Thomas MacMillan Photo
Where C‑Town shopping carts once rolled on Dixwell Avenue, Isee Greenwood wants to see teenagers roller-skating, doing homework, playing educational video games, and best of all, staying out of trouble.
Greenwood (pictured above onsite) has her eye on the empty building that once housed the grocery store on Dixwell Avenue near Webster Street. She wants to open a roller rink there complete with a mini movie theater, food court, homework room, and a computer room. She said she sees it as a positive place for young people to hang out, and as an answer to youth violence and childhood obesity.
On Wednesday night, she’ll pitch her plan to the Board of Aldermen’s Youth Services Committee. She’s looking for the committee’s support as she goes about finding money to transform the old grocery store into a successful rollerskating business.
It’s not the first time Greenwood, who’s an assistant teacher at Lincoln Bassett school, has sought to bring roller-skating to New Haven. In 2007, she wanted to open a rink on Long Wharf. But the property she had her sights on, 108 Food Terminal Plaza, was sold to a pie company.
Undaunted, Greenwood, who’s 45, said she’s now found an even better location in the heart of a community that could use a positive outlet for young people.
The old C‑Town stands near a branch of the New Haven Public Library and a stone’s throw from the Dixwell Q House, once a beloved community center now shuttered and vacant.
“It’s right here in the community,” Greenwood said during a visit to her proposed site, where she laid out her vision.
It would cost about $400,000 to renovate the space and buy equipment, including rental skates, Greenwood said. She said she’s prepared to put her house up as collateral for a loan to raise some of that money. She said she’s also found private backers ready to put up some money; she hopes the city might assist her in some way.
A grocery store, it turns out, is an ideal candidate for roller rink conversion, Greenwood said. C‑Town offers a big open space for a track, with a manager’s office overlooking, which could be converted to a DJ booth.
In addition to putting up her house, Greenwood said she’s ready to quit her job to run the roller rink. She would hire about 14 people to start, she said, and open the rink from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week.
While she has never run a business before, Greenwood earned three business training certificates in 2007, from the Entrepreneurial Center at the University of Hartford and from local non-profits Junta For Progressive Action and Empower New Haven.
“It’s going to work,” she said of her plan. “I believe in it.”
The need is there, she said. “I believe our youth community needs some type of positive activity.” The rink would be a place families could come to. Greenwood said she would have security personnel, a metal detector, and hire a police officer.
New Haven youth suffer from a lack of positive activities and end up “hanging out on the corners at all times of night,” said Greenwood. A roller rink, she offered, could change all that.
Great idea. I hope it works out.
If we weren't all spending most of our household incomes in New Haven to own and operate private vehicles, sending billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia in fuel payments, there would be plenty of money around locally to fund these types of public spaces.
To illustrate, take the fact that the city of Copenhagen is just as productive as Detroit, but uses about 1/10th the amount of energy. All that savings, known as the "Green Dividend," means that Copenhagen has billions of dollars more than Detroit does to spend locally - on things like schools, building maintenance, and youth activities such as round-the-clock kayaking on the city's waterways.
Under our state's and city's current model, where alternatives to the automobile receive virtually no public funding while parking garages receive massive subsidies, New Haven will soon look more like Detroit than Copenhagen.
How about a new statewide tax on fuel sales in order to fund youth programs?