Late Monday afternoon, Jan. 21, 2013, one half block from the New Haven Green, Nim’s Jewelry Store was robbed and the owner assaulted. Unfortunately, these kinds of encounters on Chapel Street between Church and State are not uncommon. Nim’s, which sits below The Institute Library at 845 Chapel St., was robbed successfully three times during 2012 alone. Already 2013 looks like more of the same.
Two doors down from Nim’s, we run a vintage store said to be raising the perception of the street. We’re glad for the recognition, and we get a lot of terrific customers. We enjoy the business. But like Nim’s, we face a daily threat of robbery. With goods not protected under glass case, a good part of every day gets spent bird-dogging would-be robbers, some recognized from previous encounters, others recognized for their style of working in pairs to draw attention away from the cash drawer while accomplices dig in, others where one just feels a robbery coming on, and many unsuspected until one happens on telltale tags on floors in dressing rooms from “walk outs.”
Most of the thefts are petty, but over time they add up. We’ve lost six personal cell phones, plenty of cash, and merchandise small enough to fit in pockets. But large thefts too. This weekend we watched a pair on video make off with a 6’ high $1,200 piece of art during one unattended moment. Every day we have two or three stories. Other merchants on the street confirm similar tales.
Billboards on the interstates celebrate events at the Shubert and Long Wharf, at The Shops at Yale, at Restaurant Week, and at Project Storefront in the 9th Square. People respond coming daily into New Haven to enjoy the offerings, peaking in the afterhours at New Haven’s notorious nightclubs. Traffic is up.
But Lower Chapel Street hangs on to a desperate 1980s style dystopia. When the city awarded its big development project on Lower Chapel, the developer immediately changed the site’s name and orientation from 740 Chapel Street to 360 State Street. In fact, just about everywhere one turns one senses that Lower Chapel Street is the unwanted ugly child of New Haven, the perception of a danger zone.
Not long after we set up shop in our building we approached then-director of economic development, Henry Fernandez, to raise the issue about Lower Chapel Street. His response was that these were “market conditions” and we just had to live with them. When we reached out to Yale Properties, they expressed concern for any potential to draw business away from areas where they are heavily invested. Six consecutive leasing agents engaged over the next ten years have yet to attract any tenants to our building. And the emerging attention by local marketing agencies may add to the buzz of adjacent 9th Square, but skirt Lower Chapel. Everyone dodges Lower Chapel Street.
To be sure the Town Green instituted attractive summertime planters hanging from light posts on Lower Chapel and drew some attention in promotion of the Yuppie Boutique where the storeowner was gunned down a few years back. But these efforts are tentative and non-game changing. There’s too deeply engrained a general acceptance that the “market conditions” are intractable and one just has to live with them. Nowhere does motivation stir anyone to mount a comprehensive and effective effort to tackle the “market conditions” of Lower Chapel.
Looking back, every single street now touted for its safe and vibrant culture began just as unpromising as Lower Chapel. Under separate initiatives Upper Chapel, College, Broadway, Whitney, Audubon, and Orange streets all required full-Monty comprehensive makeovers with the vision, the will and the perseverance of someone knowledgeable about and capable of changing dystopia into success. Their successes are confirmed by thousands of similar success cases nationwide, so many that there are now clear predictable prescriptions available to anyone with the will and capability to get it done, even on a citywide basis.
The same honed prescriptions also single out conditions that attract unwanted activities like those at Nim’s, and Lower Chapel has them all.
It may seem that the “market conditions” for Lower Chapel are problems limited to the chumps who drain personal fortunes and stand point on their walls every day. But what those who dismiss Lower Chapel don’t seem to grasp is that the “market conditions” that distinguish it from upscale parts of downtown are so nuanced that no one from distant realms, say from Branford or Bethany, even gets it.
From afar the bad and the good of downtown New Haven tend to lump together. Talk to anyone. As small as the danger zone’s deserved reputation for crime and lack of safety may be, every downtown business stews in the same juice, maybe not in thefts but in uncaptured sales, in uncaptured industry and in uncaptured applications. How many excellent prospects pass on New Haven? By all accounts, quite a few.
Low capture rates are exacerbated by the fact that nodes, which have reached success like Upper Chapel and Orange, are separated from each other by the danger zone. Prospects who make it to one node rarely venture to the other since it would require hazarding the dangerous area. Also, Lower Chapel dampens evidence of increased traffic from shoreline rail since riders’ first taste of New Haven is soured by greetings of danger. Rich or poor, city or country, nobody likes danger.
Think of the boost in prospects who would overcome any reluctance to consider New Haven if the scourge of danger were entirely removed. Double? Triple? Hard to say. But one thing’s for sure, it’s a boost that benefits everyone who depends on an appealing perception of New Haven. Those of us up to our eyeballs in the muddle of unwanted perception sure could use some help.
Lower Chapel Street is unpleasant to walk on because of the howling traffic, which speeds along just inches from your head.
Adding a couple parking spaces next to the Citibank last year helped - more of that could be done to "buffer" the space between pedestrians and vehicles, or between bicycles and speeding buses.
Also, our merchants need to be educated that congestion is good, not something that should be "solved." The highest rents, safest streets, and most activity are always in places with the highest degree of congestion.
When you try to "solve" congestion (for instance by widening the street, which is what the City did with Chapel from State to Orange in the 1960s), you kill the city.
Narrow the streets down, add a few crosswalks, tree buffers, median islands, and bike lanes, and Chapel will be a place that everyone can enjoy. Traffic will wait its turn to use the street, or take an alternative route.
These types of proposals have been floated to the Mayor and Town Green leaders for decades, but have fallen on deaf ears.
The situation is very similar on Dixwell and Whalley - blighted main streets that are even more important than Chapel.
Until we have a few visionary leaders, joblessness, environmental degradation, and crime will reign supreme in much of New Haven.