticks in particular “that protect the natural environment while also supporting a safe visitor experience.”
City Councilwoman Eneida Martinez, who helps represent the East End, said she does not want to see the parkland “snatched.”
“We’re not giving our Pleasure Beach away to anybody,” she insisted. “Bridgeport owns it. Parks and Recreation can maintain it. They have allowed it to go into deterioration. That’s why it’s full of ticks and other wild animals. I’ll be fighting tooth and nail.”
Gresko, however, believes Aspetuck is better poised to manage things there.
“This is what they do for the rest of Fairfield County,” he said. “They’re very serious about the possibility of doing this.”
Founded in 1966, the organization, according to its website, operates 45 preserves with trails in this region. In recent years, the nonprofit has also been trying to make inroads in Bridgeport by planting forests at city schools and parks and pursuing other land purchases. Aspetuck is currently eyeing the just-shuttered waterfront Bloodroot restaurant property in the Black Rock neighborhood and nearly 15 acres of North End acreage along Serpentine Drive where a subdivision was planned.
“This is very important for us to be in Bridgeport and connect folks to nature,” Brant said. “Nature is for everybody. It should be for everybody.”
Finch said he was pleased to hear Aspetuck may step in where he feels the city has failed.
“On the surface it sounds like a wonderful idea,” the former mayor said. “It’s been very disappointing to me how it’s been allowed to languish. I think the tick thing was more of an excuse to not do your job and keep it open. … Having said that, getting it open again is the real key, not fighting over why it was closed.”
“It really, truly is a wonderland,” Finch said of the peninsula. “If they (Aspetuck) manage this like they manage all the rest of their property, it’s going to be a home run.”