Mill River District Evolves
​“Five Minutes” At A Time

Business owners around the Mill River in Fair Haven missed deliveries during the post-Christmas blizzard because stretches of John Murphy Drive were unplowed. They called Anne Haynes of the Economic Development Corporation; she made sure the city public works plows got in there posthaste.

Result: Rob Bolduc of Boldwood Interiors on Market Street was able to receive his new gluing machine that will help his business of fabricating countertops and restaurant booths continue to expand.

“Five-minute activities [like that] help a lot,” said Haynes.

That, and a lot more, is going to be needed to transform the Mill River section of the city, which New Haven Development Commission member Pedro Soto said has become the forgotten zone between downtown and the more eastern stretch of Fair Haven.

At last week’s Development Commission meeting, Bolduc and Haynes exchanged stories and what additional kinds of help Mill River area businesses need – like better security, lighting, and signage.

Bolduc, a commission member, praised Haynes for helping him access state loans and other resources to buy the old Gant Shirt Factory building and to expand his woodworking business into it. (Click here for that story.)

But problems persist.

Bolduc said Market Street has only two light poles — and both have long been out of service.

He described how his trucks have been vandalized, and how he arrives on Monday mornings to his Market Street business to find piles of garbage have been dumped on or near his property over the weekend.

Hayneswas the guest of the commission at last week’s meeting in City Hall. Haynes’ works on following through on city municipal development plans and in general serves as go-between for businesses and local officialdom. Her EDC is a quasi-public, semi-private group that works hand in hand with City Hall but is privately funded.

She described her work at the EDC, which was established in 2008 to retain and attract business to the city, as being the “navigator and sherpa” for businesses to negotiate the often complex web of city and state resources.

That’s a lot of “five-minute” activities, and more.

An architect by training, Haynes once worked for Cesar Pelli, helping to design Co-Op High. She expressed special affection for the mix of old factories and old residences in the Mill River area.

And she was not alone.

Soto (at right in picture), a commission member and New Haven Preservation Trust executive director, who works at Space Craft on East Street, spoke of the value of preserving those treasures.

If you “re-purposed” the old industrial buildings for residential as well as business use between Grand and Chapel on the spine of East Street, it “could be another East Rock,” he said.

By Haynes’ initial assessment, food manufacturing businesses and “clean tech” could be positioned to excel in the area, where small to midsized businesses like Bolduc, Space Craft, and Radiall are thriving.

Most people don’t realize that New Haven still retains considerable light manufacturing in this area, she said. Creating a buzz or a positive “climate” around that, was another of her tasks.

“People always ask me about English Station,” the long-closed power station on Grand Avenue and the Mill ,she said.

Her answer: If there’s the right development in proximity to it, English Station will take care of itself.

Figuring out the right mix for the Mill River Development area for future residential growth and businesses where employees can live nearby and walk to work (as at Bolduc, and Space-Craft Manufacturing on East Street) is part of what Haynes wants to find out through her study.

She said that when she first joined the EDC the city had already been thinking about expanding the area of the Mill River Development Plan to give it more tools for development.

The Mill River Development Plan is one of eight MDPs administered by the New Haven Development Commission.

She’s advancing that initiative, but cautioned that it was so preliminary some of the area’s businesses had not yet been informed. Yet they would be soon, she said. In the offing: a kind of regular roundtable she would be convening for business owners in that area.

Haynes added that New Haven is both big enough and yet small enough, so that all the sectors, businesses, residents, and community groups, need each other to succeed.

Haynes asked Bolduc if he is having trouble with his Internet services, as another area firm, Radial has been. Yes, he replied.

“I know exactly how to fix that,” she said, adding that AT&T and Comcast simply do not have as much infrastructure in the Mill River areas as in other parts of town.

While the larger plan evolves, there appeared to be a lot more such “five-minute activities” in the offing.

Haynes exchanged contact info and said she is going to introduce Bolduc to Bill Neal of Radial, whose company is nearby but whom he has never met.