“This little miniskirt,” Ricardo Beamon was saying as he displayed a Sacred Bleu original, “costs $173.” Beamon and three lifelong buddies from New Haven have opened “Yuppy” boutique on scruffy lower Chapel — right next door to where the Nu Haven porn store just closed to make way for an upscale replacement.
For years lower Chapel, between State and Church, has remained a downscale strip of largely faded-beauty brick buildings while all around it downtown New Haven has gentrified. Is that gentrification finally migrating onto those blocks?
“They’re cleaning up the area, making it a fresh New York kind of thing. We’re trying to be part of that,” Beamon said. He wants to draw in customers from those people suddenly paying “$1,500 a month for a one-bedroom apartment” a block away.” Not to mention Yalies and trendy clubbers.
Beamon opened Yuppy with Tim and John Sanford and Lamar Oliver. They’re all 27 (except John, who’s 33).
They grew up together in the Dwight-Kensington neighborhood, went to Dwight and Troup schools together. They saw the changes happening downtown and thought they could play a profitable part. They have all three floors, with plans to add departments in the coming months. They plan an official opening in May, but they’ve been doing business for a few months.
Their shop’s name stands for “Young Up-and-coming Prominent Professional for You,” said Tim, who manned the register the other morning. Beamon roamed the store’s first-floor showroom showing off the high-end trendy merchandise: Paris Hilton-endorsed J & Company slacks, Rebel Yell, Fourty-Itality, Michael H. Denim. He describes the selection as “Night on the Town” clubs as well as “conservative at work” clothes, “depending where you work at.” The store’s at 756 Chapel St., between Orange and State; click here to e‑mail them.
Next door is one of the Ninth Square’s prized older buildings, the so-called Bassett Hardware building. The three-story (plus large loft) brick edifice dates to some time in the 1800s and served as a hardware store until 1967. Its recent incarnation as home for the Nu-Haven adult book and video store symbolized lower Chapel’s decline. Its recent sale to a local partnership symbolizes the strip’s upscale prospects. The partnership asked the store to leave this month and hopes to land a retailer, a cafe, a deli, and/or a law firm, according to managing member Chris Nicotra.
“The block is clearly changing,” Nicotra said. “Wooster Square to the CBD [central business district] is getting closer and closer .There are so many people living in the Ninth Square. There are so many people living in Wooster Square.” You usually find porn stores on streets without that level of foot traffic, he observed.
Because the building’s previous Rhode Island-based owners had to keep their noses clean to avoid scrutiny from city inspectors, they did a great job keeping the structure in shape, Nicotra said. They put a new metal roof, repointed the front and back. Mechanical systems are all sound. The new owners have one major change to make: a new facade.
