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Keys to the Highway
The commercial melting pot that is the Boston Post Road between Milford and West Haven continues to evolve as the region's true retail hub
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Business New Haven
7/8/2002
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Consumers can rely on the Boston Post Road in Milford and Orange for virtually everything they need or want. From fitness centers to oyster bars, and from “auto row” to “furniture row,” it's all there.
Such was the case ten years ago, when the first issue of Business New Haven hit the stands. Back then, a Stop & Shop anchored one end of the Connecticut Post Mall while Caldor held down the opposite end. It's like a soap opera of retailing: Caldor is with Bradlees and Service Merchandise in the big box-store heaven in the sky. Stop & Shop moved across the street. Sears left Orange and moved into Stop & Shop's old spot. Caldor's spot now houses a furniture store and is soon to house Macy's department store.
In Orange, Staples and Burlington Coat Factory moved into Sears' old digs, while the Service Merchandise building lies vacant. At the turn of the century, what looked like a storyline involving Erica Kane is finally taking shape.
Just like everywhere else, the Boston Post Road through Milford, Orange and West Haven has undergone enormous changes.
Paul Grimmer, economic development director for the town of Orange, says that when major big-box retailers like Builder's Square, Bradlees and Sears moved out, a lot of people were concerned about the “decline” of the Post Road. Granted, Builder's Square has been gone for nearly a decade, but it was the beginning of a possible demise.
With all of the businesses that have moved out of Orange, there was great concern that retail wasn't going to survive to the extent that it had in the past.
“I think what we've found out in the past six months is that retail is alive as it has ever been and people have identified Orange as a place that they want to do business,” says Grimmer today.
In spite of the Post Road shuffle, commercial Realtor Carl Traub says the Post Road in Milford and Orange is “red hot.” In the past ten years, offices have gone up on places like Bic Drive and Schoolhouse Road, attributable in part to their proximity to Post Road retail.
“People in those offices look at the shopping and the retail as amenities for the offices,” Traub says. “They complement each other well.”
The town of Orange funds the Orange Economic Development Corp. (OEDC), a 28-member, private non-profit group that is also funded with monies from private companies, grants from foundations, and the state and federal governments.
Functioning as a municipal economic-development team, the Orange group's goal is to recruit new businesses to the community and develop programs and projects to help retain businesses within the community.
The OEDC focuses its efforts on the Orange Industrial Zone (where the Stew Leonard's property is on Marsh Hill Road) and the Boston Post Road.
Says Grimmer, “We try to find those marriages of companies that are looking for retail, commercial or industrial properties - and work with them to try and encourage their development in Orange.”
There are approximately 200 acres within the Orange Industrial Zone that is available right now, although not much of that is on the Boston Post Road itself
About 18 months ago, the town organized an ad-hoc group known as the Boston Post Road Committee. Members were appointed by the First Selectman to study some of the Post Road attributes, strengths and limitations.
The group analyzes and reviews possible aesthetic improvements for the Boston Post Road such as erecting welcome signs, supporting antique light ordinances and coordinating landscaping/maintenance contracts for the landowners along the corridor.
“A lot of Orange has a mix of new businesses and older facilities that don't have the same characteristics,” Grimmer explains. “They have the characteristics of what they were 20, 30 or 40 years ago.”
The Fire-Lite plaza at the intersection of Racebrook, Old Tavern and the Boston Post roads, for example, has a large driveway with no landscaping or greenery.
“We're trying to encourage [greenery] all the way up and down the Post Road so that gives it a smooth flow,” Grimmer adds. “One of our major initiatives is to see if we can get decorative colonial or Victorian lighting.”
Victorian lighting and greenery aside, in the past year alone Trader Joe's, Bassett Furniture, Best Buy and a Burlington Coat Factory store have opened on the Post Road in Orange. Smaller companies like Kennedy & Perkins Optical and national chains such as CVS have also set down roots in Orange.
The Discovery Café, a coffee shop/learning and enrichment center for children, recently opened next to Office Max, sharing a parking lot with The Home Depot.
“We've had a lot of activity,” Grimmer says. “We have Raymour & Flanigan Furniture, which just took over a major plaza, and Target, which was just approved. Just between the two you're looking at tens of millions dollars of new development.”
Larger properties in Orange are slowly filling up. The former Builder's Square, Bradlees, Shaws supermarket and Service Merchandise properties remain available.
“The former Shaws property will be leased relatively soon and that is probably the least of our concerns,” Grimmer says. “It's an area and a property that will support a profitable retail establishment soon.
“I do not think that people in general are opposed to development along the Boston Post Road,” adds Grimmer. “If we saw anything with the Target application, it was that people are supportive of development, but they are also supportive of maintaining as rural a nature or as residential or comfortable atmosphere as they can.”
The landscape doesn't change much when you cross the Post Road from Orange into Milford. According to Robert Gregory, Milford's economic development director, most recent activity along the Post Road involves redevelopment of older, substandard or less-than-optimal properties.
One exception is the 47-acre property occupied by Ryder Trailer Park, which is expecting to move to Cascade Boulevard, if approved by the planning and zoning board.
In Milford, there is very little open land for development, Gregory notes.
Most of what is happening is re-use and creative re-use. For example, two old, derelict buildings were demolished to make way for a new Milford Bank branch at the intersection of the Post Road and Rose's Mill Road.
Across the street from the new bank property, Babies 'R' Us is another example of a new entity. Further south, the Angelica Healthcare property will soon be a new Saab dealership.
Gregory says it's a constant process.
Like Orange, Milford is also working on beautification issues. The planning and zoning board is working with new developments by looking for more plantings to soften the hardness of the asphalt and the concrete.
Krispy Kreme, where Kentucky Fried Chicken used to be, agreed to put in some brick facing in order to soften what Gregory calls a “corporate look,” when it builds the national doughnut chain's first Connecticut store this summer.
Building will also be taking place at the Connecticut Post Mall, as the Westfield Corp. retail facility adds 430,000 square feet of space to accommodate a new Macy's store, another floor for Filene's and new parking garages. The town's planning and zoning board approved conceptual plans, although developers must return with final plans before work can commence.
Ten years ago there was no Costco, no Trader Joe's, no Starbuck's, and no Lowe's Home Improvement store. What will the Post Road look like ten years out, in 2012?
“I hope in the next ten years, the state widens and looks at turning lanes on the Post Road,” says Gregory. “If you bring those people to the area at key times, you have to have them be able to move.” The recent emphasis on beautification and flow from one town or city to the next should also continue.
Richard Harrall of Hamden's Harrall-Michalowski Associates worked on Milford's conservation and development plan proposal, the first such new plan since 1972. “Appearance is the problem,” he says, “not uses.”
Harrall says Milford suffers from a New Jersey epidemic. Many people associate New Jersey with the areas they pass through on the turnpike or Garden State Parkway. There are nicer areas beyond, but judgments are made on first impressions. “We're looking for a nicer entrance to the Post Road in the downtown area,” Harrall says.
The plan also calls for fewer driveways or entrances to parking lots and a better system for left-hand turns from the Post Road.
“Zoning used to be very use-oriented, meaning it wasn't good to have residential with industry,” Harrall says. “Today, zoning is not use, but the impact of the use on the environment, neighbors and residents.
“The transition in Milford has been to bigger and better in the last ten years,” says Carl Traub. “Better quality stores, bigger stores, more traffic - the area has become a much more accepted place for people to go shopping where you can fundamentally be on the Post Road and get everything you need.” Such is the case for Milford and Orange. But not necessarily for West Haven.
West Haven Mayor Richard H. Borer Jr. puts it this way: “The Post Road has been a source of frustration for us. We think it has some great potential and some great opportunity, but it has some inherent difficulties.”
The main difficulty is that all of a sudden, the Post Road effectively terminates. “It all of a sudden becomes a convoluted process on where to go,” Borer says.
At one point West Haven officials proposed to their New Haven neighbors rerouting one or more Elm City thoroughfares so that the Post Road could continue its eastward march as a unified corridor. The reaction was positive, Borer says, but it's not on either municipality's active radar screen.
The second difficulty is that the lots are small. Mixed planning and zoning along the Post Road has allowed residential homes to become car lots and such. West Haven has been buying pieces of property that adjoin larger parcels along the Post Road, which is actually called Orange Avenue through West Haven (a name change for the road is also on Borer's agenda).
For example, the city bought a foreclosed property behind Hallock's appliance store, cleared the property and sold it - to Hallock's.
Further down the road, an old pizzeria was demolished and the property it sat on was bundled with other surrounding properties.
“Our goal has been to bundle adjoining properties whenever we get title to them through foreclosure or whatever process we can be entitled to the properties, and bundle them to the larger parcels,” Borer says.
The difficulties don't stop as abruptly as the road stops. There are aesthetic issues also.
When you're driving through Orange, you know exactly when you hit West Haven.
“That is because the way [Orange] developed, there are no residential homes that are backing up and pushing onto the Post Road. In West Haven, you have residential neighborhoods that are snuggled up to the Post Road, which makes it difficult for development,” says Borer.
West Haven is working with the University of New Haven, which in turn re-invests in its host city. Borer foresees West Haven's Post Road becoming a university village where students and staff can shop. The city is improving the intersection at Forest Road both on the road and off. Two buildings were torn down on a property where a new CVS stands.
West Haven had the potential to make its small section of Post Road a profitable hub. In Allingtown Village is a very eclectic group of small businesses. All in a row are a Colombian restaurant, a Portuguese restaurant/bar, an African-American beauty parlor, a Chinese restaurant and an Italian barber. It's a melting pot with great potential.
“That's what we want to build on,” Borer says. “There's abandoned properties behind those businesses that are working hard to survive.”
He continues: “We'll invest in a parking area behind there, making it well-lit and safe. There is a little renaissance going on in that area. Our Boston Post Road is not like Milford, and it never will be. We might as well recognize what we are and build on it.”
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