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Fresh Connections
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Business New Haven
8/24/1998
By: BNH
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Rethinking the role of downtown New Haven in the life of the city and region over the next, say, quarter-century will take more than time-worn formulas for urban redevelopment. In the medium-sized post-industrial cities of southern New England, they simply haven't worked.
In the 1960s and '70s, New Haven, Hartford, Springfield and Worcester all placed their eggs in the basket of downtown mall development. The fact that by now all of those facilities are on at least their third incarnations is telling evidence of the obsolescence of that strategy.
It isn't the cities' fault. The tides of demographic change, including the flight of population, and then retail, to the suburbs, have been too powerful to stem by bureaucratic fiat, no matter how well intentioned.
Only Providence, R.I. continues to hew toward a downtown mall strategy as an engine of redevelopment. And, as the Ocean State's capital city, the “Venice of New England” has laid enormous stakes - upwards of half a billion dollars - on the table in hopes of a different outcome from its urban New England peers.
A smaller neighbor, Waterbury, staked its future on the million-square-foot Brass Mill Center, a gaudy presence off I-84 complete with cinema megaplex and the “usual suspect” chain retailers. Having opened its doors only last September, it's too early to tell whether the investment will pay off over the long-term - or its ultimate impact on the fate of the Brass City itself.
In the City of Elms, Mayor John DeStefano Jr.'s grand redevelopment gamble for the city is based on a Waterbury-sized mega-mall on New Haven Harbor. Skeptics have expressed fears that such a facility would “kill” downtown, especially the largely boutique-type retail establishments that survive beyond existing Chapel Square Mall.
DeStefano counters that by establishing strong links between the harbor and the existing downtown, the Long Wharf marketplace will in fact stimulate visits not just to the mall, but to downtown as well.
But neither DeStefano nor anyone else has illustrated what form such a link would assume, or how and why visitors would use it.
With regard to the “why,” two considerations come to mind. One thing that would encourage visitors to a Long Wharf mall to take a side trip downtown might be a fun, unusual mode of conveyance - say, a hard-wired trolley, steam locomotive-powered train or even, as the estimable Andy Rubenoff suggests, only half-jokingly, on page 3 of this issue, a monorail. After all, he points out, the most fascinating view of New Haven's polyglot architecture can be had from 50 feet in the air.
The second reason “why” shoppers would venture from the harbor to downtown is what they find when they get there. Downtown's restaurants and boutiques are justly praised for their one-of-a-kind fare, but there simply aren't enough of them.
No one knows what it would take to create a critical mass of eateries and shops in the central business district. But the best guess here is that it isn't 100 more; it may be as few as one or two dozen more.
Creating a fertile climate for that relatively modest number of new small businesses hardly seems insurmountable. But to do so requires something that to date is lacking in New Haven: a commitment to attract, support and retain viable downtown retail and restaurant businesses even in addition to a mega-mall on the waterfront.
Historically, city development efforts reminds us of a baseball batter who swings from his heels in hopes of knocking one over the fence, but in the process strikes out a 100 times in a season. The regeneration of downtown commercial life requires a whole lot of singles and doubles - and the best plan is the one that helps small businesses grow and thrive downtonwn- as well as the kind of original thinking that has been woefully absent in our region for too many years.
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