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Making a List, Checking It Twice
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Business New Haven
11/29/1999
By: BNH
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Like you, we are reminded in this holiday season that we have plenty to be thankful for. But that's never enough, is it?
Alongside our New Year's resolutions, we are compiling a list of New Year's wishes to hang by our stockings - hoped-for developments that appear within reasonable grasp for our community, but still plenty desirable enough to inspire visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.
Our list for Santa includes:
• The creation, from the bottom up, of a strong, independent Downtown Council, comprising center-city retailers and merchants, not beholden to City Hall, the chamber or Yale. There already exists wide recognition of common interests on the part of downtown merchants. But they're not pulling in the same direction.
The problem is that perhaps a third or so are under the mayor's sway or cowed by Yale (the mayor's willing minion on the mall issue); a third believe the mayor is hell-bent on putting them out of business; and the last third are uninformed or simply don't care.
A unified downtown business voice would force the mayor and the chamber to whistle a new tune regarding the mall and the future of retailing in downtown New Haven - and to maintain focus and attention to downtown business even after mall construction begins.
• The realization and acceptance of the fact that New Haven is a lot more like Northampton, Mass. than it is like Baltimore, and that the Elm City's future has a lot more to do with encouraging entrepreneurism than it has to do with erecting stores for rich people on the harborfront. Indeed, it seems to us that the chances of turning Long Wharf into a Harbour Place are about the same as those of the Orioles winning the AL pennant next year.
• That it finally dawn on those in leadership positions that New Haven's economy is no longer driven by large, institutional employers such as SNET, Echlin, Yale, the Knights of Columbus, UI and so on. City Hall and the chamber stubbornly persist in bringing a big-company mentality to a small- and mid-sized business economy. It's out of step with the times, and prevents us all from focusing on what it will take to grow the real-world economy, not the fantasy-land one.
• An acknowledgment that New Haven public schools are broken, and that they cannot - or will not - be fixed by the present education and political leadership. The core challenges of the community - middle-class flight, dearth of qualified labor - will only worsen until we figure out that high-school graduates must be taught to read, write and perform basic mathematical functions.
• A hockey franchise, and an annual college basketball tournament, for Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven. We'll be first in line at the ticket window.
• Free shuttle service between Union Station and downtown office buildings. Right now, ridership on the Shore Line East commuter rail line is subsidized to the tune of more than $5,000 per rider per year. This is insane. What deters potential rail commuters isn't cost, and isn't the convenience of getting from Guilford to the train station - it's the perceived accessibility and safety of getting from the train station to the office. Surmount that obstacle and few will wish to continue to brave the daily Q Bridge horror show.
• Raze the former Macy's building and watch potential developers line up for that prime real estate parcel. Development pipe dreams today remain trapped, literally, “in the box” - the Macy's box. Potential development is mired by the physical dimensions and restrictions of an outmoded facility. Knock it down, and let the imaginations soar.
Happy holidays, everyone.
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