New Haven Independent

Will Butts Rain On York Street?

by Paul Bass | July 27, 2009 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Warning against airborne cigarettes, Yale has weighed in against Toad’s Place’s plans to add a smoking rooftop deck.

The university’s real estate arm, the dominant landlord in the Broadway/ York Street district, sent a letter to New Haven’s City Plan Department raising “serious concerns” about the proposal “involving public health policy and public safety.”

The letter arrived just in time for last week’s City Plan Commission meeting considering the idea. Toad’s Place wants a special zoning exception allowing it to construct a 400 square-foot wood deck atop the popular nightclub where up to 50 people could smoke and purchase soft drinks.

The commission tabled the proposal pending a city review of the impact on parking. The exception would allow Toad’s — which argues that the lounge wouldn’t increase the number of patrons at the club — to add the rooftop deck without providing more parking spaces.

It would also promote more smoking and litter the surrounding area, Yale University Properties Director Abigail Rider wrote in the letter. Yale prohibits its tenants in the district from selling tobacco or allowing smoking on their premises.

“Currently Toad’s patrons must leave their drinks and exit the premises to smoke, which at least makes it inconvenient,” Rider wrote. “Creating a smoking area inside Toad’s where patrons can carry their alcoholic beverages and smoke at the same time is clearly intended to facilitate smoking, not discourage it. Granting this variance would have the effect of directly contravening public health policy.”

She also raised the prospect of flying butts.

“It would take no effort at all to flick a cigarette butt over the fence the applicant proposes to erect on the roof, regardless of the proposed 72” height of the mesh fence,” she wrote. “A cigarette butt so launched would land either (1) on the roof of the 290-292 York, (2) in the cardboard-containing trash bins located in the alleyway and in the area behind 290-292 York known as “the Fishtank” which belongs to Yale, (3) on the heads of pedestrians in the Yale walkway that runs between Toad’s and Mory’s or on the York Street sidewalk or (4) on the back roof of Toad’s itself.”

Lawyer To Yale: “Butt Out”

“If you’re six-foot-five you can maybe flick a butt” over the fence,” responded attorney James Segaloff, who represents Toad’s in its request before City Plan and the Zoning Board of Appeals.

“Who’s going to flick these butts 20 feet in the air” and projecting them toward Yale buildings? he asked.

The rooftop lounge would in fact clear the air down on York Street, Segaloff argued: It would remove the throngs of Toad’s clients who now congregate on the sidewalk to puff away.

“Yale should butt out,” he said.

The proposal also concerns officials in charge of residential dorms on the block, such as the Hall of Graduate Studies.

Dean Jon Butler said Monday that Yale’s Graduate School is “strongly opposed” to the proposal.

“The student rooms do not have air conditioning and students necessarily open their windows for ventilation from early spring to late fall,” Butler wrote in an email message. “In addition to the problem of smoke, the noise of conversation, singing, and general good times inevitable and accepted in a fully commercial district would be destructive in a compact block where 175 graduate students live, work, study, and sleep only a few feet away — the HGS dormitory having housed graduate students for almost 80 years, or since HGS opened in 1932. This is all the more important because many graduate students continue living at HGS all summer because their laboratory and library research keeps them at Yale and in New Haven throughout the year.

“In addition, the rooftop facility would be 1/3 of a block from two Yale undergraduate colleges, Morse and Stiles, whose rooms also are not air conditioned and would be affected by the inevitable noise and activity at the Toad’s Place rooftop facility in the spring and fall.”

Frank Keil, master of Yale’s Morse College, agreed, saying his students “would have to bear the full brunt of increases in noise and other problems.” Master Steve Pitti of next-door Ezra Stiles College echoed those concerns and added a worry about “catcalls” and spilled drinks.

“You Live With It”

Reaction was mixed Monday among passersby outside the nightclub.

“It’s Toad’s. You live with it. It’s dirty either way,” said Yale undergrad Dan Klassen.

He goes to dance parties at the club, and enjoys them. He’s not a fan of smoke, he said. But what has detracted more from his experience at Toad’s, he said, is the advent of more nights geared to 19- and 21-year-olds.

History professor Paul Freedman said he likes the “anomaly” of Toad’s, a non-university business, having a spot on such a Yale-dominated stretch of town. He said he doesn’t see a “prima facie” reason to oppose the plan.

Neither did a graduate economics major (pictured) — because he just graduated. “I’m so happy I’m leaving in two weeks,” he said. He has been living at HGS, within a stone’s throw from Toad’s. He predicted the rooftop lounge will worsen the situation. “It’s already noisy as it is. It’ll be more noisy.”

Grad student and librarian Missa Northrop guessed that “drunk people up on the roof flicking cigarettes would probably be a bigger problem.” She offered a different solution: “I think it would be better if people stop smoking.”

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Comments

Posted by: City Hall Watch | July 27, 2009 3:01 PM

Yale should butt out. First, public health is not Yale's concern. If Toadees are going to smoke, Yale opposition to that is not going to change it. Secondly, would Yale prefer that people leave their drinks unattended so that people can slip drugs, maybe even date rape drugs in a person's drink while they go outside to catch a smoke? Third, I don't see smokers at the Owl Shop pitching their cig or cigar butts on either the street or launching them at fellow College Street patrons. This is much ado about nothing. Have containers, service the area and put up a fence. End of story.

Posted by: JOHN | July 27, 2009 4:03 PM

'"Who's going to flick these butts 20 feet in the air" and projecting them toward Yale buildings? he asked.'

Clearly Mr. Segaloff has never been drunk and in possession of a cigarette butt, for the fence represents a clear and present challenge to any such person. (It also appears Mr. Segaloff is unaware of Toad's clientele, of which I am one.)

@CHW: "Third, I don't see smokers at the Owl Shop pitching their cig or cigar butts on either the street or launching them at fellow College Street patrons."

It's kind of a different crowd, dontcha think? Not a lot of drunk girls from Southern at the Owl (much to one's chagrin, I suppose). Not so at Toad's however...

Posted by: Cheryl | July 27, 2009 4:29 PM

I agree with the comments from City Hall Watch. The first thing girls are taught when they start going out is not to leave your drinks unattended. Having someone slip drugs into an unattended drink is FAR worse than having to sweep up a few butts, so what is left... quickly toss down the rest of your drink (and have something uglier to clean off the street), leave your drink with someone who may be drunker and less aware than you, or chalk that drink up and buy another pricey drink when you come back in. Noise level getting louder with a rooftop lounge? Duhhhhh! It will be effects of the alcohol causing the increase in noise, not the smokers nor their smoke.

As for the librarian and like-minded folks, if people have the right to be self-righteous a-holes who somehow think it is their right and privilege to tell others what is best for them, let smokers have the right to smoke.

Trust me as one who smokes, those cigarettes are the only things that are keeping the teeth in the mouths of people with all that friendly advice.

Posted by: urbanbookworm | July 27, 2009 4:33 PM

Quite the contrary City Hall Watch - public health is the concern of everyone, including institutions, and particularly adjoining property owners. All the more so because it exercises some parental responsibility as a residential school for the particular health, safety and welfare of its students. Take your reflexive Yale-hating somewhere else.

Your comment about date rape is a lovely combination fallacy embracing 'begging the question,' 'strawman,' and "ad hominim" - not worth arguing.

The comparison to owl shop is on its face not viable. Owl shop services a distinctly different clientèle in a distinctly different setting. A simple trip by Toads will show you that people do flick their cigarettes all sorts of places. Intention aside, casting about of fire in an urban setting is irresponsible, and more dangerous from above.

But all that aside, I actually think it would be a potentially good idea - particularly for releaving the congestion on the sidewalk that often occures in the evening and creating an interesting urban space - though, I myself would probably never go there. Never-the-less, it is quite appropriate for the City Plan Commission to weigh evidence and testimony from all interested parties.

Posted by: Alphonse Credenza | July 27, 2009 4:51 PM

The controversy itself has created a problem by suggesting smokers compete by flinging their lighted butts over the fence.

What I don't understand is why anyone in his right mind would set his buttocks aflame in the first place!

Posted by: Mister Jones | July 27, 2009 6:06 PM

Yale's holier-than-thou public health arguments are just a pretext. The real issue is that they are opposed to the expansion of any non-Yale properties in that area, of which there are precious few, Toad's being one of only maybe three on the York-Broadway block.

Posted by: Dot Khan | July 28, 2009 12:03 AM

I used to be one of only 3 or 4 Toad's Place employees with access to the roof for 20 years. Usually it was to cover the skylights for daytime events or leaks when it rained.
There are 2 logical places the deck could be built.
One is from the upstairs Lilly's Pad lounge onto a flat deck made over the main floor. It is impractical to extend it over the peak of this part of the roof to reach the "fishtank". The flat roof in the front which would require constructing a new staircase.

I hated my clothes smelling like smoke from over 20 years working there. The noise from dorm room parties was often louder what leaked from Toad's.

There is a long history between Yale Properties and Toad's. They do not own Toad's and have no say about tobacco use there.
Yale Properties was given a waiver for 137 additional parking spaces when they rebuilt the stores on Broadway years ago.

I suspect that Toad's may try to expand the smoking deck sometime in the future

Posted by: Earl | July 28, 2009 7:20 AM

Why hasn't anyone created an alcoholic beverage with tar and nicotine already in it?
I would love to see the television ads similar to those for Erectile Disfunction, and Osteoarthritis, depicting the young folks taking a new pharmaceutical that time releases nicotine and all the wonderful chemicals a body needs for cigarette addiction. In this way we would have a new product that would make money for the Drug Companies, Brewers and Distillers, and the Medical Care System, too.

Posted by: Rebecca | July 28, 2009 10:24 AM

Public health is absolutely Yale's business. A lot of the "public" in downtown New Haven is comprised of its student body. Much of Toad's profit comes from Yale students. Toad's is pretty disrespectful already, adding a noisy smoky dirty outdoor element when the sidewalk is bad enough doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

Posted by: Steve Ross, Human | July 28, 2009 12:00 PM

"Your comment about date rape is a lovely combination fallacy embracing 'begging the question,' 'strawman,' and "ad hominim" - not worth arguing."

I disturbs me when folks start throwing argumentation theory around on web boards. Is reflexive intellectualism (postured or sincere) much different than "reflexive Yale-hating"?

Everything is worth arguing, hence the NHI.

Posted by: LevelHeadedAndObjective | July 28, 2009 12:10 PM

Leave Toad's alone. They employee people. Provide quality entertainment. Let these people enjoy themselves and consider they are adults. Responsible adults. Not like the many unresponsible students who attend Yale. Freedom to choose is such a difficult word for some folks isnt' it?

Posted by: Mister Jones | July 28, 2009 12:31 PM

Many people who go to bars will smoke. It's a fact of life; regulation won't change it. All that happens is that smokers gravitate to where it's more convenient--hence the proliferation of outdoor decks like at Geronimo's, and the Toad's proposal.

For a while Toad's had a small smoking section, a fenced area outside the rear fire doors. Apparently Yale put the kibosh on that--it was on Yale's turf--so the smokers are now on the sidewalk. Seems to me that a roof deck, while perhaps not perfect, is an improvement.

Posted by: eddie | July 28, 2009 12:41 PM

Earl: The drink should also have caffeine, to complete the trifecta. I could live without the tar.

Smoking should either be legal or illegal. As long as it's a right, people should have the right to do it, within reasonable limits. Local boards can't zone it out of existence, and they shouldn't. It's not their job.

Posted by: kal | July 29, 2009 1:38 AM

wow this is an interesting article

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