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The State of the Neighborhoods
Elm City commercial districts seek strength through diversity
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Business New Haven
9/18/2000
By: Linda G. Mele
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New Haven's vibrant neighborhoods have much to offer both their residents and those who visit the Elm City.
Take the Wooster Street neighborhood, for example. Once home to about 90 percent Italo-American business owners and residents, today about half are Italian and the rest a real United Nations mix, according to Frank D'Amore, neighborhood representative for the Wooster Street Business & Professional Association.
“Wooster Street was predominantly Italian until about 10 or 15 years
ago,” D'Amore explains, “and now we're also home to a lot of Yale staff and students and businesses owned and operated by people from different ethnic groups.”
The site of the famed Italian “restaurant row,” the Wooster Street area is also home to a variety of businesses from funeral parlors and convenience stores to bakeries.
“Right now, business is great,” D'Amore says, “and we have very little turnover.”
According to spokesperson Thea Buxbaum, the same is true for the Westville section of the city.
“We're reviving the Westville Business Association,” Buxbaum says, “and hope to get the word out about the variety of businesses we have here and increase the pedestrian traffic we have.”
Once a separate village from New Haven, Westville was incorporated into the city in the early 20th century, Buxbaum says, and it's “a fairly unique” area.
“Believe it or not, we have about 50 businesses in our commercial district, including clothing stores, salons, art galleries and studios, professional offices and several antiques stores,” Buxbaum says, “and our turnover rate is small.”
Buxbaum says the neighborhood benefits from the traffic off the Wilbur Cross Parkway (Route 15), from the Bethany and Woodbridge communities, from downtown and the suburbs and from foot traffic.
“It's become a 'destination' area and, according to statistics, as many as 42,000 cars a day pass through here,” Buxbaum says.
TThe neighborhood hosts a spring arts festival run completely through the efforts of volunteers.
“Our goal is to get people traveling through the area to slow down and spend a few hours here,” Buxbaum notes.
Most Westville businesses are owner-operated by entrepreneurs from an eclectic mix of ethnic backgrounds. The same is true of Westville residents.
“Westville is an ethnically, culturally and socio-economically diverse neighborhood,” Buxbaum says.
Jorge Perez, city alderman from New Haven's Hill section, says his neighborhood is “fairly stable with little turnover in businesses.
“It's multi-ethnic,” Perez explains, “with businesses owned and operated by Italians, African-Americans, Hispanics and Indians.”
The ethnic mix of residents is about 50-50 African-American and Latino, Perez says.
Perez characterizes his district as a tight neighborhood without any formal neighborhood or business association.
Paul Wessel, Liveable Cities Initiative neighborhood specialist for the Fair Haven neighborhood, says he works with the merchants to help them develop and grow their businesses.
“We have a lot of mom-and-pop businesses,” Wessel explains, “about three-quarters of which are stable. About one-quarter of the storefronts turn over on a regular basis, but they aren't vacant for more than a few weeks.”
Wessel says area business owners have recently formed the Grand Avenue Village Association.
According to Wessel, the area is attracting a variety of new residents from Mexico and Central America. Fair Haven also includes a large Puerto Rican population.
“Bodegas seem to survive,” Wessel says, “and niche restaurants serve a need.
“We have a thriving religious-articles store that sells both wholesale and retail, a commercial laundry that handles lab coats from Yale Medical School and tablecloths from fancy hotels. And a new bakery just opened, too,” Wessel explains.
Wessel says that about half of Fair Haven business owners also live in the neighborhood, and “By and large the employees are local residents or family members,” he adds.
Evelyn Schatz, business manager and president of the Upper Chapel/Chapel West Special Services District, says her neighborhood's 18 restaurants feature nearly every kind of cuisine one could ask for.
“Like other neighborhoods, we have our turnover, but basically things are pretty stable right now in the commercial area,” Schatz notes. “We have a very good relationship with Yale University and the Hospital of Saint Raphael - which is good because their employees and visitors are our bread and butter.”
Sheila Masterson, executive director of the Whalley Avenue Special Services District, says her neighborhood is “a wonderful, exciting mix of just about everything under the sun.”
“Twenty-five percent of our 115 businesses are owned by women, and 25 percent are minority-owned,” Masterson says.
The biggest boon to the Whalley area has been the Shaw's Supermarket that opened on Whalley Avenue three years ago - the first supermarket chain to locate in a Connecticut city center in many years.
“It's been a home run since the day it opened,” Masterson says, “and has contributed in many ways to the growth in the area.”
Shaw's shuttle service brings seniors into the neighborhood to shop, Masterson notes, and many of its other customers come from different parts of the city and the inner suburbs.
Residents of the Whalley Avenue neighborhood are just as ethnically mixed as are its business owners, Masterson says.
The Dixwell Avenue and Newhallville sections boast a preponderance of African-American residents and businesses. The Newhallville-based Science Park was initially conceived as a way to provide jobs for residents in the area, but that really hasn't happened. Some new partnerships - including a tentative development agreement between the Science Park Development Corp. and the Cambridge, Mass.-based Lyme Properties - may turn that around.
Ninth Square is also a United Nations of business owners, including those of Korean, Taiwanese, Israeli, Italian, Malaysian and East Indian descent.
Spokesperson Kathleen Etkin says that also goes for the 335 apartments that are leased in the Ninth Square district.
“We're about 50-percent leased,” Etkin says of Ninth Square's commercial space, “and only have approximately 25,000 square feet of commercial space left. We did lose one tenant when the Old New Haven restaurant closed, but that space is now occupied by Tycoons restaurant.”
Etkin says there were also some space for which leases were signed but the businesses never opened.
And, while business isn't necessarily booming in Ninth Square, the local United Way office is expanding, and a 2,400-square-foot convenience store is currently under construction, according to Etkin.
Other areas of the city aren't ethnically oriented either in the residents they attract or the types of businesses that locate there.
Take the Broadway district and the surrounding area nearest Yale. Most of the businesses that locate there cater to Yale staff and students and their needs. They also cater to the wide array of ethnic backgrounds represented by those students.
Overall, New Haven is an eclectic mix of ethnic groups both in its residents and its businesses. And, while the outlook for each neighborhood looks rosy now, to a greater or lesser extent, due to the booming economy, that could change if the economy's fortunes change, too.
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