Thomas MacMillan Photo
On his last day on the job, departing city traffic tsar Jim Travers unveiled a first: a new card for shopping, dining, and parking in the city and a new way for New Haven to “brand” itself as a destination city.
Travers (pictured) Monday afternoon unveiled “Shop•Dine•Park,” a gift card that works like a debit card — and can only be used in New Haven.
Travers said he took the idea from mall gift cards — gift certificates that can be redeemed at any store in a mall. The Shop•Dine•Park works the same way, except the “mall” is all of New Haven, and you can use it to pay for parking, too.
“We’re really, really, really super excited about this program,” Travers said.
It’s a way to continue to establish the city as shopping and dining destination. City officials said the card is likely the first of its kind in the country. It took Travers and his team two years to make the card happen, in part because of a complication caused by the Patriot Act.
The Shop•Dine•Park card (pictured) is a Discover-based card, acceptable wherever that company’s credit cards are accepted. The cards are available exclusively at the Info New Haven storefront at the corner of College and Chapel streets. They cost $3.95, plus however much money you want to put on the card.
By the spring, they’ll be available online and will have a couple of new features, including the ability to add more money to your card. Travers said the Shop•Dine•Park will eventually merge with the city’s municipal ID cards.
The new card also has the potential to give downtown merchants a new way to contact their customers. For instance, in the second phase of the card’s roll-out, people who dine at, say, Meat & Co. sandwich shop might receive a text message alert about a sandwich deal when they use their card to pay for parking in New Haven.
That will be an option only if people choose to register a phone number when they buy a card. People won’t have to hand over any personal information.
Travers said he first began working on the on the gift card idea when the city phased out its Parxmart card, with which people could pay for parking downtown. Parxmart’s small but loyal following in New Haven let Travers know that they wanted another way to pay for parking, beyond using change or a credit card.
Travers wanted to issue municipal gift cards, but he didn’t want to collect people’s social security numbers, as the Patriot Act requires credit card companies to do. Eventually, with the help of a company called ParkEasy, Travers found a way to create a “semi-closed loop card” — halfway between a credit card usable everywhere and a gift card usable at only one store.
At a Monday press conference at the Shubert Theater, Mayor Toni Harp said the card has made her think of New Haven as “a sort of urban theme park” with the new card as a “pre-paid all-access pass.”
Travers said the card keeps dollars local. The cards are purchased here and the money can only be spent here. For instance, Travers said, if someone gave him a $500 The Shop•Dine•Park card, he could go to the Apple store on Broadway and get a new iPhone. But he couldn’t use the card at the Apple store in Danbury.
Travers suggested that a parent could buy the card for her child, to use while the youngster is studying at one of New Haven’s universities. Through the ParkEasy website, the parent would be able to track what the child is buying and, when new features rollout in the spring, add money to the card.
Win Davis (pictured), head of the Town Green Special Services District, said the card “will be a wonderful opportunity for everyone to give the gift of New Haven.”
“It’s awesome,” said John Giannetti, owner of Meat & Co. and 116 Crown. “I’m psyched.”
Giannetti said he’s looking forward to using the card to help him to keep contact with people who eat at his restaurants. When they use the card, he’ll be able to collect their phone numbers, if they choose.
Travers announced the card on his very last day as transportation chief. It was his “last hurrah,” he said.
I want to think this is a step in the right direction, but Instead of pushing the national/global corporate chains that make up "The Shops at Yale" and other spots downtown, it would be nice to see the city put together an incentives card for independent, locally-owned businesses (the kind that Yale Properties systematically runs out of the city).
Perhaps the "Supportland" card could be a model for New Haven: http://supportland.com/