Who Needs Universal Drive?

Imagine people flocking to a ​“deconstructed Home Depot” — the stretch of small home-improvement businesses along Grand Avenue. Or lettuce and peppers growing in greenhouses on the roofs of old factories, then being sold to area restaurants. Or a ​“tech shop” where creative new-media businesses can afford to manufacture sophisticated protoypes.

Welcome to the Mill River District a few years down the road, if some urban thinkers who have been spending time there convince New Haven to run with their ideas.

The deconstructed Home Depot was one of several concepts floated for the improvement of the Mill River district in a public meeting Tuesday night.

Two consulting firms hired by the city and the Economic Development Corporation presented results of the first phase of a study into how to build on the little-known businesses successes in a stretch of Fair Haven and eastern Wooster Square in order to create new jobs in a thriving district. The district is roughly bounded by Hamilton Street, Jocelyn Square and Humphrey Street, James Street, and Grand Avenue.

They offered a vision of economic development that departed from the traditional industries on which New Haven planning has focused: bioscienes, or ​“eds and meds,” university-related tech research.

People also buy stuff in New Haven, in growing industries like specialty foods, they noted. Restaurants buy sauce from Palmieri’s. Homeowners and contractors buy plumbing supplies from Bender’s, paint or flooring tiles from Grand Paint. They buy counters and restaurant booths from Boldwood. (Read about that, and a previous story about the emerging district, here.)

All told, the consultants noted, if you stop at various lighting, plumbing, and other home-improvement stores along Grand Avenue between I‑91 and James Street, you can find lots more to buy than in a trip to a suburban big-box Home Depot. Letting people know that, and improving the way they connect, could help draw more shoppers, as well as more related businesses.

“Right now, you drive to one [business] and you drive to the other,” said Corey Zehngebot, who works for Boston-based architectural planning firm Utile. ​“We could have better pedestrian walkways, better street crossings, lighting, signage, improved bus shelters.” All of those improvements might turn Grand Avenue’s disparate businesses into a veritable shopping district for home improvement supplies, she argued.

Along with the city Economic Development Administrator Kelly Murphy and EDC chief Anne Haynes, staff from Utile and the Providence-based economic consulting firm Ninigret Partners presented three scenarios for what a better Mill River could look like: a ​“home improvement marketplace,” an ​“industrial village” or a ​“mercantile food home.”

The neighborhood could end up with a bit of all three scenarios, they said. ​“The goal is not to pick a ​‘winner’” by investing in types of business that don’t already exist there, Zehngebot told a crowd of about 30 at 95 Hamilton St. ​“The goal is to provide a framework for any of these scenarios.”

Click here to read their report. (Lots of pictures and details.)

All the ideas grew out of the current business strengths in Mill River. A mercantile food home, for instance, could be created if the various prized bakeries and restaurants in the district could team up more often and also distribute their products to a wider market.

“As a general rule, mixing retail next to manufacturing is frowned upon” when it comes to food, said Kevin Hively (pictured), who works for Ninigret Partners. But in the Mill River district, it could be an asset.

Hively said the team estimates that the city is missing out on $145 million a year in ​“unmet demand for grocery products.” Meaning lots of people buy food in the suburbs, but would buy it here with more choices. That should figure into any business development and job-growth strategy for Mill River, he said.

In an interview before the meeting, EDC’s Haynes said there’s also talk beginning of creating a ​“tech shop” in an old industrial space. In such a shop, a cooperative might purchase expensive fabricating equipment beyond the reach of small businesses needing to create prototypes for new products they’re developing. In the old business model, planners would seek to steer loans to new businesses to buy such equipment. The tech shop would spread the cost around with less risk, she noted.

Another idea under consideration: 5,000-square-foot rooftop greenhouses that hydroponically grow lettuce, beans, peppers, and other staples to sell directly to restaurants. Such models already thrive in cities as diverse as Brooklyn and Toledo, the planners said.

Underlying this planning process is a lesson taken from decades of urban planning past: That planners can’t dictate what people will buy in a market. Rather, the most successful development happens ​“organically” — when individuals take the risk to create products or services that other people want to buy. The role of planners, in this case, is to discover what’s working and help it grow more by helping to line up, say, infrastructure improvements or capital or marketing help.

Call it ​“organic-plus” planning, Utile’s Tim Love said.

Tuesday night’s meeting was the second held by the city as plans for the Mill River district enter Phase 2 of their plan, which involves investigating whether specific investors or business people or other agencies can put meat ont he bones of these proposals.

Phase 1, which took about nine months, has been about mapping, market analysis and strategy. In phase 2, the city and contracting firms will test specific scenarios that businesses could expect if they want to grow in Mill River. They expect to do that with actual businesses that approach the city with such a goal in mind.

“It’s not a plan first, do later kind of thing,” said Utile’s Tim Love. ​“We could end up looking at this in real-time.”