Too close for Southern Comfort? Crown Street's Wine Thief.
Thomas Breen Photo
Michael Hendrix: "Doesn't bother me" if another liquor store opens.
A Crown Street “package” store is taking the city and a downtown landlord to court, in a bid to squelch new booze-dispensing competition from opening two blocks away at the corner of High Street.
The lawsuit has been filed by RAL Enterprises LLC against the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) and Crown Court Apartments LLC.
The plaintiff in the case is a holding company controlled by Karl Ronne, who owns The Wine Thief liquor and wine store at 181 Crown St.
The defendants in the case are the BZA and a holding company that owns the new 132-unit, seven-story apartment building at the corner of Crown and High Streets.
According to the Jan. 28 state court lawsuit, the Wine Thief owner is seeking to overturn a liquor-store-enabling approval recently granted by the BZA.
That approval came in early January, when the BZA signed off on Crown Court Apartments’ application for a variance to allow a package store to be located roughly 1,000 feet away from where another package store already exists. City zoning law, meanwhile, limits package stores to being located at least 1,500 feet away from one another.
During the BZA public hearing, Crown Court-hired attorney James Segaloff said that the landlord wants to rent 2,000 square feet of the building’s 10,000 square feet of first-floor commercial and amenity space to “an upscale liquor store.”
Pressed during the meeting to explain what kind of legal hardship warranted the landlord’s requested zoning relief, Segaloff said it would be “an injustice to let an independent commercial business not to get started” in this newly built High-Crown spot. Especially when the landlord has had such trouble finding other commercial tenants for that ground-floor space.
In the Jan. 28 lawsuit filed by the Wine Thief, meanwhile, local attorney Bernard Pellegrino argued that the BZA acted “illegally, arbitrarily and in abuse of the discretion vested in it” when it granted Crown Court’s variance application.
Why is that?
Because, according to Pellegrino:
• The Crown-High landlord “offered no credible evidence of applicable exceptional difficulty and unique hardships occasioned to its and its property” to warrant the variance approval.
• The Crown-High landlord offered no evidence that its zoning-relief request “did not substantially affect the comprehensive zoning plan of the City because, of course, the comprehensive zoning plan seeks to limit the location of retail package stores in the City to not less than 1,500 feet.”
• Crown Court’s “alleged hardship is self-inflicted in that it seeks to rent its property to a retail package store within 1,500 feet based on the location of the Plaintiff’s store, as well as three (3) other stores within 1,500 feet.”
• The Crown-High landlord’s “alleged financial hardship regarding its ability to rent its commercial space, under Connecticut Law interpreting permissive hardships for the granting of such variances, is insufficient to support the BZA’s decision.”
Pellegrino noted that, in Crown Court’s zoning relief application, the landlord argued that the hardship supporting its request for a variance “is based on its difficulties in renting its commercial space to prospective tenants.”
Ultimately, the Wine Thief’s lawsuit argues, that’s not a good enough reason to bend city zoning law and allow a new package store to open up less than 1,500 feet away from an existing one.
Click here to read the lawsuit in full.
Segaloff: Don't "Inhibit" Developers
Attorney Jim Segaloff.
Reached for comment Wednesday morning, Segaloff confirmed that his client has been served with the Wine Thief lawsuit.
And he lamented one package store’s apparent attempt to box out the competition.
“I think it’s unfortunate, [because] the potential is that we would be unable to lease the premises to a shop selling very fine wines,” he said about the BZA appeal. “The loser here is the public. There certainly is a perceived demand for a wine shop in the area where we’re located, at Crown and High.”
Segaloff argued that the lawsuit represents “an effort to hinder competition, particularly in the general downtown area.”
Segaloff emphasized how many new residents — living in newly built apartments, like the ones at High and Crown — there now are in the downtown area.
“There’s been a significant growth of apartments, housing, and a large number of residents,” he said. “All good for downtown New Haven.
“But with that breakthrough, the residents have certain needs, demands and interests. They’re consumers. I think that it’s important to not inhibit the developers, who are making a major financial commitment to build these apartments … to inhibit their opportunity to fill up the commercial space” that’s a part of these buildings.
Segaloff said he’s no spirits expert. (“The only wine I enjoy is Manischewitz on Passover,” he said.) But that doesn’t mean a new liquor store should be barred from opening downtown, he said.
Google Maps image
Distance between the Wine Thief at 181 Crown St. (near Temple) and the proposed new liquor store at Crown and High.
In an email comment sent to the Independent Tuesday, Pellegrino disagreed with Segaloff’s competition-controlling critique.
“This appeal is about enforcement of the regulation which is very clear in its intent,” Pellegrino said. “While some may quibble with the intent as anti-competitive, that is the law. The fact of the matter is that there is no legal hardship that supports the granting of the variance in this case.”
Corporation Counsel Pat King, meanwhile, declined to comment on the lawsuit, in line with the city’s long-standing policy not to comment on pending legal matters.
Neighborhood Need For "Affordable Groceries"
Future home to a new package store?
At High and Crown.
Passersby walking up and down Crown Street, meanwhile, generally responded to the liquor-store legal battle with a shrug.
Most said they’d rather see a grocery store go in in an area already saturated with places to buy alcoholic beverages.
But “it doesn’t bother me,” Michael Hendrix said when asked about the prospect of another liquor store opening up on Crown Street.
Hendrix works as a temp for a company called Brescome Barton. He was spending the afternoon driving around the city, delivering alcohol to package stores and bars.
“Every stop you see” there’s a place to buy alcohol, he said, gesturing to different bars and liquor stores within view near Crown and Temple.
A man named Alan who was on his way out of College Wine, around the block from Wine Thief on Church Street, said he can’t imagine another liquor store opening up downtown.
“There are so many,” he said. The Wine Thief — because of its affordable prices, high quality, and friendly service — is his favorite.
What would he like to see open at Crown and High instead?
Ideally another grocery store, he said.
Two other pedestrians near Crown and High agreed with that latter recommendation.
“I think there are enough liquor stores” in the area, said one young man — who asked to remain anonymous, and who lives at the newly opened apartment complex at Crown and High. “Some type of grocery store” would be a better fit for the building, and the neighborhood.
The other pedestrian said his take on the matter would hinge on whether or not there’s a way to measure how much liquor stores exacerbate alcohol abuse downtown. If they do, then another one shouldn’t open, he said.
What would he like instead?
“Some place to buy affordable groceries.”
I love the Wine Thief. It is so good that it will do fine in the face of competition. Competition is good. The new store should keep its license.