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Main Street Solutions
October 23 conference aims to illustrate how healthy commercial districts are key to maintaining and building livable communities
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Business New Haven
10/13/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
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Connecticut’s only annual commercial district revitalization conference will take place Thursday, October 23, at New Haven’s Omni Hotel.
The all-day affair will be presented by Connecticut Main Street Center and the Community Economic Development Fund. It will focus on tools and strategies that lead to action-oriented, comprehensive revitalization programs that work in traditional downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts throughout Connecticut.
Webster Bank is the title sponsor of Main Street Solutions. Major sponsors of the conference include: J.P. Morgan Chase, Wachovia Bank, Business New Haven, Fleet Bank, New Haven Savings Bank, the Connecticut Economic Resource Center (CERC), Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development, People’s Bank and Citizens Bank.
The following are previews of five of the 15 sessions scheduled for the day.
‘Commercial District Revitalization Is Smart Growth: Strategies’
William Ethier, executive vice president and CEO of the Home Builders Association of Connecticut, will approach commercial district revitalization from a residential developer’s perspective.
"I’ll talk about our experience dealing with regulators and the approval process," he says.
Ethier says that in order to entice residential developers to look at downtown areas, two things should be evident. First, "The market has to be there," he says. "It may be, depending on the location and different demographics. You can’t just plan for some type of great type of development if there is no market for it."
Second, he says developers need the assistance and the approval process, including all permits, to go through.
"Cities will say they need more development back downtown, but it can be just as difficult, if not more, to get through the bureaucracy and the approval process in some cities as it is in some of the suburbs," explains Ethier.
"Cities have got to make it easy for the developers. You need good planning and good zoning, something that allows different types of designs and mixed uses and all of the things that will make a city vibrant. But you also need to make sure that developers are involved in that process because we know the market better than anyone."
Old Saybrook Town Planner Christine Nelson agrees.
"There are certain policies that are design-driven that should be adhered to," she says. "One is the notion of infill development. Instead of spreading out [so-called sprawl] into new places [greenfields], you want to infill where there’s existing infrastructure such as streets or sewers."
Nelson continues: "Many downtowns are home to municipal or community services that people need to come for, and we want compact infill for redevelopment. Other things that are important are accessibility or looking for multi-modal transit options."
Nelson will also discuss how "smart growth" principles can be applied to downtowns to help revitalize them.
"Most of those principles are based on how to funnel or guide market capital into physical form, and how you get towns and investment," she explains.
"Downtowns are places that attract people," she says. "The idea is to attract them and retain them so they stay as long as possible and spend as much money as possible."
Nelson is also a member of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Tax Burdens and Smart Growth Inititiatives.
She’s noticed that people come downtown or to a town center looking for variety. "They like mixed use and there is a lot of psychology behind the mix of businesses," she explains. "For example, impulse items should be on the first floor at eye level."
Housing is also a key element to mix into downtowns. While many traditional downtowns have housing, it’s generally outdated and smaller than what people are looking for now, Nelson says. "It’s perfect for entry-level employees in the service industry who do not make a lot of money or single-adult households."
Nelson adds, "Downtowns need to be flexible in terms of regulations — not using the one-business/one-function sort of zoning."
‘Unleashing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Micro-Enterprise Development & Financing
State Rep. Diana Urban (R-43) will be a panelist for this session and will discuss the contributions so-called micro-enterprises make to local economies, their importance to women and minority borrowers, and her efforts at the state Capitol to promote micro-enterprise business development.
"We are going through an economic change that began about six or eight years ago," Urban says. "We have missed the boat and fallen behind, and now we need to get our act together or we’re in big trouble."
Urban says that because the term "small business" is so imprecisely defined, it has been difficult to develop an economic strategy to promote the sector.
Urban plans to discuss micro-entrepreneurs, or "the person everyone knows: the hair dresser, the liquor-store owner, the people who are not making $10 million a year."
"We need to build an economic web and build that economic spirit that our country was founded on. We can’t forget that’s where our strength is," Urban says.
Pete Rivera, regional director of the University of Connectcut’s Small Business Development Center, will also speak during the session about the importance of ethnic and minority business development as one of the driving forces in local economic development — not just in the inner city but in suburban and rural communities as well. Rivera will also describe the work of his agency in supporting small businesses.
Donna Wertenbach, president of the Community Economic Development Fund (CEDF), will moderate and close this session by talking about the role of micro-enterprises in helping low- and moderate-income citizens and the support mechanisms small businesses need to be successful.
‘Community Partnerships Fight Crime’
New Haven Police Lt. John Minardi will discuss how keeping places secure has a positive impact on businesses in the area.
Minardi works closely with the Whalley Avenue Special Service District, a business organization.
"We try to pair up businesses with police for everything from the physical design of the business — to make it friendly, but not inviting to criminals — to keeping businesses clean and the front of stores and front windows clear and uncluttered," Minardi explains.
When there are civic problems in the area of a business, New Haven police will help to identify a solution. If there is a crowd that gathers only at night in certain neighborhoods, police can help a business find out why the crowd is there.
"If it’s a store that’s open 24 hours, maybe get the store to close for two hours or get a trespassing complaint, or maybe they can hire an extra duty officer to move people along," Minardi says.
Menardi is working with Whalley Avenue businesses on obtaining a security camera system. "There are 119 businesses in this 1.2-mile stretch of Whalley Avenue," he explains. "The private companies have applied collectively for a grant to put cameras onto all the businesses that face out into public areas. It’s the same idea as a strip mall with security cameras, but this is across a public area."
The business owners would be responsible for monitoring the cameras, but if something does go on, police could quickly respond.
Sylvia Oberle, executive director of the Center for Community Safety at Winston-Salem (N.C.) State University, will also speak during this session to discuss the importance of businesses working closely together with residents and law enforcement agencies.
"A lot of the work that I do with communities through the justice department initiatives involves community residents and a wide range of partners working together with law enforcement," Oberle says.
Her talk will address the role that agencies like schools, mental health, probation and parole agencies, hospitals and housing authorities can play in making safe communities.
"The notion is that safety is not just a law-enforcement issue; it’s an issue that is of importance to many people in the community and some partners outside law enforcement as well as community residents," Oberle says. "Those kinds of ideas ought to be brought into the discussion and the planning. Certainly businesses need to be aware of what the crime situation is in their community, and like everybody else not operate out of assumptions or perceptions for what the problem is."
Oberle advocates that companies engage law enforcement in analysis of a particular crime problem and perhaps even sponsor some research by local universities or local crime analysts to find out exactly what the nature of a particular safety problem in the area is.
"They need to understand it," she says, "and then spearhead some planning efforts so businesses can sponsor committees for downtown safety.
"A lot of people don’t come downtown because they’re afraid, when in reality their fear is based more on perceptions, rumors and not real incidents," she says. "First, people need to know what the true picture is and if businesses can encourage that kind of examination, that’s a good first step. Then they need to be very active proponents of a planning process based on that data."
Oberle will also offer other suggestions that businesses can implement through their design including lighting and other kinds of environmental design that provide safe access for customers and make stores very attractive and safe places to shop.
She encourages business owners to educate their employees on how to recognize unsafe conditions without appearing unfriendly to customers.
"A lot of people in retail equate that with odd-balling any strange person that comes in the door. We’re talking about providing training for employees on how to recognize safety issues, but also to balance that with very customer-friendly organization," Oberle says.
‘Commercial District Revitalization Is Smart Growth: Reclaiming Brownfield Sites & Abandoned Buildings To Create Healthy Communities
Robert Santy, president of the Regional Growth Partnership (RGP) of South Central Connecticut, will discuss brownfields reuse and remediation.
"We uniquely deal with environmentally challenged properties," Santy explains. "To us, if you have an environmental nightmare in the middle of Main Street or downtown, or a neighborhood, it affects your ability to bring back the entire area."
Santy intends to talk specifically about the work RGP is doing with Empower New Haven, evaluating environmental concerns on about 14 properties in the Empower neighborhoods. Properties include abandoned gas stations, auto-repair dealers and the like. Most of these properties, like several on Dixwell Avenue, are prime development sites.
"What we’re trying to do is bring together resources from environmental assessment to remediation to redevelopment and include business finance along the way. We have an assessment program and Empower is providing remediation dollars and we’re also working with the Community Investment Corp. and the Connecticut Economic Development Fund on business lending and business planning," Santy explains.
"What we’re hoping is that rather than just do one piece like the assessment, then wonder what’s going to happen with the property, we’ll work with the neighborhoods and all these organizations to create a redevelopment plan that will bring the property to real good use."
‘Arts Events & Economic Development’
Barbara Lamb, executive director of New Haven’s Office of Cultural Affairs will discuss how arts events can have a direct economic benefit in a community.
"We here in New Haven have planned events for years without giving a lot of thought and consideration to how those people who are coming into your city are actually interacting with businesses in town," Lamb explains.
"Often the events are isolated events that might occur on the Green or they might occur in a courtyard somewhere or they might occur in a structured auditorium or performance space somewhere," she notes. "But little thought is given to, ‘How do we get these people to come in earlier and have dinner, or stay later and stop for a drink, or stay after a performance to go out for a coffee and dessert?’"
Lamb’s department runs the annual New Haven Jazz Festival, Sounds in the City and Friday Flix events and looks at how the event can tie-in with other things that are going on in the city.
A lot of it is basic and simple, like giving out information to the crowd about other events in New Haven, Lamb says.
"In the case of the Jazz Festival, we created a special pullout section in the New Haven Advocate that became the official program guide to the festival," she notes. "It had a map and information on where different sites are in New Haven as well as a calendar of events for the two-week period of the Jazz Festival."
She says there were upwards of 6,000 people coming into New Haven to attend the tapings of television show Jeopardy! and a shuttle bus was run between the Temple Street garage and the Paine Whitney Gym where the late September taping took place.
"The shuttle drivers indicated they’d just go down Frontage Road and up Crown Street. I said ‘No, I want these buses to go downtown.’ I want them to run up Chapel Street, over York Street, so people get exposed to what’s going on on Chapel Street and what’s going on in the Broadway District," Lamb says.
"Otherwise, people coming from out of town would still have no sense of all that New Haven has to offer. If you route someone on a bus through an area where there’s just a lot of industry or vacant buildings, they’re not getting any sense of the vibrancy of the city. There’s no incentive for them to want to venture out into the city once they’re finished with the taping.
"By doing this, it wa our hope that even if they do venture out from the gym, they may not stop on Broadway and do a little shopping, but it may give them the incentive to come back to New Haven at another time," she says.
Main Street Solutions features 15 education sessions in all, covering a broad range of topics such as "Great Businesses Make Great Streets"; "Downtown Housing"; "How To Attract the Best Developers"; "A Mayors’ Roundtable"; "Attracting Cultural Heritage Tourists"; "Preservation Tools" and more.
Following the education sessions, attendees will have a choice of five different walking tours in downtown New Haven or one of the adjacent neighborhoods, capped off with receptions in local hotspots.
The walking tours will focus on such topics as "Creative People Make Creative Settings"; "Attracting Specialty Retail To Make Your District Unique"; and "How Entertainment Venues Can Work Together To Make a Downtown a 24 Hour Destination."
Luncheon will feature a keynote address by John DeStefano Jr., mayor of New Haven and president of the National League of Cities.
For complete conference information on the conference, visit www.ctmainstreet.org or call 860-280-2556
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