New Haven Independent

The two men (Jay Bell and Bob DeShields, left to right) live near the Fast Food Deli at 750 Congress Ave. They go there to buy Tylenol and cooking oil when the other stores are closed. It’s a short walk away, and until recently, it stayed open until 2 or 3 a.m.

Last week, they trekked all the way to the Hall of Records to defend their local store, which is run by a family of recent immigrants from Yemen. The owner, Tawfiq Saleh, came before the Board of Zoning Appeals to protest a cease-and-desist order requiring the store to close its doors from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. each day.

The protest, which did not succeed, pitted store-goers against the city’s community-policing effort to shoo away a criminal element that had been roosting on the corner nearby.

Among a half-dozen neighbors who came before the board at Tuesday’s meeting, a young woman testified that when she gets off work at 11 p.m., there’s nowhere else nearby to go to buy milk or diapers. Another woman at a nearby church spoke of how generous the owners have been.

“They’re being denied the right to make a living,” said DeShields (pictured above at right).

“It’s an absolute must that this store remain open,” said Bell, who lives on nearby Redfield Street. “It would be almost a tragedy to close it.”

The small shop, in a windowless space with an iron-barred door, holds a couple aisles of toilet paper, toothpaste, and Hostess cupcakes. Behind the counter hang du-rags and cigarettes. A deli display holds sandwiches and microwavable Whitecastle burgers.

A steady stream of customers shuffled through the door Thursday morning at 11 a.m. A sleepy-eyed man in a plaid shirt held out two dollars.

“Four loosies,” mumbled the man, asking for loose cigarettes.
“No loosies,” came the reply from the clerk. (There were no nips either).

“Times Have Changed”

The city isn’t closing the store, just slapping a curfew on it. Zoning law prohibits stores from being open late at night in residential zones. The last two owners say for the past 12 years, they’ve always run the store at night anyway, closing between 1 and 3 a.m.

But a flurry of shootings this summer changed that. In July, four people were shot within one week at that corner, Congress and Redfield, according to Sgt. Holly Wasilewski, the Hill North district manager. The shootings — including a serious triple-shooting — came as a wake-up call.

Neighbors, cops and city officials agree the corner had been rife with drug dealing. People would stop by in pickup trucks, buy a bag of narcotics and speed along on their way. Neighbors say houses got shot up when drug deals went bad.

A lot of drug and crime problems had been stemming from loiterers at a barber shop on that corner, noted Wasilewski (pictured). She shut down the shop because barbers were operating without a license.

The city proceeded with a “holistic” approach to cleaning up the corner, said Carlos Eyzaguirre, neighborhood specialist for the Livable Cities Initiative. LCI removed a dead tree that was blocking a street light, and increased the wattage of street lights, he said. Neighbors helped picked up trash. The corner store was part of the plan to clean up the area and end a “dire situation,” he said.

In August, LCI slapped Saleh with a cease-and-desist order to stop operating between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. A new zoning law passed in 2003 prohibits late-night stores in residential zones. Neighbors at the Hill North Management Team as well as Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks supported the effort as way to quell activity at a nuisance corner.

Sgt. Wasilewski said in the months since the barber shop shut down, and with the cleaned up corner, she’s seen a “significant” decline in crime. Neighbors agree the drug problems have gone down.

Supporters wonder why the store can’t stay open after hours, in this cleaner environment. Storeowners got a lawyer and fought the cease-and-desist order. Saleh and Harold Russell, who ran the store before, testified before the BZA that the store had kept late hours for 12 years, and therefore should be grandfathered in to the curfew law, which hit the books in 2003.

Russell told the board any crime problems were a policing issue that shouldn’t be blamed on the store. When he made the effort to shoo loiterers away, he said he used to get death threats.

“If you don’t have the intestinal fortitude to do that after you’ve received death threats,” you shouldn’t be blamed, Russel reasoned. That’s where the police should come in, he argued.

The BZA weren’t swayed by the arguments.

“The times have changed,” said BZA Chairwoman Cathy Weber. Plus, argued City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg, applicants had not even applied for a special exception to operate their store in an RM-2 zone.

The board voted 5-0 to sustain the cease-and-desist order.

A Crackdown?

Out in the hall, neighbors saw greater themes in the city’s actions.

“There’s a pattern of the city violating your rights to get what they want,” said Russell. He feared a greater crackdown of 24-hour stores across the city in low-income, high-crime areas of town.

By cracking down on the deli, the city is just following the wishes of “an elite few,” not looking out for neighbors who rely on the store, argued Russell. He saw a parallel in the city’s recent drive to shut down neighborhood bars like the Taurus Café, because of nearby drug deals and shootings.

LCI Director Andrew Rizzo denied any concerted effort to crack down on 24-hour stores across the city. It was the third store they’ve enforced a curfew on in the past three months he said, but “we’re not going to every store at 11:05” to see if they’re open too late.

Rizzo said his department simply responds to complaints, which are usually from neighbors with quality of life concerns. “If it came to my attention” that any store was open too late, said Rizzo, “it would get the same letter.”