Chamber Leaves Chapel, Goes To Church

The Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce (GNHCC) has moved from one side of the Green to the other — leaving its decades-long home at 900 Chapel St. for a fourth-floor, 8,000-square-foot office space at 195 Church St.

Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, and Mayor Justin Elicker stood alongside more than 100 GNHCC members and other city and state officials at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday to celebrate the organization’s move two blocks north.

GNHCC represents 850 businesses across 15 municipalities. 

GNHCC President and CEO Garrett Sheehan opened the celebration by noting that, at 231 years old, GNHCC is the third oldest chamber of commerce in the U.S. He said they’d been on Chapel Street for around 30 of those years.

GNHCC Director of Communications and Public Policy Victoria Verderame said the new space has a ​“smaller footprint” but ​“more usable space” than their office at 900 Chapel. 

“We’re excited to host more events here, like today’s event to our signature programs such as Councils and Conversations,” Verderame wrote to the Independent. ​“The new office also provides our members with space for meetings, conferences, and programs,” which can be especially helpful for small businesses that may not have offices of their own. She added that GNHCC will be subletting ​“portions of the space.”

According to Verderame, she and the 12 people employed by GNHCC moved to Church Street in mid-June.

“I know we’re in new digs, but the values and goals of the chamber are well-established,” declared Blumenthal during his remarks on Monday. That includes ​“reach[ing] across the aisle” to ​“put[] workers in jobs and improv[e] the economy of our state,” he said. 

Noting that he’s often surrounded by ​“lots of conflict” and ​“dysfunction,” Blumenthal brought up a Monday morning ​“win” at a U.S. District Court, in which federal Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the Trump administration to cancel its stop-work order against an 80-percent-completed wind farm in New London. He called the decision a ​“win for Connecticut and for our business community that supported the project,” and argued that the wind farm would create jobs, make energy more affordable, and protect the environment. 

After the press conference, Lamont told the Independent that he went to the ribbon-cutting because ​“New Haven is happening.” He said he’s fighting to make it easier for businesses, small and large, to grow and expand. 

Connecticut’s strengths are the ​“quality of our education” and ​“the quality of our workforce,” he argued, but our ​“Achilles’s heel is the high price of electricity.” He said he supports wind, solar, natural gas, and nuclear developments, describing himself on energy as an ​“all of the above kind of guy.”

Elicker’s remarks focused more narrowly on New Haven’s ​“booming” economy, especially with the influx of bioscience, life science, and quantum businesses. It’s a ​“new location,” he said, but ​“the same mission around inclusive growth.”