Buried in the woods of a Hamden town park, past the ballfields and the walking paths, there is a long concrete structure that most people mistake for a wall. It runs through John P. DeNicola Park, a graffiti-covered tunnel that has sat abandoned for decades. Inside it, workers for Winchester Repeating Arms once test-fired machine guns.
On Oct. 24, 2026, a few miles away at Spring Glen Church on Whitney Avenue, a very different kind of gathering will take place. The 3rd Annual Eli's Garden of Healing's Makers Market runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., free and open to anyone who walks in. Local artists and small businesses will set up tables of handmade goods and one-of-a-kind finds, and the money raised will go toward turning that concrete tunnel into something its builders never imagined: a garden.
The market is the public face of Eli's Garden of Healing, a Hamden nonprofit founded in the aftermath of a killing that shook the town. Elijah Gomez, known to nearly everyone as Eli, was 15 years old and a football player at Hamden High School. He had turned 15 the week before. On May 9, 2022, he was walking home from school along the Farmington Canal Trail when he was fatally shot. Three men were later accused of waiting for him along his route.
Eli loved being outdoors. His family describes a kid who wanted to be outside constantly, who played basketball and spent as much time as he could in nature, who enjoyed visiting parks and nature preserves and being on the water or in a backyard. He was surrounded by trees on the canal trail when he died. His loved ones have said that as much as they hate to think about his final moments, they take some comfort in knowing that the last things he saw were lush and green.
The organization that grew out of that loss is led in part by Crystal Cathcart, Eli's aunt, who serves as president and co-founder. Its mission is broader than a single memorial. Eli's Garden of Healing describes itself as dedicated to fostering community healing and preventing violence, serving survivors of violence and working toward safer communities. It runs youth mentoring and violence prevention programs, and it has invested in Hamden PAL and expanded "Eli's Cleats" to four schools for the 2025-26 school year. The garden itself, in the group's framing, is meant to be a symbol of hope, a place where survivors find solace and strength as they reclaim their lives.
The site it has chosen is deliberately provocative. The DeNicola Park structure was used as a firearm testing facility by Olin Corp., the ammunition manufacturer, around the mid-20th century, according to a University of Connecticut School of Engineering report cited by the Connecticut Post. Winchester Repeating Arms, the legendary New Haven gunmaker, built weapons that were fired inside it. The nonprofit's own history notes that the property's story is intertwined with Six Lakes Park nearby, which was also a Winchester test firing site. For decades the range has been overgrown with invasive plants and largely forgotten, even by people who have been to DeNicola Park many times without realizing the park stretches all the way to Leeder Hill.
The plan is to turn the length of that structure into a 1.7-acre woodland garden where visitors can walk the former symbol of violence end to end and, in the organization's words, reclaim the impact violence has had on their own lives. For those who know Eli's story, a portion of the walk is meant to evoke the journey he never finished on his way home from school.
The design is being led by Marissa Dionne Mead, a Hamden resident and associate principal at Svigals + Partners who co-founded the design studio Atelier Cue. Mead had already worked on one of the most sensitive projects in the region: she was lead architect for the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence. She has also worked on a Meriden project that includes a sensory garden and created a mobile memorial sculpture for lives lost to opioid addiction. In 2022 the Connecticut chapter of the American Institute of Architects gave her its Women in Architecture Award, citing what it called a potent and enduring commitment to creating welcoming environments within community spaces. Cathcart called the choice an immediate and obvious one.
The project is not small or quick. The organization has estimated the build at around $2 million, a multi-year effort that is still in the evaluation phase because the site is a brownfield, requiring study of the structure and the soil before construction can accelerate. Community feedback sessions are built into the process; the nonprofit has solicited ideas from neighbors about how the space can add value to the park and to people affected by violence. It has also gathered signatures on a petition of support. In the meantime, it has kept programming going: bird habitat volunteer builds, art in the park, flower arranging for intention and remembrance, herbal workshops at Spring Glen Church.
It has also drawn a distinction that matters to the people behind it. Hamden has a separate project, the Hamden Homicide Memorial Botanical Garden of Healing at Eli Whitney Park, which will honor more than 50 local families who have lost a loved one to homicide; Eli is one of the names to be included there. Eli's Garden of Healing says its goal is to keep names out of memorial gardens by preventing violence in the first place, while still offering a place of peace for anyone touched by any form of violence.
The Makers Market fits into that same philosophy of gathering people rather than dwelling only on loss. Now in its third year, it has become an annual fixture, a Saturday of shopping with a purpose where the price of admission is nothing and the point is partly just to be in a room together. Vendors have applied through the nonprofit, and the organization promotes the market through its own Instagram account.
The setting is a church hall on Whitney Avenue, a short drive from the woods where the concrete tunnel waits. Visitors who come for pottery or prints or candles will get a table of handmade things and a story about a teenager who loved trees. The garden is still years from opening. The market, for one afternoon in October, is what the healing looks like in the meantime.
Eli's Garden of Healing's 3rd Annual Makers Market takes place Oct. 24, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Spring Glen Church, 1825 Whitney Ave., Hamden. Admission is free and open to the public.