New Haven Independent

“When I go into a local hardware store in this area, I don’t even have to know the name of what I’m looking for … a bolt, a latch, a thigamajig. But the owner’s there to help, to read my mind practically, to kibitz, too. We exchange local news, and I’m happy about the transaction, and it’s not just a transaction of money but of a kind of spirit. When I go into one of these box box places, not only is there no one there to help, I waste hours of driving there, of walking around miles of aisles, the prices aren’t very good, and the money leaves the community. All the fun and joy of shopping is when it’s local.” That’s why the speaker, Lulu deCaronne (in the center of the picture), the owner of Lulu’s on Orange Street, has become one of the founders of the New Haven Independent Business Network.

A dozen people attended an organizational meeting Tuesday evening at Fair Haven Furniture. Business owners like Laine Harris participated in a free-wheeling discussion on the evils of the strip mall forcing people to have two cars and on the supermarket self-check out. “I mean these big stores deny you even the simplest human interaction,” Harris said

The organization, less than a year old, has an evolving website — yourhaven.org . About 30 businesses in New Haven and surrounding towns have shown interest (including Fair Haven Furniture’s Elizabeth Orsini and Kerry Triffin, on either size of deCaronne in the photo above). The network of small, independent, “mom and pop” establishments did not come together over any specific threat of “big box” development in New Haven, according to deCaronne.

However, she didn’t mince words about the struggle of the scrappy small business owners who survive in the Elm City. New Haven, she said, is simply not small-business friendly. “We want to work with the city on legislation and other matters that promote small business and all the community benefits we bring. And, yes, we want all the businesses in town, finally, to be on the same page, because, yes, there is power in numbers.”

Bob Solomon, who runs the Yale University Law School clinics, she said, is going to become involved. “We’re very serious.”

Laine Harris, the owner of Your Community Yoga Center in Hamden, is not only serious about the real economic threat of malling and the cannibalization by large chains of the small stores. Harris is also serious about the preservation of the humane and environmental values inherent in the small, locally owned business.

The new network wants to counter this, although it is still in formation, and not quite sure what immediate issue they’ll it will take on. Not a chamber of commerce, nor a business association such as GAVA on Grand Avenue, which has specific geographical limitation, the network has its spiritual identity, but is still working through its organizational shape and the specific issues that it will pursue. If anything it appears to be a kind of business cousin to the New Haven Bioregional Committee, whose founder, Nathan Bixby (shown here with Grand News’s Brent Bissell) is also a member.

“The germ of this came about,” he said, “when Lulu and I last November were standing in front of Best Video (also a member of the network), and it just hit us, in a kind of cumulative way, that small businesses are threatened just the way the environment is threatened.”

“The words ‘economy’ and ‘ecology,’” added Bissell, “come from the same root and refer to the social unit just above the family. The network is all about how you manage the economy in a way that doesn’t destroy the ecology.” In other words, keeping the capital in town, clean and with no strings, and keeping it circulating like good air.

With help from Maria Tupper and Fred Cervine at the Bioregional Committee, Bixby said, the website was launched and the mission focused. In the spring, the group screened the film “Independent America” at Grand Paint, about a traveler through America who avoided all chains, big box stores, and main highways. Then with the help of Steve King (in the back behind Harris), of Common Vision, the restoration company, the website was launched.

What would be the next step? The gathering at Fair Haven Furniture seemed poised to decide to become a non-profit organization. But, independents as they were, some members weren’t sure that was the route to take. Perhaps too bureaucratic? So they ponied up some money to defray a few expenses, but concluded that for the next step — to broaden the reach to small businesses all over the city, to market, and to eventually establish a formal dues-paying organization — they may need a paid dynamo administrator.

With a sense of excitement that what they are doing is part of the rising national small-is-beautiful movement — Bixby identified at least two national umbrella organizations, including one, BALLE, which stands for businesses allied for living local economies — they set up the next meeting for Lulu’s, 49 Cottage St., for Oct. 16, at 7:30 p.m..

All interested parties are invited to come, and Lulu says you don’t have to bring anything; her great coffees and locally prepared treats are on the new network. For more information, call Lulu at 785-9218.