Violence Down, Tensions Persist At Grand Plaza

The parking lot outside of the Grand Cafe swelled last fall with live music, poetry, and pizza as activists gathered to ​“reclaim” a Fair Haven corner known for attracting violence.

A year later the bar is closed, shootings are down, and a new set of neighbors fills the lot with cannabis smoke and stereo tunes.

That’s the latest with the now-former Grand Cafe spot in a commercial strip at 124 East Pearl St. / 118 Grand Ave.

The plaza was the site of a communal reclamation campaign: Dozens of Fair Haven residents mobilized to ​“occupy” the parking lot at the corner of East Pearl and Grand with nightly Bomba music and board games in response to multiple shootings in the area. Months later, the same group of neighborhood activists succeeded in getting the Grand Cafe to lose its state-issued liquor license, causing the bar to close its doors. 

The parking lot feels safer now to some neighbors, although organizers of last year’s protests say there’s more work to be done.

“I walk down the street and feel a hundred times safer than I did before,” said Kica Matos, a leading local social justice advocate and East Pearl Street resident who co-led last year’s ​“Occupy Grand Cafe” protests.

“But,” Matos continued, ​“people who live on that street still say that it continues to be a problematic corner.”

Though no shootings have occurred since the closure of the bar, the corner remains ​“problematic” to some neighbors because of a new group of people hanging out there — whom police and neighbors accuse of dealing cannabis and harder drugs and of occasionally bringing weapons along with them.

"Open Air Drug Market" Continues

“The violence supported by the Grand Cafe hasn’t really continued, but the open air drug market has,” observed Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, whose ward includes the parking lot and who was one of last year’s Occupy Grand Cafe organizers.

According to Fair Haven’s police district manager, Lt. Mike Fumiatti, violent crime has all but ceased in that area.

And yet, he continued, city cops have made roughly two dozen arrests over the past year in that same area. Fumiatti reported that the arrests pertained to narcotics possession and dealing, gun possession, and trespassing.

Miller and Fumiatti said they have primarily witnessed cannabis dealing in the parking lot. Recent legislation legalizing cannabis in Connecticut has complicated police efforts to quell unlicensed weed sales in that area, Miller and Fumiatti argued, because transferring cannabis in the form of a gift is now legal.

“To some extent, people are used to it, but I would say, it’s still something that people find incredibly frustrating,” she said. ​“At times it still makes people incredibly uncomfortable. There’s still a daycare right next door.”

“There’s still a decent amount of money to be made, so what we worry about is people coming to rob the people who are selling marijuana,” Fumiatti said.

“The police have actually been very diligent,” Miller said. She expressed frustration with the property owner’s management representative, who lives out of town, for not doing more to prevent criminal activity from taking place in the area. ​“She’s an investor. She’s not a community member,” Miller said. ​“It speaks to a broader citywide issue about out-of-town property owners who tolerate things on their properties.“

Miller and Matos agreed that the trajectory of the lot won’t change by simply ​“arresting our way out of this problem,” as Miller put it.

The city has attempted other approaches. At one point, the city placed jersey barriers around the parking lot to deter people from hanging out there, but after businesses complained, the property owner sent a letter to the city demanding that the barriers be removed, as the Livable City Initiative’s Carmen Mendez recounted to the Fair Haven Community Management Team in mid-October.

Since then, Fumiatti has proposed a ​“pop-up” police substation for the parking lot which would allow officers to have a continuous presence. He did not receive permission from the property owner to proceed with the plan.

While the Grand Cafe bar itself is currently vacant, Matos said, she believes a solution could lie in finding ​“permanent tenants who move into that property who create a community-oriented, healthy space for people.”

Miller argued for a security guard permanently stationed at the parking lot: ​“There has to be some kind of consistent presence from the property owner.”

A representative from Three Brothers LLC, the New York-based holding company listed as the property owner, told the Independent in a recent phone interview: ​“I’m not the police department and that’s not on me to resolve. … I cannot do anything about people doing illegal activities around the vicinity of my property.” She added that she has increased lighting in the area since receiving complaints. She refused to provide her full name.

The aftermath of the Occupy Grand Cafe protests speaks to a challenge of transforming public perceptions about a place, Fumiatti said. ​“The issue with the property is that historically it’s been a place that is known for illegal activities, so it’s really hard when everyone knows that that area is a place that you go to hang out, that you go to buy marijuana, that you go to engage in other activities,” he said. ​“What we’re trying to do is break that cycle.”

Fumiatti said he sends officers to that area ​“quite a bit” to ​“break up the groups hanging out.”

Overall, Fumiatti said, shots have been fired in the lot, but no one has been hit. ​“There was a pistol whipping in which a shot was accidentally fired but we were able to identify the offender and arrest him,” he wrote in a text message.

"We're Like Hippies Here"

At 3 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, about 10 regulars were hanging out in a handful of parked cars at the lot. They offered a more sympathetic take on the lot’s transformation over the past year than that described by Miller, Matos, and Fumiatti.

The group spends time in the parking lot regularly, they said, mostly to smoke weed and play music. They said they believe the parking lot has been unfairly targeted by police and some neighbors, while other parking lots and corners on Ferry Street and in other parts of the neighborhood are more affected by violent crime.

Members of the group wandered in and out of a smoke shop located adjacent to the former Grand Cafe over the course of an hour, purchasing cigarettes and rolling papers.

A smoke shop staffer who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation echoed her customers’ argument that the parking lot has been unfairly singled out by police and neighbors. 

Police officers have ​“harassed my customers,” she said. ​“Some of my customers were complaining that they wouldn’t come here anymore.“

The police have asked her to call 9 – 1‑1 on the people outside, she said, but she doesn’t want to alienate her customers. ​“Kids come here to buy snacks and sodas. That doesn’t mean they are here to do crime,” she added. ​“They are just hanging out.“

The smoke shop staffer is a familiar figure to her customers, who know her by name. One of them called out ​“Love you!” as he walked out the door.

“They are targeting my store,” she said. ​“I feel disrespected, humiliated.”

“We’re just smoking,” said one parking lot regular, who asked to remain anonymous. The group is primarily smoking and gifting cannabis, which is now legal, she argued. ​“I understand that this is a wealthier area than Ferry,” that ​“Yale professors” live close to the waterfront, but ​“this is how the culture is around here.” 

“We’re like hippies here,” she added.

“I feel like this place is targeted because it’s Black people,” said Curt Duarte, another frequent parking lot inhabitor. He argued that the idea to place a pop-up police substation in the parking lot is ​“racially motivated.”

Duarte suggested that a cannabis dispensary should take the place of the former Grand Cafe, so that people currently selling weed could access a legal pathway for their business.