New Haven Independent

Both sides are fed up with each other and wondering what to do next.

Neighbors have fumed for years about the condition of the property, at the busy corner of Fitch and Blake streets one long block from Whalley Avenue. It houses Harry’s Package Store, which partly serves students at the nearby Southern Connecticut State University campus. The paint is peeling. Overgrown weeds and junked cars dominate the bleak landscape surrounding the store.

Elaine Braffman, a neighborhood worker from City Hall’s Livable City Initiative (LCI), has begun the paperwork needed to fine the property’s owner $100 a day under New Haven’s anti-blight ordinance until he cleans up the place.

“The $100 a day fines add up very rapidly,” Braffman warns. If they do, she says, the city will seek to foreclose on the property.

Neighbors brought their complaints earlier this year to a block watch meeting with Joseph Maiorano Jr., who owns the property along with his father. They rent out Harry’s, where a six-pack of Bud was selling for $6 on Wednesday. Maiorano and his father also own two popular upscale restaurants in town, Polo Grille & Wine Bar on Elm Street (which is undergoing renovations to add a basement dining area) and Wooster Street’s Tre Scalini, where the zuppa di pesce goes for $22.95 and a cup of mocha cappuccino with Godiva white chocolate costs $5.95. The Maioranos live in Orange.

The block watch meeting didn’t go well. Maiorano said he wanted to invest money to make the lot nice. He’d put in three stores. He wanted to add a car wash and a Dunkin’ Donuts to the mix.

The neighbors opposed the idea. Their suggestions included a coffee shop and a park.

“We don’t need another Dunkin’ Donuts,” says block watch member Lori Hillson, who also chairs the Beaver Hills management team. She doesn’t want all the traffic a Dunkin’ Donuts would bring. She also notes that two other Dunkin’ Donuts outlets are nearby.

Neighbors objected to the car wash idea because it would stay open all night and be self-serve. The problem property backs up to a well-kept apartment complex filled with senior citizens. “Are we going to have a car wash with people coming through with boom boxes at 2 a.m.?” asks the neighborhood’s alderman, Carl Goldfield.

Maiorano’s Math

“They want a coffee shop, but not a Dunkin’ Donuts. The neighborhood wants a jungle gym. It’s not going to work,” Maiorano responds. “The neighborhood shot down everything I wanted to do to improve the image of the area. I wanted a high-tech car wash there. It was a million-and-a-half-dollar project. They didn’t want it.”

Do the math, he says: It costs at least $200 a square foot to build up the lot for new businesses. The lot’s 550 square feet. So it would cost him more than $1 million. He says he could arrange the financing, but not to house a playground or a coffee shop. “Who’s going to be big enough to pay rent” to cover the financing? he asks. Dunkin’ Donuts, yes. Small-business person running a coffee shop, no.

Maiorano insists he hasn’t “heard anything yet” from LCI’s Elaine Braffman about threats of fines. “Anything she ever asked me to do I’ve complied with. She hasn’t e-mailed me in a year and a half.”

Braffman tells a different story. She says phone calls to Maiorano go unreturned. She shows the Independent a copy of an Aug. 3, 2005, e-mail she says she sent him.

“Harry’s Package store is once again in deplorable condition. The lot is overgrown with vegetation at least 4 feet high. There are once again unregistered/junk cars on your property. Please respond to me…” the e-mail message reads in part. “Joe, you need to at least paint the building, replace broken windows, and address the other issues I have mentioned. This property you and your family own must be maintained. Polo’s grill certainly is… Harry’s is located close to a residential neighborhood.”

The e-mail ends with the threat of the $100 per day fines pending “total compliance with all housing, zoning and building code violations.”

Alderman Goldfield expresses little sympathy with Maiorano’s frustrations about the neighborhood. “It has been a complete pit,” Goldfield says of the property. “We have asked him a million times to clean it up. He’s never done it. Why would we have any faith in any promises?”

For his part, Maiorano says he’s looking to sell the property to the right buyer. Over time, he predicts, “Southern Connecticut State University will own all that property” in the area anyway.