New Haven Independent

The answer, according to Gabriela Campos and Angelo Reyes of the Grand Avenue Merchants Association (GAVA), is a great deal indeed.

The $3,500 sign, which was paid for through the City’s Façade Improvement Grant Program, was formally installed Tuesday morning on the lot covering the grave of Spunky’s Fried Chicken, once a notorious crime hot spot in Fair Haven.

Today, says GAVA board member and local entrepreneur Angelo Reyes, who owns, among many other Grand Avenue properties, the lavenderia across the street from the lot, some 61 percent of the merchants along Grand, from the river to Ferraro’s, have expressed an interest in forming a special services district similar to downtown’s Town Green association.

“Within the next eighteen months,” said Campos, executive director of GAVA, “we’re going to work on the other merchants so we reach from the whole length of the Grand corridor down to State Street.”

If it can enroll 51 percent of all the merchants, GAVA can take steps to become a special district. In exchange for a tax or assessment, which the merchants impose on themselves, Grand Avenue would reap benefits. “We might get as many as four clean up crew members and perhaps a patrol officer dedicated exclusively to Grand Avenue,” said Angelo Reyes, a GAVA board member and local entrepreneur who owns, among many other Grand Avenue properties, the lavenderia across the street from the lot. (Click here to read a story about some of the work he’s up to on Grand.)

Already Jorge Ruiz, a member of the small “clean team” that GAVA has retained through special arrangement with the downtown district, is giving local merchants a taste of what Reyes and Campos hope will be the future: a completely secure, clean, and vibrant Grand Avenue commercial corridor from the river to Yale.

Why the parking lot? Anecdotal evidence, as well as the 1990 census, indicate that many Fair Haven families don’t have cars. “Because, we want shoppers from all over New Haven to come here,” Reyes said. “The lot will help.”

Campos said that even many of the merchants she talks to along the avenue were not aware that parking is free. “When I ask them what they need,” she said, “they say parking, and I tell them about the other lot on East Pearl and now this one, and they say, ‘OK, parking problem is solved.’”

Other problems that are being addressed in the spring cleaning underway on the avenue are graffiti and loitering. Almost all the merchants, Reyes reported, have agreed to let GAVA organize a removal of the “tagging.” Almost all in the immediate area of the parking lot have also accepted a GAVA supported “no loitering” policy.

“Those white ovals with blue lettering in the windows,” Campos said, as she pointed across the street, “tell the police the merchants give permission, like a standing complaint, to remove loiterers.”

GAVA, says Campos, has about 100 merchant members and growing. Although the American Sign Company, on Ferry Street, in the area for 30 years is not a member, at least not yet, although Campos was considering making a pitch as the genial crew — Tony Lafo, owner and Bob Brown and Bob Merry (with the beard) — prepared the ground for the sign.

Long a location known for drug and gang activity, the ground on which the lot and now sign are planted was seized through eminent domain by the city. Today, said Campos, it’s a sign of partnership between the city, GAVA, and the neighborhood, and yet more evidence of the positive change and resurgence coming to the neighborhood.

What’s next? The planters with colorful flowers to line Grand Avenue?

“They are on the way,” said Campos. “Very soon.”