New Haven Independent

Posted by: Connie Drysdale | November 10, 2009 8:53 PM

Diana,
Great article! I love these kind of stories! Now, I will stop in and visit the pharmacy!
Connie

Posted by: Norton Street | November 10, 2009 10:56 PM

This is the type of thing a small town needs. It is located in the center, along a retail corridor with abutting buildings, which makes for a very walkable place. I have many objections to the design, placement and scale of the proposed and already built elderly housing developments; they could have and should be integrated into the town rather than plopped on top of a bunch of trees off some side road. The elderly needs walkable environments where all their needs are within a very short distance, because once they stop driving often times they are completely stranded and become dependent on others.
Hopefully housing can be added on top of some of the buildings along Main Street, that would continue to improve this nice part of Branford. Also some of the parking lots could be built on and the inner core of central Branford could be slightly denser.

New Haven could really use people like this and businesses like this, because mostly what exists in New Haven are big chain stores that funnel money to distant executives without ever making meaningful contributions back into the community that supplies all their wealth. New Haven is really made up of several 'Main Streets' surrounded by neighborhoods that radiate out from a central business and retail core. People often forget or choose not to realize how similar the old Connecticut Town Centers and the old Connecticut cities are. Too often we try to make Hartford and New Haven out to be like New York, when really our cities are just a series of small towns that are interconnected and interwoven with each other.

One last thing: my grandfather owned a pharmacy in a very small town in New York for most of his life. The pharmacy was located just down the road from the house that he built and this is the type of relationship we should be appreciating and pursuing in the 21st century. The current unbalanced equation of suburbanites commuting miles and miles to work has proven itself harmful, wasteful and unnecessary. We must not confuse suburbs and small towns; to group this nice downtown part of Branford with the sprawling wasteland of suburban Branford is a mistake. We must encourage all the small towns like Guilford, East Haven, etc to reclaim their centers and abandon their suburban hellholes.

Posted by: Tony T | November 11, 2009 12:18 PM

I too commend the Ragonese family for putting resources back into our town center (its not only money,but hard work and personal effort).The big box stores,like Walgreens,CVS etc all too often put these independent stores out of business and we all loose a valuable community resource when that happens. Support your local businesses instead of these big box stores whenever possible. Usually the price difference in negligible if you consider the cost of gas,time and the usually inferior product that the chain retailers sell. A tool or building product from Home Depot or for example Branford Building Supplies are generally not of the same quality,and if you factor in convenience and the possibility of a return or damaged item,doing business with a local business is almost always a better deal.Think global but shop local !!

Posted by: Catherine Ziegenfuss | November 11, 2009 12:40 PM

What a lovely piece about a hometown business. Too bad Norton is very busy telling us what we 'should be appreciating'. News flash, Norton, there ARE apartments above the store fronts on Branford's Main Street. As for denser living in the middle of town...I think that's been tried and it's called tenements.

As for me, I love my big yard where my kids and dogs can run and play, I can cultivate a garden for food and beauty, and where I have a level of privacy I feel I've earned through diligence and hard work.

I don't object to mixed use neighborhoods if that's what an individual wants. I object to your diatribes suggesting it's the way it must be.

Posted by: Norton Street | November 11, 2009 2:02 PM

Catherine,
What a ridiculous post. The options aren't tenements and McMansions. There are a nearly infinite variety in between those two extremes. And notice how I praised downtown Branford... I merely suggested that continuing the successful parts of Branford and discouraging the unsuccessful parts is a good thing. I too enjoy a nice yard and garden space, but not at the expense of others. Enormous lawns are problematic, modest lawns are not. Play space for kids outdoors should be located in parks, not on every individual single family lot.
The suburban living arrangement in America directly caused the decay, disinvestment and fall of our cities. The social degradation that has occurred in the inner city over the last several decades has led to a violent culture. People die every year as a result of America's continued investment in suburbia. Its not a question of preference, its a question of morality. Local town living, local rural living and local city living are the only acceptable lifestyles, anything else (like suburbia) is unacceptable.

Posted by: Catherine Ziegenfuss | November 11, 2009 7:59 PM

The only acceptable way of life? The good news is you don't get to decide for me what kind of lifestyle I lead. Good luck with your utopia, buddy.

Posted by: streever | November 11, 2009 8:28 PM

Norton Street,

I think it's the WAY you "suggest" that irritates people. Maybe instead of writing about all the problems you could just praise the good next time?

It's a little odd, the 3 paragraph + diatribes on every other story. The redeeming quality is that you are self-aware enough to realize how annoying it is. The non-redeeming part is you still do it so routinely. Maybe just take it down a notch?

tl;dr:
You hate suburbia, we get it.

Posted by: steve ross, human | November 12, 2009 12:51 PM

I'm happy to see the pharmacy moving ahead. I agree with my friends at Branford Green Grocer that steps like these are integral to attracting more people to downtown. Now Main St. just needs some more local businesspeople to fill in the few, long-empty gaps. Exile on Main to open a satellite rare-finds record store over there, maybe? (Hint Hint).

For what it's worth, Norton Street, your posts are barbed and resolute, and they're enjoyable (for me) to read. Still, your polemics rarely seem to convince the people that need convincing.

"anything else (like suburbia) is unacceptable"

Unnacceptable to who? You? Me? So what? And says who? And who cares?

I know that you've done this in the past, but linking some resources that illuminate your worldview might engage someone who has at least some predilection toward your position; hurling insults typically spells pretension....

You show someone a factory farm, they'll feel bad eating meat. Tell them that eating meat is wrong and they'll eat it out of spite.

Posted by: Norton Street | November 12, 2009 3:20 PM

Post war suburban sprawl that has been the defining trait of America is a unique problem.
"The good news is you don't get to decide for me what kind of lifestyle I lead."
By helping to continue the growth and maintenance of suburbia, you, Catherine, are preventing me from living the way I want to. That is what is so fascinating about suburbia. Suburbs are inherently not self-sufficient. They require a 'host organism' to exist; 9 times out of 10 the host is a city.
Suburbs have created the illusion of individuality through separation, which over the years has morphed into the reality of repetition (sameness) and isolation. This condition often convinced people that because they have all this 'private' stuff that it means they somehow have earned it and are paying the full cost of it; when in reality middle class home ownership, transportation infrastructure, building construction, and gasoline (among other things) are massively subsidized.
Often times my childhood was defined by an inability to do things because of crime in the neighborhood, which was a product of decades of inner city cultural decay, disinvestment, middle class abandonment, etc that created several generations of undereducated, undisciplined, and angry children. Car traffic was another major factor of my inability to enjoy my neighborhood as much as I could have; commuters create an extremely dangerous condition on the streets. My friends and I could rarely, if ever, get a game of street hockey because there were far too many single occupancy vehicles on the road at every hour of daylight. The street, for all of human history up until about 1920, had been defined as part of the public realm; this was especially important in America, because we do not have the thousand year old plazas of older cultures, we have our streets. It was a place for the public to use in many different ways. With the enormous increase of automobiles in the 20th century came a change in the perception of the street. The streets were handed over completely to vehicles, and they became entirely a means of circulation.
I think it is fair for us to now look back and decide whether or not that was a good decision. I say no; the number or vehicle related deaths in this country, the air pollution, the asthma rates, the isolation created by being in a box several hours a day, etc for personal transportation is not a good tradeoff.
Its the crime and the traffic that, to this day, prevent me from living a lifestyle of my choice. Suburbia, in this case, has been acting as 'the person who tells me how I can live' my entire life, even when I don't live in a post WW2 sprawl development.
Many locally owned businesses have been run out by large stores that were attracted by the amount of car traffic on our streets. SO to accommodate for these cars the stores build massive parking lots in front, which physically dismantles neighborhood thoroughfares. The equivalent of severing a spine.

Streever and Steve both makes good points. I often get frustrated and that becomes very apparent in my posts. However, I think I am being extremely civil in relation to what I'm talking about. I know there are kids in this city everyday who are seeing and experiencing the same things I did 5, 10, 15 years ago. Its not fair for them to have to grow up in places that are not made for growing up.
We will go down in history as being the most apathetic people ever. And its because out living arrangement is too spread out, we cannot successfully be a democracy if we only find out about people who are different from us by reading the paper or watching the news. People need frequent face to face interactions with a diverse range of fellow humans; we don't get that with our current built environment.

Posted by: joe porrello | November 13, 2009 4:58 PM

Karen,
I'm sure your dad is looking down and is very proud of what you have done..Good luck and God bless!

Posted by: Catherine Ziegenfuss | November 15, 2009 6:49 PM

Whatever, Norton. Did I mention your diabribes? I meant to say seething diatribes.