New Haven Independent

The 1 p.m. shooting last Friday in the parking lot sent customers scurrying out the back door of busy Francis Beauty Salon. It made the evening news. And it made people shudder. Not only because of the act itself.
But because Dixwell Plaza, which has had a troubled history, appears to be on the rebound and can ill afford a dangerous reputation.

C-Town, which has a thriving Fair Haven branch, is moving a supermarket to the plaza. Most of the storefronts in the plaza are filled. The surrounding neighborhood has gone from dreary and rundown to sparkling: The Monterey Homes replaced the old Elm Haven projects, and the new Wexler Grant Community School is one of the gems of the citywide school rebuilding program. New single-family homes on Frances Hunter Drive are selling.

Merchants for the most part said in interviews Wednesday that business hasn’t dropped. Turkish-born Ridvan Citalk is still selling the usual amount of pies at Downtown Pizza. He, like his neighbors, had only praise for the cops and says the plaza has been basically peaceful. “There are cops all the time. The people who live here are all right. All good people here,” he said.

“It’s good here,” agreed Indian-born Vasu Patel, owner of Dixwell Market.

Curiously, the least optimistic responses came from merchants whose shops were filled with waiting customers. Business is only “so-so,” complained Korean-born Sangjin Kim, as he waited on a line 10-deep waiting to buy shampoos and human-hair weaves at his beauty store.

Pedro pulled out a notebook listing customers by day from behind the counter at Francis Beauty Salon. All the haridressers were busy; all the waiting chairs were filled. But Pedro (he didn’t give his last name), the store’s St. Marten-born manager (who works for the salon’s Dominican-born owner), turned to pages from before the shooting to illustrate a less hopeful tale. The number of customers has dropped since the shooting, he said. Usually at this time of year he sees 100 a day. So far Wednesday afternoon, he’d seen 43.

The plaza’s dominant attitude — cautious optimism tempered by sadness over the shooting — was voiced by Maria Tonelli, who runs the plaza’s public library branch.

The night of the shooting, the library saw a smaller than expected turnout for a “Spittin Youth” poetry slam. Still, the event was a success. And the library has seen no drop-off in the number of kids who come each day since then, according to Tonelli (pictured in photo). The branch’s traffic has steadily climbed in the past few years along with the fortunes of the surrounding plaza.

“It’s discouraging,” she said of the shooting. “I think of this as a safe community. It’s so safe in Dixwell that our officers are being called away [to handle complaints] all over the city. We leave here at night in the dark” without fear. At this point, one random shooting hasn’t changed that.