Nesta Allen: "Who are we, nothing?"
Residents gathered in Jocelyn Square Park and then walked surrounding blocks on the eve of a zoning vote to demonstrate that they live in a neighborhood — not in “Las Vegas” or an “industrial wasteland” befitting a midnight-to-dawn BYOB strip club.
They held the event in response to a proposal from former Scores and Key Club owner Peter Forchetti to build a “Las Vegas-style” strip club called Planet Venus in a vacant warehouse at 203 Wallace St.
Fifteen residents rallied at the park before walking two minutes along Wallace to the warehouse in a demonstration of how close the Jocelyn Square area would be to the strip club.
The protest followed more than a month of community organizing against the strip club plans, during which residents pointed to the history of violence, noise, and raucousness at Forchetti’s former establishments. It occurred ahead of the Board of Zoning Appeals’ meeting on Tuesday night, during which the board is scheduled to decide whether to afford the proposed club a special exception to reduce parking and to exist 1,100 feet from another “adult cabaret,” the Catwalk Club on East Street, rather than the minimum of 1,500 feet distance.
“We heard over and over again [from Forchetti] that this is an industrial no man’s land,” said Ellen Cupo, who helped convene the protest and who represents the neighborhood on the Board of Alders. “This is a place where children should be able to play, where people should be able to sit outside and enjoy their neighborhood.”
The crowd at Jocelyn Square.
Jonah Lynn, who lives on the corner of Wallace and Walnut, said the strip club proposal fit into a broader pattern of disregard for the area. “Nobody cares about this street. The city doesn’t care about this street,” he said.
“This isn’t an industrial place with nothing here,” said Nesta Allen, a Jocelyn Square resident who came to the protest with his young kids. “Who are we, nothing?”
Neighbors march down Wallace Street, toward the proposed strip club site.
Jocelyn Square resident Eli Westerman and Fair Haven resident Darlene Casella.
At a previous zoning board hearing, Forchetti’s attorney, Ken Rozich, argued that the project“has adequate lighting, surveillance inside and out that will revitalize the area.”
“This is a vacant lot,” Rozich said. “It could hopefully lead to a revitalization of the whole area; it would certainly be an improvement. It’s not going to contribute to illegal activity due to the security, including on and off-duty police officers. It will cut down illegal activity. Here, you have vacant building after vacant building and here you have a person ready to invest a certain amount of money. It’ll not prevent urban renewal but hopefully will attract it.”
Neighbors Monday afternoon argued that they expect more violence and rowdiness from the strip club, which is meant to be a “Bring-Your-Own-Beer” establishment open from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. They said that parking is already scarce in the area. They speculated that the club would mostly serve out-of-towners without any incentive to take care of the area.
Celeste Fulcher attended in honor of her daughter, Erika, who was murdered at the Key Club in 2013. Fulcher doesn’t live in the neighborhood, she said, but “I stand along you guys.” Forchetti “showed his character with the prior club,” she said.
“I’m not against adult entertainment, but I am against what it brings,” Allen said: people aiming to stir up trouble in an intoxicated environment. He noted that neighbors who lived in the area before him had worked hard to revive Jocelyn Square. “I sleep good at night now because of the work that’s been put in.”
Can the City of New Haven make an ordinance outlawing what are called entertainment lease agreements that exotic dance clubs use to exploit labor? The entertainment lease agreement is illegal, yet still widely used. It tries to strip dancers of their rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Connecticut Wage Act to treat them instead as independent contractors instead of employees.
Making dancers employees obviously makes a club less profitable, and less viable. The City may be able to step in and help here.