Brian Dowling Photo
Across from the Foot Locker and dusty bus stop on Chapel Street, a yoga studio and acupuncture clinic threw a grand opening party, a gesture of goodwill to a block undergoing a constant series of changes and development.
Breathing Room Yoga and Infinite Well Acupuncture occupy a former tattoo parlor on the second floor of 817 Chapel, a 25,132 square-foot building constructed in 1900 at the corner of Orange and Chapel. It’s the newest spot in the area offering wellness services, as the studio contrasts with one of the last blocks near the Green that have yet to become upscale. About 100 of the studio’s students, friends and community members gathered Saturday evening in the airy space to wish the venture well.
“This whole city is evolving a lot. It’s starting to creep down the block,” said Margot Broom (pictured above), the 27-year-old creator of Breathing Room Yoga. Setting up her studio in the building, she was approached by the owner of a nearby business, who told her she might not be able to make it here. “My response was that everything has to change, everything has to evolve,” she said.
In 2009, Broom lost her job doing interior design for a New Haven architecture firm, so she took the opportunity to launch a yoga studio in an 800-square-foot space at the back of the nearby English Building. That first studio had an obscure entrance off of Federal Plaza and was separated from the English Building Market by a thick curtain. With experience teaching yoga a few years prior, Broom led the first incarnation of Breathing Room Yoga, which lasted two years, found students and grew.
The studio’s lease was up in November 2010, and Broom found the new location at 817 Chapel. She covered some renovation costs through Peer Backers, an online crowd-funding site, raising more than $10,000 from about 100 contributors in 45 days.
Around this time, through a mutual friend, she met Boaz ItsHaky, an acupuncture specialist looking to set up an office near the Green.
In the fall, workers gutted the tattoo parlor, and Broom, with ample interior design experience, sat down with her father, who owns a building restoration company in Hadlyme, to plan the space. “We put our minds together to make it exactly how we wanted,” she said.
ItsHaky, who has a main acupuncture office in Orange, and Broom share a vision to make their services available to the masses. Broom claims that Breathing Room is the “most reasonably priced” studio in New Haven, and offers, like other studios, discounts for new students.
ItsHaky is bringing the price of acupuncture down by offering open-room acupuncture, where he treats multiple people simultaneously in one space. That reduces the $120 pricetag of traditional private-room acupuncture services to about $20 for the shared model. “I was thinking of one day stopping by the office around the corner, the mayor’s office, and drag him in here and give him acupuncture,” he said. “It’s very good for stress.” (Click here for a background story about ItsHaky running for Congress four years ago.)
Tobie Schuerfeld, one of the studio’s instructors, predicted the movement of “news wellness going into this area” will make yoga and acupuncture “more comfortable and more accessible” to newcomers.
The studio is newest tenant in a building bought by Pike International in August 2011 for $1.25 million. Pike’s operations manager, Yochi Levitansky, said the building had a few squatters when the company purchased it. The company has since cleaned up the building; Levitansky praised its character. “The question is who is going to bring it out, a residential tenant or a commercial tenant like Margot.”
“This side of Chapel is where the action is,” said Shmully Hecht, Pike’s president. He said the company is looking for “more exciting, young businesses” for vacancies on the third floor, or could just convert the space into loft apartments. “It’s really about what the market is going to do.” This week the company has a meeting planned with City Hall to discuss plans for a rooftop restaurant.
A space next to the studio is empty, after a hairdresser left weeks ago. Most of the third floor is also available.
As guests walked into the grand opening party, they were asked to remove their shoes. “You rarely go to parties where you have to take off your shoes,” said Katie Schelle, a former coworker of Broom who helped her set up the first studio.
Along one wall was a table of food prepared by a local chef. In an opposite corner, a bar was stocked with wine and beer from the Wine Thief.
Groups milled around throughout the night, with drinks and plates of food. One student of the studio, Julia Zhao, said she likes walking down Chapel and seeing classes going on from the street level. She’s attached to the new space too. “It feels like you’re going to yoga in your living room,” she said. “It’s not an uppity studio.”
A silent auction lasted the whole night as visitors bid on items donated by local businesses such as Lululemon, Barcelona, Alisa’s House of Salsa and Tracey B.
From the same side of the room, two-thirds of a local band, Mon Monarch, performed flowing indie folk that bounced from the tall antique tin ceilings to the newly painted walls and polished hardwood floors. Chuck E. Costa, the band’s lead singer and official Connecticut state troubadour, played guitar with Colin Meyer, the band’s usual drummer and bassist.
Great to see more entrepreneurs coming to New Haven.
Now if the city would just install on street parking on that side of the street, plus a mid block crosswalk and some improvements to the horrible Church/Chapel intersection, the area would really take off.
The city should also make sure that the vacant lots are developed - it's been the victim of a silly lawsuit based more on the egos of the parties involved than on any rational projections of public benefit.
Look at what happened to Temple Street about 10 years ago. After the installation of traffic calming, it went from being utterly desolate (with one nail salon and nothing else save boarded up buildings), to a street with dozens of places to go and over 100 new jobs.
If our city actually prioritized job creation and tax base, we might be better off.