Atticus Went Underground To Sell Food During Lockdown

With downtown a war zone and armed agents prowling blocked-off streets, Atticus Bookstore Cafe found a way to salvage some of its business: delivering sandwiches and salads through underground passageways linking the store to neighboring shops and the Yale Center for British Art.

“They’d phone in lunch orders, and we’d meet them down there in the tunnel,” said General Manager Ben Gaffney.

Gaffney estimates that Atticus lost 80 percent of its business Monday when an anonymously phoned threat about a campus shooter forced downtown streets closed for hours.

Chapel Street stores like Atticus were shuttered from mid-morning until the end of the day. Gaffney put Atticus’ loss in the thousands. Area coffee shops such as Willoughby’s and Blue State around the corner on York Street also took precautions, posting warning signs alerting their customers to the possible danger in the area.

“It was a bad day for business everywhere, but especially on Chapel,” said Prasanna Kodithuwakku (pictured), a cashier at Woodland Cafe in Sherman’s Alley.

At Woodland, frightened customers stayed on the premises, but asked that the waiters turn off the lights. Employees closed the eatery at 4 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. At other locations, diners asked that they be seated away from the windows facing Old Campus, where the alleged gunman was suspected to be.

Nearby Panera lost between $5,000 and $6,000 in business Monday, according to Manager Vinny DeLillo. Police turned the Chapel Street location into a command headquarters for the day. SWAT team members in camouflage, police officials sporting badges, and FBI officers gathered around Panera’s large tables to plan, spreading out papers, strategizing, and buying nothing.

“There were guys in Kevlar vests crawling all over,” he said. ​“I had never seen riot police up close. But then they told me, ​‘You’re in the safest place you could possibly be,’” because it was the heart of the security force.

Jeff Venditto, 25, a Panera employee, said he ​“was able to sneak out with some associates, escorted by a cop,” mid-afternoon. Others stayed in the store until later in the day. At Atticus, about 15 customers remained on the premises during the lockdown.

“We had food, drink, entertainment, and bathrooms. There are worse places to be,” Gaffney said.

Staff who couldn’t leave Atticus helped prepare food for people trapped at Hello Boutique and the other connected buildings. About a dozen staffers were asked not to leave the Center for British Art, said Gaffney, who kept them in eats and hot drinks. He said guests weren’t allowed access to the passageway, and the museum wasn’t open to the public, so no one took a spontaneous private tour.

At Book Trader Cafe, policemen came in for hot chocolate and to use the bathroom throughout the afternoon, said employee Naomi Jungden. The servers locked the doors, but would let customers in.

“Once the lockdown was lifted, everybody and their brother came in,” since most had been caught someplace without food during the ​“shelter in place” order, said Jungden. As the day unfolded, she said that they heard ​“about 1,500 different stories” from customers and regulars checking in.

Server Shavonda Miller, 27, at Claire’s Corner Copia, said their first news came from a customer who had gotten a text about a gunman in the area. She said that the cops ​“warmed up” with information and let them know what was going on when offered coffee and hot chocolate. One waitress moved to lock the business’s Chapel Street entrance, but Claire Criscuolo, the proprietor, asked her not to.

“Claire was here, protecting us, keeping us calm, being a mom to us,” said Miller.

Access to Claire’s is also available on College Street, so customers were able to come in for lunch despite caution tape and police officers blocking one door.

Cashier Danny Rodriguez (pictured), 39, said he thought they may have lost some money from phoned-in pick-up lunch orders, since some pedestrian traffic was blocked off. ​“But for the most part, due to the Thanksgiving holiday, it was pretty dead,” he said.

Rodriguez, who grew up in the Hill in New Haven, said he ​“wasn’t really fazed” by the apparent threat and massive police presence.

“I grew up in a neighborhood where there were shootings all the time, so it wasn’t really that scary,” he said. ​“They responded a lot quicker to this area than they ever would to my area.”