David Sepulveda Photo
The crowd outside the Anchor Sunday night.
Yale University Properties tried for two years to help a tenant keep open College Street’s Anchor bar, but the manager just couldn’t meet the rent, officials said Monday. No further rescue efforts are in the cards.
The officials — Yale Director of New Haven Affairs Lauren Zucker and Yale University Properties leasing agent John Pollard — described the efforts in an interview with the Independent following an outpouring of public disappointment over the news that the Anchor, a storied watering hole since Prohibition days, served its last drink Sunday night. (The original full story about the closing appears lower down in this article.)
Fans of the bar launched an online petition drive Monday to try to save the bar. Yale does not plan to seek a new tenant specifically to continue operating the Anchor as a bar, Zucker and Pollard said.
The Moore family, which has owned the Anchor for more than 50 years, has no interest in trying to keep the business going or finding new management for it, one of the principals, Charles Moore, said Monday. “It’s difficult for us to run the business” anymore, Moore said. “If it’s not going to work, the family understands that. We thought we had made all the best decisions for the Anchor. We’re sad to see it going. But so be it. If something better comes along, we’re OK with that. The chapter’s closed.
“The bar business is a very dicey business at best. It’s tough on families. It’s tough on relationships.”
The Moores had hired David Nyberg’s management company, DWN Enterprises, to run the Anchor. Nyberg signed a lease with Yale in December 2012, Zucker said.
“He’s been a very sporadic rent payer since the conception of his lease,” Zucker said. Nyberg failed to make rent payments, then failed to meet the terms of a court-ordered stipulation, Zucker said. She and Pollard said Yale had made “accommodations” with Nyberg to try to help him stay in business; they declined to say what kind of accommodations. (“We’re not going to put out in the press our rent negotiations,” Pollard said. “We don’t disclose people’s business arrangements in the press.”)
Nyberg Monday confirmed Zucker’s and Pollard’s version of events. He conceded tthat he had fallen behind on the rent. He said he wishes he could have had more time to try to keep the Anchor open. Nyberg, once an active developer and property manager in New Haven, has been pulling back on his work here.
Moore said his attorney and Nyberg’s attorneys are currently discussing unidentified points of contention about the Anchor: “It hasn’t been a smooth road, I’ll say that.” Moore had no comment about the fate of some of the Anchor’s iconic inventory, such as the Rock-Ola jukebox. He added that his family has “always had great relations with Yale.”
Pollard said that Yale University Properties will seek a new commercial tenant for the space at 272 College St. He declined to identify what kind of business Yale would like to see occupy the space.
Pressed about its preferences for commercial tenants, Pollard said: “We do not emphasize having bars.”
“So many factors go into” choosing a tenant, Zucker said, including “credibility, facilities, experience.”
Pollard said Yale will not actively seek to find a tenant who would buy the Anchor and keep it going as a bar. Nor will Yale keep the business going on its own, he said: “The university cannot enter into becoming a bar operation.”
“We’ve made repeated attempts to rescue the Anchor over the years. We’ve proved that,” Pollard said.
“It would be totally inappropriate for me as a broker to try to go out and entice somebody to be the Anchor bar and restaurant,” Pollard said. “You have to let the market dictate that. The first time you put someone into a business that doesn’t work, you’re liable. David Nyberg couldn’t make it work. The Moores want to move on.”
Zucker said Yale notified Nyberg’s DWN Enterprises in the fall that it needed to vacate the premises. She said Nyberg asked for an extension through the end of the year to avoid having to fire people during the holidays and to give employees advance notice. Employees ended up not learning of the closing until hours before the final call Sunday.
Following is an earlier version of this article:
David Sepulveda Photo
The crowd outside the Anchor Sunday night.
The doors of one of downtown’s storied businesses closed Sunday night, as the Anchor Restaurant served its last drink to the public. At least for now.
Behind on its rent, the College Street bar pulled up … well, anchor … after well more than a half-century as a watering hole for actors, poets, and regulars drawn to its sense of history and unpretentious charm (which one admirer boiled down to “lighthouse-shaped lamps, blue vinyl booths and a neon-lit Rock-Ola jukebox”). It was the bar where bartenders from other taverns showed up after finishing their shifts.
The last round.
The word spread on social-media sites Sunday night, with tributes and regrets and calls to meet for a final drink, hushed tete-a-tete, or send-off celebration. But management threw out the last patrons (pictured) shortly after 8 p.m.
The Anchor had hit hard financial times and fell “a few months” behind in rent, according to David Nyberg, whose company managed the bar.
He said the bar did start repaying the bill, but Yale University Properties, the landlord, decided not to continue renting.
“We tried. We want it to continue. Yale hopefully will find an operator” to keep the institution going as the Anchor, Nyberg said.
Melissa Bailey Photo
The Anchor’s official permittee was Albert DiCicco (pictured). Reached by phone in Rhode Island Sunday night, Albert’s son said Albert has been ill and wasn’t available to speak. DiCicco was one of the managers with Nyberg, according to Nyberg.
Yale spokesman Jim Shelton released this statement: “University Properties entered into a lease with the current owners of the Anchor Bar, who purchased the business from the Anchor’s original owners a few years ago. The current owners have decided not to continue the business.” (Nyberg said the management of the business, not the ownership, changed a few years ago.)
“I knew this would all come sooner or later. It’s been an icon all these years,” said Charlie Moore, whose family has owned the Anchor for 50 years. Moore said his family still owns the business. “It’s sad to see it go. But all things run its course.” State records list a “still active” LLC run by Moore and his mother as the business’s owners. Nyberg confirmed that he and DiCicco work for the Moores.
In a conversation Sunday evening, Moore offered a snapshot Anchor history.
“The bar originally started in Woodmont in Milford on Anchor Beach. That’s where the name Anchor came from. That was back during Prohibition,” he said.
“It [was brought] to New Haven in the ‘40s by a man Al Levett. Al Levett sold it to my uncle, Harold Singer.
“Harold sold it to my father, Marshall Moore, and his sister, Kathleen Balunas. That was 1963.”
Marshall died in 2000. Charlie (who’s now 52) and his mother Dorothea then took over ownership, and have continued owning it since. They hired Nyberg’s company to manage it. “In David Nyberg’s defense, the city of New Haven has not made it a conducive business environment downtown. I’ll single out the parking issue,” Moore remarked.
After the bar shut down Sunday evening, patrons stopped to take last-minute photos in front of the New Haven landmark before the restaurant’s neon lights turned off for the last time.
“I just lost my job. I’m not really in the mood to discuss this,” remarked one of the bartenders.
Beecher Taylor, a comic who has lived in New Haven for five years and is past winner of the Connecticut Comedy Festival, was reaching for a different kind of punch line as he talked about the bar’s closing: “It’s sentimental. It’s a New Haven nightmare. The closing was abrupt and it didn’t give us time to prepare,” he said.
Jamie Arabolos, who has tended bar in New Haven establishments for 13 years, arrived too late to gain entrance even though she was familiar with some of the staff. Arabalos sported a red hoodie as rain continued to fall on her and those gathered outside. She called the Anchor “one of the best places to go when we got out of work.” Arabolos warned that “any places bearing vintage or original signs are disappearing forever.”
Vicky Allen arrived moments after the restaurant went dark. She said she wanted to come down to “say good-bye.” Allen recalled that she had run bible studies in the bar. “They were always nice and accommodating,” she said.
“I just heard and just got out of work. It came out of nowhere for me” said a patron of 11 years, who asked to be identified only as Charlie. Charlie called the Anchor “a different kind of bar where you talk to people and you build relationships here.”
At 11 p.m. people were still coming by to pay their respects, taking pictures of the place. and chatting with each other.
“I figured on the last night it would stay open until one,” said one.
“It’s got a studied decrepitude,” said Roderick Topping of Dwight Street, who has lived in New Haven since 1988. “It’s the old ‘50s New Haven that I never knew. I was appalled when they put in a new carpet.”
“This was where I met you,” his friend said to him.
“The second time,” he said.
“The time you remember,” she said.
A man with a beard came by and tried the door anyway, even though he saw the window dark. Two more people came by. They’d heard the news and had come by for a last round, expecting to find it open. They took a picture through the window.
Brian Slattery Photo
Charlie Moore’s favorite memories: Hanging out with Anchor regular Thornton Wilder. “Thornton Wilder and my father were best friends. As a kid, Thornton Wilder was just one of the guys. I never knew he was a double Pulitzer Prize-winning author. He was a great friend,” Moore said.
The Anchor survived the devastation of most of the businesses surrounding it along College Street in the 1970s. Then, when developer Joel Schiavone rebuilt the district as “Shubert Square” in the 1980s, he made sure to keep the Anchor there. It enjoyed a revival along with downtown New Haven since. Schiavone, an early proponent of the philosophy that came to be known as new urbanism, argued that locally owned businesses — like the Anchor, like Claire’s Corner Copia — rather than chain outlets, give cities a distinctive edge over the suburbs. Schiavone lost his College Street area properties to foreclosure in the 1990s; Yale bought them. In recent years Yale, like other landlords, has been filling downtown storefronts with outlets of out-of-town chains.
Click on the play arrow to watch Wally Lamb offer a preview of one of his novels in 2008 at a weekly “Ordinary Evening” reading series in the Anchor basement.
Have a favorite Anchor memory? Feel free to post a comment about it.
Brian Slattery contributed reporting.
Ah well, the place hasn't been the same since Dee left anyway.