Norwich — Hobart Avenue resident Brian Kobylarz said the patrons of the St. Vincent de Paul Place soup kitchen who have used his yard as a “picnic spot” have become more polite and courteous in recent months.  

They now set out a picnic tablecloth and leave the litter neatly on the cloth, Kobylarz said, tossing a dark green cloth onto the table during a Tuesday evening meeting for residents to express concerns and complaints about the soup kitchen's presence in the Cliff Street neighborhood.

Several residents, along with soup kitchen officials, patrons and volunteers on Tuesday attended the first quarterly neighborhood meeting mandated in a federal court settlement of the soup kitchen's appeal of the city's zoning permit denials for the facility.

The soup kitchen had moved temporarily in summer of 2012 to the former St. Joseph School at 120 Cliff St., and six months later asked for planning and zoning permits to remain there. 

After the permits were denied, St. Vincent appealed to federal court. The Commission on the City Plan approved the court settlement Dec. 22 allowing the facility to remain in the former school.

Kobylarz had complained frequently at previous meetings that soup kitchen patrons were using his yard and patio furniture to eat take-out meals.

He presented a photograph of one woman sitting on outdoor furniture at a previous meeting.

He said he found the tablecloth with foam plates one day at the end of summer.

Longtime Hobart Avenue resident David Mitchell said he and his wife decorate their fence for every holiday throughout the year.

This past Christmas was the first holiday in 3½ years that the display was not vandalized, he said.

Thanksgiving decorations a few weeks earlier were damaged.

Mitchell expressed skepticism that the settlement provisions can be enforced. He said there are no definitions of vandalism or excessive noise, and the address of the facility, 120 Cliff St., “isn't on the map.”

The address does not come up on the online city property records.

Police Sgt. Peter Camp, head of the city's community policing unit, and Officer Christopher Chastang encouraged residents to keep reporting incidents whenever they occur.

Reports might not result in arrests, but frequent police activity should reduce problems, they said.

“When you have people yelling, screaming, running down the street,” Kobylarz said, “by the time you call, they're gone.”

“I'm here to help,” Camp said. “I'm not going to give in. I can't give in.”

“I'm giving in,” Mitchell said.

Police urged residents to re-establish a neighborhood watch group that had been active for years, and offered to help coordinate the effort.

But Kobylarz, who chaired the watch group for many years, said with so many transient residents now, watch group organizers couldn't be sure they weren't inviting drug dealers to join the group, tipping them off about police scrutiny.

Jillian Corbin, executive director of St. Vincent de Paul Place, also offered to work with neighbors on various issues.

Corbin said the soup kitchen is working with Reliance House, a downtown human services agency that works with people with mental illness, to do neighborhood cleanups.

She offered to run a cleanup in the Cliff Street neighborhood this spring.

Corbin also hopes to coordinate a holiday tree-decorating effort.

Resident Mark Gagne, owner of Cummings-Gagne Funeral Home at 82 Cliff St., said he stopped decorating a neighborhood Christmas tree because of frequent vandalism.

The light strands are still on the tree, with many missing and broken bulbs.

Corbin offered to bring ladders and get volunteers to remove the old lights and redecorate the tree next Christmas.

“The last time I tried, within 48 hours it was vandalized,” Gagne said. “We lit it on a Friday night, and by Sunday, it was vandalized.”

c.bessette@theday.com

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