nothin Dixwell Goes “Off-Broadway” | New Haven Independent

Dixwell Goes Off-Broadway”

Paul Bass Photo

Yale Chief Higgins outside a future community outpost.

The cops are coming to Lake Place and Dixwell Avenue — and setting up shop.

The Yale cops, to be specific.

The university’s police department plans to establish a community outpost on the first floor of a now-empty three-story brick building that anchors the northwestern corner of Lake and Dixwell.

Yale University Properties is renovating the entire building with plans for academic, residential commercial [uses] or some combination of the three” for the rest of the space, according to Director Abigail Rider.

The first floor will get a new glass front so people can see cops there and feel welcome inside, according to Yale Police Chief Ronnell Higgins.

The spot won’t exactly be a substation.” More like a community outreach” center. Cops will write reports there, confer with supervisors, hold meetings with the community. A front room might serve as a stop for people waiting for the Yale Shuttle, with a board showing expected times of arrival. The department used to have similar outposts on Park Street and on Congress Avenue.

The building’s renovation is part of a larger effort by Yale to improve the beginning stretch of Dixwell. Last year it purchased 9 – 11 Dixwell for $1.9 million. The 13,304-square-foot. four-story apartment building with first-floor retail, constructed in 1900, was the last piece of real estate the university didn’t already own on the block between Tower Parkway and Lake Place, which is dominated by Payne-Whitney Gymnasium.

The two first-floor storefronts are currently empty. A liquor store operated out of one of them since 1973. Back in the day it housed the Soundtrack nightclub.

Allan Appel File Photo

9-11 Dixwell circa 2008.

Click here to read a story about Broadway Liquors’ unsuccessful 2008 quest for city permission to expand from one storefront to two.

Yale University Properties is currently renovating those storefronts. It hopes to start leasing them in August, either as one 3,000 square-foot space or two separate ones, according to Rider.

We intend to fill the space with retail uses that will activate that stretch of the street and make it pedestrian-friendly,” Rider stated. We are aiming for uses that complement, but are not the same as, the Broadway offerings — sort of off-Broadway’ space.

We think that this end of Dixwell already is a more pleasant place to be, and will be even more so in the near future.”

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