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Redefining Downtown
In its 362-year history, New Haven has revitalized and renewed itself many times.
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Business New Haven
8/21/2000
By: Linda Mele
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In order to appreciate its present prosperity and growth, it's necessary to know something about the city's history and the ups and downs those who have lived and worked here over the years faced.
When the Rev. John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, a wealthy London merchant, sailed into New Haven harbor in 1638 with a group of 500 English Puritans, the area that is now New Haven was the home of a small tribe of Native Americans called the Quinnipiack. They built their villages around the harbor and harvested food from the sea, hunted with bow and arrow for food and furs and grew maize.
Because the Quinnipiacks and other local tribes were continually under attack by bands of Pequots and Mohawks, Quinnipiack sachem Momauguin and other tribal leaders decided to sell the land they owned to the Puritans. As part of the deal, the Puritans agreed to protect the Quinnipiacks and let them use the land east of the harbor.
The Puritans established a government and by 1640 the town (originally named Quinnipiac) was christened New Haven. According to English custom, the town was designed around a central square (which is now the Green) with a grid of nine squares surrounding it. By 1641, 800 people called New Haven home.
Seventeen years after the Collegiate School was founded in Old Saybrook in 1701, it was moved to New Haven and renamed Yale College after its largest benefactor, Elihu Yale. It eventually became the world-renowned Yale University which, today, is the city's third largest taxpayer.
Yale graduate Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin just before the turn of the 19th century and later established the Whitney Arms Factory near the New Haven/Hamden line. It was eventually sold to the Winchester Co. and became one of the city's largest employers.
From the Civil War to the end of World War I, the city's population swelled from 40,000 to 108,000, 28 percent of whom were foreign-born.
This immigrant labor helped New Haven become a leading producer of clocks, plows, wagons, clothing, carriages, rubber goods, beer, pianos and a plethora of other products.
Anti-immigration laws drastically reduced the flow of European immigrants after World War I, when African-Americans and Hispanics became the newest post-war immigrants.
The increasing accessibility of the automobile after the world wars nearly caused the death of the city as thousands of middle-class families fled to the suburbs.
The city steadily declined until 1954, when eight-term Mayor Richard Lee began its slow revitalization.
Lee hoped to eliminate the slums and revitalize the economy, spending more than $300 million on public and private projects.
By 1965, the face of the city was changed with the construction of an office tower on Chapel Street, the Chapel Square Mall, a 300-room hotel and the Macy's and Edward Malley department stores.
The city's population, however, continued to decline, and eventually Malley's, Macy's, the hotel and a host of downtown businesses closed.
Some rebuilding continued during the next two decades, but it wasn't until the 1990s that things really began to turn around with the completion of the Audubon Arts Center complex, the establishment of Science Park, the revitalization of the East Shore community, the harbor area, upper State Street and other neighborhoods.
A number of new initiatives, begun during the administration of current Mayor John DeStefano Jr., are helping, once again, to rebuild and revitalize New Haven. And, guess what? A lot of people think it's working.
A host of projects, big and small, have turned the tide of decline, according to real estate agent Bill Silverman of Levey, Miller, Maretz in New Haven.
“I've been doing this for 22 years in New Haven,” Silverman says, “and it's never been better.
“As an agent, I cannot keep up with the requests for space for purchase or lease,” Silverman says. “The vacancy rate on industrial space is almost non-existent, and there's little or no undeveloped land. There are several thousand feet of office space available here and there around the city, but, overall, it's unbelievably good.”
Silverman says the most vibrant parts of the city, in terms of commercial activity, are in the Fair Haven area around Grand Avenue, Ferry and State streets.
“It's exciting to see all kinds of businesses open to serve the Hispanic community there,” Silverman says, “and it's exciting to see developers interested in the neighborhoods.”
One of the hottest trends involves turning industrial/commercial space into loft-style living and working spaces.
A New York developer is turning the former Strouse-Adler building into residential lofts, while another developer wants to build 140 loft apartments for artists in buildings on Crown Street between Orange and State streets.
In Westville center, the old 71,000-square-foot Geometric Tool factory has been converted into offices for businesses such as a computer training school and a pre-school. Only 8,725 square feet of space isn't leased, Silverman says.
Even with the ever-increasing possibility of the controversial Long Wharf mall becoming a reality, businesses will continue to open up in the city, according to Silverman.
He says small mom-and-pop retail stores won't be dissuaded from opening up because the people who live and work in the city won't necessarily want to travel to the mall for everything they want.
“Mall or no mall, people will still shop downtown,” Silverman says.
While Silverman is glowingly optimistic about the city's present and future, account executive John Friedlander from New Haven's Traub & Co., Real Estate for Business, refers to the market only as “fairly healthy.”
“New Haven is not a place where corporations look to locate,” Friedlander says, “so it's really not what we would call a 'market.'”
“There are no plans that I know of to develop new buildings, though there is a lot of interest in converting old buildings to residential and commercial use,” Friedlander says.
The former 210,000-square-foot SNET headquarters at 227 Church Street was sold to Elk Investors a New York developer in 1998, Friedlander says, and its restoration is nearly complete.
The “long overdue” mid-block garage bounded by Church, Orange, Wall and Elm streets has been on the back burner for too long, Friedlander says. “It's been talked about for more than 15 years,” Friedlander says, “because the finances were problematic.
“The properties were owned by different people with different ideas of how it should be developed,” he explains. “Putting it together has been a challenge, but it's an important key to downtown's future office development.”
Part of the problem, according to Friedlander, is how the city markets itself.
“New Haven has great stories, but it doesn't tell them very well,” Friedlander says. That's why Friedlander and others are “eagerly” looking to Susan Hartt to tell those stories better.
Hartt is the new executive director of Market New Haven Inc., which was developed to sell the city, mainly the downtown area, and the benefits of living and building businesses there (see story, page 3).
“What impressed me most is the real enthusiasm people have for the city,” Hartt says, “and that the world needs to know that it's a fabulous place to live and work.”
“Before, there wasn't one place that showcased the positive things about the city, the little stories, the people stories that tell the real story of New Haven,” she says.
“We will be ferreting out some of those stories so people will understand what's going on in New Haven,” Hartt says.
Included will be the enormous growth of the biotech and health care industries, as well as the “fun” things the myriad of restaurants and cultural activities offer.
“It's exciting and wonderful to be a part of it,” Hartt says.
In the midst of all this excitement is the hiring of North Haven First Selectman Anthony Rescigno as the new president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce and director of the Regional Leadership Council, effective September 1.
“Things look very positive,” Rescigno says. “There are a lot of very aggressive and positive-thinking people working hard to renew not just the city, but the whole region.”
“The strong economy, the enthusiasm and the cooperation of everyone will keep us going in the right direction. I'm very excited and anxious to get going,” Rescigno says.
Chamber representatives Susan Godshall and Fabio Sampoli are equally pleased by the direction in which the city seems to be headed.
“The outlook is terrific,” Godshall says, “and with the hiring of Tony Rescigno and Will Ginsberg [new executive director of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, who will also come on board in September], what we've been saying all along - that New Haven is a clean, safe, fun place to live and work - will be visible to everyone.”
Adds Sampoli: “Things are clicking. In some ways, it's never been better and everyone is very optimistic. But we still have a way to go.”
Barbara Lamb, director of special projects for the city, says things look “positive” for both residential and commercial growth.
Lamb says that a number of projects “in the works” for months and even years may or may not ever see the light of day.
“There's been some talk for years about a new home for the Ravens,” Lamb says, “but nothing is on the drawing board at this time.” Nevertheless, the mayor has floated the idea of acquiring the Sports Haven site on Sargent Drive as a site for a new ballpark.
Lamb also says the fate of the former Macy's building is still undecided and work on the $12 million Temple Street Garage renovation has just begun.
New Haven Economic Development Administrator Henry Fernandez says the city “is the hottest place in New England right now from the huge private investment in biotech to the factories expanding in Fair Haven to the great restaurants and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
“In short, the economic outlook for New Haven is bright, and every sign suggests it's only going to get brighter,” Fernandez says.
Also in the works is a new retail outlet, called Ashley Stewart, on the ground floor of the old Lerner's store at Church and Chapel streets, which opened on August 3, according to developer David Schaffer of New Haven's CA White Inc.
“We're also looking at our options for residential renovation on the upper floors,” Schaffer says.
Schaffer hopes to attract other retailers to the complex's 17,000 square feet of street-level space.
Another developer is investigating the viability of building a parking garage in the former W.T. Grant building on lower Chapel Street.
In addition, 24 apartments are planned for the upper stories of the former Palace Theater and retail shops are slated for the ground floor.
The 107,000-square-foot office tower at One Church Street has no vacancies, according to Silverman, and 10,500 square feet at 142 Temple Street has just been leased to Playwright, an Irish-style pub.
There are still some retail challenges in the Ninth Square area, but future plans include a grocery market to serve the 330 apartments in the district, according to Godshall.
Friedlander notes that there is already a shuttle bus between the Coliseum and Union Station, but plans are nearly complete for a shuttle between the Coliseum Garage, the Temple Street Garage and the uptown/tower district.
“We did some test runs on July 28,” Friedlander says, “and we hope to launch the service in the early autumn.”
According to Friedlander, the initiative is a public/private partnership that includes the United Illuminating Co., New Haven Savings Bank, the Town Green Special Services District, Rideworks, Connecticut Transit, the Greater New Haven Transit Authority and Downtown Brokers For a Better New Haven, an organization of commercial real estate brokers active in the downtown area.
“We haven't determined if a fee needs to be charged for the service,” Friedlander says, “but all those things will be ironed out before the launch.”
Some of the welcome changes in the downtown district are directly attributable to the creation of the Town Green Special Services District, which became operational in 1997.
According to acting director Scott Healy, the organization's mission is two-fold: hospitality and maintenance.
“We have a private company that supplies guide-service officers in a 27-block area,” Healy says. In each of two shifts, seven days a week, three to four guides help visitors in many ways. “We've gotten letters praising them and applauding how helpful they were in cases of people getting lost or having their car break down,” Healy says.
According to Healy, another company was hired to clean litter from the sidewalks and curbs every day of the week and, twice a year, to steam-clean sidewalks. “And, usually within 48 hours, graffiti is removed,” Healy says.
Healy says the group has also formed a retail recruitment and retention program with the help of the city and the United Merchants Association and “new storefronts are opening every month.”
In addition, a number of promotions have been planned to further advertise the city's best side. “In September, we plan to put a welcome basket on the bed of every incoming freshman at Yale,” he says. “They will be filled with goodies and gift certificates from more than 35 merchants and a number of restaurants.”
Visitors and business owners have told us the streets have never looked cleaner,” Healy adds.
Tim Fegan, first vice president of New Haven's CB Richard Ellis, says the former 550,000-square-foot SNET building at 300 George Street (a/k/a “Big Blue”) was sold for $27.5 million to Massachusetts-based Winstanley Enterprises. The owners will invest another $20 million to renovate it.
“It's being renovated, top to bottom, inside and out,” Fegan says, “with biotech and telecommunications companies in mind.”
Fegan says some space has already been leased to Achillion Pharmaceuticals (25,000 square feet) and Molecular Staging (25,000 square feet also). Fegan doesn't agree, however, that things are “booming” in the Elm City. “Real estate-wise, it's awful,” Fegan says. “Our commercial vacancy rate is 20 percent, where average is considered 11 percent and 'booming' cities report six to eight percent” [retail vacancy].
“We're not seeing any new construction, and the biggest project currently underway is the renovation of 300 George Street,” Fegan says. “Eventually, as many as 3,000 people are expected to be working there, and it will bring life back to the whole area,” he adds.
Yale University vice president Mike Morand and Matt Jacobs, manager of operations for Yale University Properties, are much more enthusiastic than Fegan about the city.
Jacobs says the university is in the middle of a ten-year, $1.5 billion campus renovation program that includes construction of an environmental-sciences facility next to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural of Natural History, renovation of Saybrook College on Elm Street and the construction of a new medical research complex at Congress and Howard avenues.
“By September, the new Yale School of Art will open at 1156 Chapel Street, the former home of the Jewish Community Center,” Jacobs says, “and it will be home to about 400 workers.”
According to Jacobs, a host of smaller projects at the Yale Divinity School and Payne Whitney Gymnasium are also in progress.
A new $5 million retail building on Broadway is also under construction, Jacobs says, where the former Enson's and Cutler's were housed.
“We demolished what was there and a company called Urban Outfitters will occupy the new 30,000-squarefoot building,” says Jacobs. At press time construction was underway.
Last year, Yale purchased 15 properties formerly owned by developer Joel Schiavone that were in receivership, Jacobs says.
“We're spending about $2 million to bring them up to code and make them safe and attractive,” he explains.
Perhaps the most exciting thing on the drawing board is the kick-off of Yale's year-long 300th anniversary celebration slated to being on October 21.
“We're more bullish than ever about the prospects for New Haven, both downtown and its neighborhoods,” Jacobs says.
So whether it's a planned celebration, a new parking garage, artists lofts or new restaurants, those who have and continue to help the city grow and prosper seem ready, willing and able to accept and conquer the challenges that lie ahead. BNH
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