New Haven Independent

Toy Story Over

by Melissa Bailey | February 12, 2008 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A funky toy store’s demise is one of a flurry of changes afoot in the city’s Audubon arts district.

Richard Stack (pictured) and his wife Suzanne opened up the Toy Store on Audubon five years ago.

“We were the first on the block,” he said, forerunners in a burst of new retail on the eastern side of the street, where landlords Yale University Properties had just done renovations.

A strip of locally owned shops with distinctive storefronts — offering books, jewelry, and handmade gifts — added to a burgeoning arts scene. The stores fed off arts institutions across the street like the Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven Ballet and Neighborhood Music School. (Click here for a story on Audubon Street itself)

After violin or ballet class, parents would faithfully take their kids by the hand and lead them across the street to the Toy Store, where they’d browse together. Kids could slip a marble onto a zipping Italian racetrack and watch it plunk into a metal bowl. They could dig into a basket of mobile parts, or cozy up with a big gorilla on a red trampoline.

“It’s very sad,” said Stack, to share his news with faithful toy store fans.

The store’s lease with Yale is ending, Stack said Monday, and the Stacks decided not to renew. The couple plans to close the shop in the next six weeks. In total, the Stacks ran their distinctive toy store in New Haven for seven years.

Despite rumors, Stack said he isn’t being pushed out by the landlord. “We don’t have any complaints about Yale,” he said. Yale has treated them in a “straightforward” and honest way, he said. Instead, Stack blamed location and a national recession for a decline in sales.

Faithful customers had a deep love from the store, but that customer base was “not enough to support a store, especially in light of a recession that has cut our sales by 20 percent in the last two years,” Stack explained. “Twenty percent was pretty much what we had to live on, so there was nothing left.”

Stack said the location’s lack of parking made it hard for the specialty store to survive.

Other Changes Afoot

Shana Schneider, director of marketing for Yale University Properties, agreed the location has its flaws: “Frankly, pedestrian traffic is thin on that block, which makes it difficult for some merchants,” she wrote in an email to the Independent, “but we are committed to leasing the space to retail tenants.”

Next to the Toy Store, a second pioneer, the Sogno Boutique of Dreams, appears to be in a state of flux. An email announcing a “Storewide Moving Sale” has been circling New Haven networks. Inside the store Monday, owner Krista Camputaro said there is a storewide sale, but she declined to characterize it as a moving sale. Whether or not the store will stay remains “uncertain.”

“The future is yet to be determined,” Camputaro said. Schneider said only that Sogno’s lease has not yet expired.

Further up the street, The Devil’s Gear bike shop is scheduled to open a small, second shop on Audubon in first week of March - click here for a story on that.

While some have questioned if Yale was making an intentional push to get particular retailers out, Schneider called the changes “natural.”

“As you know, it is natural for there to be turnover in the retail industry and we may see some of that occur in the Audubon District.”

Goodbye Sandra, Hello Moe

One more change-up is revealed on a sign taped to the window of an empty space on Whitney Avenue, at the intersection of Audubon, where Sandra’s soul food restaurant ran for some years a second branch of its once-popular Hill eatery (which has also closed).

Moe’s Southwest Grill will offer Tex-Mex cuisine, reads a letter from Schneider. A patch of fabric from the planned seating is shown on a board leaning against the window. Moe’s is set to open in mid-April.

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Comments

Posted by: on whalley | February 12, 2008 9:24 AM

Sandra's is closed?

Well, that officially means other than the Dunkin' Donuts the last business I would brave the painful and rage-inducing trek out and about downtown for is gone.

I'll miss the food but take comfort in the fact that there is nothing left there that will force me to ignore my intense disdain for New Haven, its subsidize the world "young professionals", its couldn't care less but we're wholly self-righteous transient student population, endless sea of panhandlers, drunks and addicts, the roaming petty bandits moving like a toxic fog from block to block, the inefficient and far too public public transportation, the annoying flyers caught in the breeze from protesters, the Scientologists and Devils Gear all clogging storm drains, blocking my windshield, wrapped around my bike, being handed to me by some obnoxious jerk who doesn't realize he is no different than the telemarketer calling me at dinnertime from India, worrying that one of these same individuals will slap a sticker on my bikes or car leaving a permanent scar akin to rape and on and on and on.

One less reason to put up with all that. Not a bad thing all maybe. Good-bye Sandra's. I'll miss the pork chops for sure.

Posted by: Esbe | February 12, 2008 9:39 AM

I'll miss the Toy Store. Stack is quite a character, mixing great advice about toys with the occasional 10-minute academic-style lecture on the merits of various manufacturers of chemistry sets. I've seen a few parents who looked "trapped" by the lectures, but the store was otherwise a perfect match for the music school across the street, as parents could pick up a last-minute birthday present while "junior" took a lesson. Same thing for Sogno, or so I thought, a great place for Mom to hang out during a lesson.

Posted by: PowerToThePeople | February 12, 2008 11:54 AM

On Whalley, sounds like you need a hug or something. ;-)

Posted by: DMc | February 12, 2008 1:31 PM

Just before Christmas the year before last, I was shopping for gifts for the children of a friend. I walked up to the door of the toy store and pulled, but it didn't open. The lights were on and promo stuff was piled outside, but the door was locked. From across the street, a ragged looking guy walked up holding a cup from Koffee. He asked if I wanted to get in, I asked if the store was closed, he said yeah but come in anyway. I mulled around in the store for a while as the guy tried to suss out what I was looking for. As time progressed, I noticed that he was drinking something likely harder than what he picked up at Koffee from a colorful decanter. Conversation turned from toys to what it's like to have Yale as a landlord and, eventually, somehow, James Joyce. I was probably there for about an hour and a half. It was probably the best time I've had in a toy store in ten years.

Posted by: ericaholahan | February 12, 2008 5:01 PM

I will miss the toy store too. It was one of the few places to shop that made me happy. And I, too, was engaged in the academic conversations with Prof. Stack: mine about child development. He is a wealth of knowledge, including the advice he gave me to buy a book called "Scientist in the Crib". I'm sure he's recommended it to others of you. Prof. Stack, if you're reading this, please try to get an e-mail listserve together of your customers--we could join forces to help you find a new location? Or something?

Thanks for bringing the joy of quality toys along with the advice about what's good for mischievious 3-yr-olds to downtown New Haven.

Posted by: displacedfromnh | February 12, 2008 5:06 PM

My one and only memory of that Toy Store, was from one evening I went in in a last ditch effort to find an old fashioned toy pistol. I asked if he sold them, to which he replied with incredible rudeness and a look of contempt... "I don't think so." I never returned to buy anything from that grouchy old codger. I, however will miss Sandra's and Sogno - the best gift shop in town.

Posted by: DAFeder | February 15, 2008 11:02 AM

POWERTOTHEPEOPLE,

ON WHALLEY seems to think that an unwanted bumper sticker is akin to rape. I'd be careful with that hug you offered -- I think a hug might be genocide.

David

Posted by: marylee belanger | February 16, 2008 10:37 PM

Just today I ran in for a birthday present and heard the ghastly news from our resident magical Wonka himself. I felt so maniacally depressed. When we lived in Providence, our beloved toy shop Uncle Sig's closed just as we were having our first child.I do wish we could throw the Stacks some type of bon voyage bash, but I loathe the idea of a bon voyage at all. If a chain goes in, I'll scream.

Toy Story Over

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