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Where Most of the Lights Are Bright
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Business New Haven
08/18/2003
By: BNH
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While the economic prospects for the city, state and nation remain uncertain for the short to mid-term, the outlook for downtown New Haven glows pretty bright.
In page 3 interview in this issue, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. counts the ways. New shops, clubs and eateries lend renewed energy to the center-city mix. Demand for residential space is higher than at any recent time during recent memory, and new apartments coming online promise what every struggling mid-sized New England city would die for: people with money living downtown.
The erasure of Veterans Memorial Coliseum from the property rolls will likely pave the way for the relocation of Gateway Community College and Long Wharf Theatre to that site, bringing new bodies and new energy downtown. Even the underperforming commercial properties of Ninth Square are evincing some gustatory gusto of late.
But the downtown coin has two sides. Redevelopers of Chapel Square Mall, who planned to reopen the facility next month, have met with notable lack of interest from national retailers. Yale’s remaking of the Broadway retail district has drawn praise from many, but not all. Among the critics are local retailers priced out of shop space or displaced by generic national retailers.
Other potential losers include any number of low-end and/or start-up retailers — selling jewelry, hip-hop fashions, sunglasses, whatever — who called the old Chapel Square home but may find the "new" downtown much less welcoming in terms of available space.
Then there are the city center’s thousands of low-income residents, including those who live downtown because of pedestrian access to stores and services.
These are the folks you don’t see in the TV spots and shiny brochures for downtown. But it’s their New Haven, too.
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