Pause Placed On Pot Shop-Palooza

The alders made good choices not allowing the bank on Church St and the diner on Middletown Ave to be turned into cannabis dispensaries. The bank is in a too prominent and important location and would be better suited for uses that would positively impact the area. I have no problem with it being located in a more size appropriate and less prominent and sensitive location downtown.
The diner is across the street from a daycare being built, near school bus stops, and across the street from a mosque. It would be a negative impact on the increased traffic and on children being unable to avoid seeing the cannabis business and its customers.
Cannabis businesses should be located in former liquor stores or bars or nightclubs or other adult use businesses with the appropriate restrictions in place to reduce negative impacts on the neighborhood, and also in industrial or commercial locations that are not nearby sensitive locations like daycares, K-12 schools, collages or businesses that have childcare on site or children or teens present on a regular basis, houses of worship, museums, retailers that attract children or families, parks, playgrounds, or the Green.
We have to think carefully about where we locate these businesses to avoid them becoming a burden or a detriment or deterrent to neighbors or other businesses located or wanting to move in nearby.

While a pot dispensary is not a good use of 45 Church, if this decision is appealed I would not surprised if the city loses. The college students are adults, many of them old enough to buy pot legally. And as much as I like and respect Chair Radcliffe, her argument is not plausible.

This building’s interior is beautiful. But its design makes it very hard to redevelop.

This beautiful building/landmark should not be made into a cannabis dispensary and everybody knows this.

Cannabis is not a run of the mill commodity - let's face it.

Just because cannabis is "legal" does not qualify it to be in a vacant building downtown.

How about we turn that old bank into a prison? How about a dog kennel? How about a small farm with cows that could produce milk?

Putting a market for cannabis in a building that looks like a bank is the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard.

All of the reasons mentioned in the other comments are the best reasons not to do this idiotic thing.

Common people!

A huge and grateful thank you to the commission for doing the right thing concerning 420 Middletown Ave. This business is truly not suitable to be located right next to an early childhood learning center.

Another building downtown that will sit empty for years and years. We’re at 10+ what’s another 10?

Absolutely ridiculous!!! They think college kids who don’t smoke weed will suddenly be gripped in its evil clutches by walking by a dispensary ? Right. Better they should walk another block and buy it from a sketchy drug dealer on the Green where you won’t even know if it’s been laced with anything. Or perhaps this was a way to protect the illegal drug dealer’s business?
As for the other site on another major thoroughfare, did anyone point out to the Commission that you are required to show an ID the minute you walk in the door? So I doubt the daycare kids could make it in to buy weed regardless of how good their fake ID looks.
These small minded, provincial decisions made essentially at the whim of the officials is why New Haven will NEVER build enough low income/affordable housing or homeless centers . Everyone is for them until they might get built near you. Well New Haven, you get what you deserve.

In Clinton, CT, an old, vacant bank was beautifully re-done as a restaurant, "Nataz." It doesn't appear that too much in the way of redevelopment went into an already lovely old building — now a modern upscale bar/eatery.

The dates on the building, on the Crown Street side (in Roman numerals), are 1857 and 1907. Presumably the former is when the Connecticut Savings Bank (the original owner) was founded, and the latter is when this building was finished (i.e., to mark the 50th anniversary).

In any case, it's not something that would have been built in 1876's Victorian era. That date can't be right. (See also the likewise neoclassical federal post office and courthouse of 1913 down the street near City Hall, also from the early 20th century.)

This is ridiculous. A NO LOITERING law would be an ideal way to deal with what would be the train station 2.0 idea.

As for the college students, come ON.

That building would be rather swaggy if turned into a dispensary. I think it would be a destination for New Haven and bring people to town to shop and then eat.

Munchies can be met Errrrwhere in that area.

The commissioners who voted no on 45 Church street building were aware that Gateway is a college that also has a 'Dual Enrollment Program' whereby high school students can take college prep courses. Many high school seniors are 17-18 year olds, and many college freshmen are 17-18 years old ... and attend Gateway and Yale, but they are not old enough to purchase marijuana for recreational use. Gateway. Gateway also has an on-campus day care center for children of its students. The Cooperative High School is located 1 block away on College Street. The commissioners also shared concern that there is great effort being put forth to attract more pedestrian friendly activities and entertainment to the downtown area with festivals, pop-ups, outside dining. And with the already known drug use on the green (including the bus stop shelter that was removed from the front of 45 Church that provided cover to individuals getting high), it is and would continue to be very difficult to enforce the laws against public use and consumption. Generally the commissioners felt that this location would have a negative impact the health, safety and welfare of the public. And while we're at it, let's be real. While I am pretty certain the medical users of weed will go home and use their 'medicine' in their home, we can have a reasonable expectation (based on witnessed behavior) that a fair number of recreational users do not travel too far from purchase site to smoke the product. You smell it coming from cars as they drive by (illegal) and people smoking as they walk by (illegal). I got neighbors who sit on their front porch and smoke weed because they don't want their houses to smell!. And the smell wafts into my house exacerbating my asthma! Having dispensaries in residential neighborhoods like Middletown Av with 8 apartment buildings a block away behind the proposed daycare center, all the homes, kids waiting for school buses is just WRONG - legal maybe - but WRONG!!!

The only legitimate argument between both of these locations was the issue of double parking on Church st(which is already common to begin with), so of course it's the issue they didn't take seriously

TrumanStreetResident, true and relevant. Saying that Chair Radcliffe’s argument was implausible may have been unnecessarily harsh.

But many of the circumstances you cite occur across the city. There are high-school students everywhere. (I’m particularly aware of this since my house is 300 feet from New Haven Academy 🥸). Public drug use happens across the city and is not limited to the Green. And while you are right that some pot buyers would light up shortly after leaving the dispensary, that is true for all dispensaries.

As you likely know, the Board of Alders serves as the city’s zoning commission and writes the city’s zoning ordinance. If the BOA wanted to bar dispensaries downtown, it would have prohibited them there. Or it could have set stricter standards for applications there. It did neither.

Again, I do not object to the cannabis business being located downtown, in a smaller, less prominent building, in a former nightclub or bar or liquor store, or in another former adult use business location, with the appropriate restrictions and regulations in place to keep it far enough away from sensitive locations.
The bank would make a nice restaurant, it would make a great food hall and indoor farmers market with pushcarts and booths for makers and craftspeople to sell their wares year round. It could become a halal market, it could become a Caribbean and/or Latin American market, it could become a shared workspace for people who work from home to have a membership to get out of their tiny apartment to work in shared space, it could become an extension of Gateway for training people to learn a skilled trade in high demand by employers, it could become a wellness center, there are any number of ideas that somebody creative could come up with.

Vincent Scully - the late Yale architectural history teacher - defined architecture as a “continuing dialogue between generations that creates an environment across time.”
I just looked up the 45 Church Street building in Elizabeth Mills Brown’s guide book to New Haven architecture and urban design. The bank was built for Connecticut Savings Bank in1906. Elizabeth Brown writes, “This example, especially noted by the Gilbert-Olmsted report for its importance to the quality of the street, was New Haven’s best - a piece of luck, for it is the only one that has not been destroyed or spoiled.”
45 Church Street isn’t just another old building; its a special, very important part of New Haven history. Just as the New Haven Green shouldn’t become a parking lot, or the churches on the Green fast food restaurants, 45 Church shouldn’t become a pot dispensary. I have nothing against pot dispensaries, fast food restaurants, or parking lots.

Regardless, that building needs to be cleaned up and patrolled. I walk by at least 3 days a week as I live downtown. Yesterday, there was a man fully squatting with bedding right on the left of the steps in the shade, and the right side a man was trying to sell me a bag of cheap jewelry. And the stairs are covered in urine stench.

Also, does not anyone know that you can illegally buy TCH in all forms at the smoke shops on Church and Chapel ? I think even the cops know this

There are numerous empty storefronts on Chapel Street - I think about 2 on each block stretching from College Street to Howe Street. Why use that cavernous and beautiful old bank for a pot dispensary when all these empty storefronts are seemingly ready to be occupied? Maybe Yale wouldn't like it, but Yale isn't doing a lot to make the empty Chapel Street spaces easy for folks to afford running a business out of them. The old bank might be suited for a non-profit, art studio/gallery space, any type of business office, etc. Maybe Yale can buy it and use it for something positive? I don't know, but not a pot dispensary!

Thank you, Jesus!

We forget that a former Arts & Tourism official for the City of New Haven suggested an indoor, year-round ice-skating rink inside that building…ah, New Haven, Live Forever…

I did not see any issue with the recreational dispensary plan.

I have visited a few in CT and out of state, and they're always nice places with respectful clientele. Usually working professionals that will spend money elsewhere in the city.

Hoodlums will buy on the street. It's way cheaper.

This comment section should be more concerned with the smoke shops poking up everywhere that do sell unregulated and often very harmful substances, attract a lower end clientele, and generally look terrible from the street.