nothin Cedar Hill To City: S.O.S. | New Haven Independent

Cedar Hill To City: S.O.S.

State Street between Warren Place and May Street.

Cedar Hill is in its worst shape in half a century, and its few remaining business owners desperately need the city’s help.

They also need to convince city zoners to reconsider a decision that’s preventing an investor from expanding a gas station with a 24-hour convenience store.

Merchants from the pocket-sized neighborhood at the eastern end of New Haven’s Hamden border delivered that message Thursday to city economic development and anti-blight officials during an emotional hour-and-a-half-long meeting.

The Cedar Hill Merchants Association and East Rock Alder Anna Festa convened the meeting in the basement conference room of Leeway’s palliative care center at 40 Albert St. to discuss the dire situation of a neighborhood criss-crossed by highway overpasses and East Rock Park. They described streets beset with drug dealing, prostitution, blighted properties, and unstable businesses.

Tuesday’s meeting in Leeway’s basement conference room.

We’re at an all-time low,” said Marie Gallo of Gallo’s Appliances, which has been at 1362 State St. for 45 years. This neighborhood is at an all-time low.”

It’s never been as bad as the last few years,” said George Menta of New Haven Funeral Service, which has also been in the neighborhood for four decades.

People don’t want to come here,” said David Sloane, the president of the merchants association and the owner of American Flag Antiques, which has been at 1355 State St. for over 30 years.

City econ dev officer Clayton Williams and Marie Gallo.

City Small Business Development Officer Clayton Williams said that the merchants association and the city originally set up the meeting to talk about continued problems at the parking lot at State Street and May Street.

Gallo said that the merchants association spends around $100 each month cleaning up the city-owned parking lot, but that the neighborhood homeless population continues to use the space as a dumping ground.

She said that someone lived for a few weeks out of an RV parked in the lot, and that the space is a hot spot for drug deals and prostitution, even in the afternoon.

The homeless people are taking over Cedar Hill,” she said. We feel like we’re fighting a losing battle.”

LCI’s Frank D’Amore and New Haven Funeral Service’s George Menta.

I couldn’t believe the illegal activity,” Frank D’Amore, deputy director of the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI), said about a recent visit he made to the parking lot.

They’ll do drugs right out in the open,” Gallo said.

Gallo said Cedar Hill’s problems are not limited to the State-May parking lot.

She said that just last week, someone vomited on the sidewalk outside of her appliance store; someone else urinated on her business’s front door; and a third person defecated behind one of her dumpsters, and then covered the excrement with a piece of cardboard.

If the merchants aren’t feeling safe,” she asked, how are our customers, how are our clients, how are the people coming to visit us supposed to feel safe?”

Festa said that she recently went on a walking tour of the neighborhood with the district’s new top cop, Lt. Manmeet Colon. Within minutes, she said, they saw open-air drug deals on Cedar Hill Avenue, piles of trash dumped behind the highway on-ramp off of Warren Place, and people sitting and drinking beer on the sidewalk outside of the package store on State Street between Warren and May.

I’m exhausted and I’m frustrated,” Festa said. It’s incredibly frustrating not getting support from the city.”

Festa said that, based on her walk with Colon, she would like to see the city do tree trimming and add more lighting to Grace Street, add garbage cans to the State-May parking lot (the last few have been stolen), help provide another little library for State Street (the last one was stolen), encourage state and federal regulators to investigate some of the markets on Cedar Hill’s stretch of State Street to see if any are selling loose cigarettes or other illegal substances, and crack down on drug dealers working out of homes on Cedar Hill Avenue and Grace Street.

Hoping For 7‑Eleven

The current gas station and kiosk at State and Ferry.

Most of the business owners present said that they saw a great opportunity for a new, reliable business to come in and help anchor the neighborhood when PMG Petroleum, the Virginia-based company that bought the gas station at the corner of Ferry Street and State Street last year for $1.55 million, proposed demolishing the station’s current take-out kiosk and building a new convenience store to be operated by a 7‑Eleven or a Circle K.

But that vision for a national chain-operated convenience store at the center of the neighborhood was dashed, at least temporarily, on Tuesday night when the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) denied the property manager’s application for a special exception to keep the new prospective convenience store open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The BZA turned down the application at least in part due to the testimony of three neighborhood advocates and the neighborhood’s former top cop, Lt. Renee Dominguez, all of whom expressed concern that a 24-hour store might attract more illicit activity to the intersection. They argued that the late-night activity means trouble, the effects of which they have to live with.

Armand Keurian, PMG’s director of development, told the Independent by phone that the company will most likely not build a new convenience store if it cannot get approval to keep that store open 24 hours a day.

The BZA’s approved hours of 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., he said, would make the company’s planned $2 million-plus investment in a new property not worth it because of the revenue it would lose out on in late night and early morning sales.

But before the company drops the convenience store idea entirely and resigns itself to running the current 24-hour kiosk as is, he said, it will try to solicit support from current neighbors and business owners who would be willing to come before the BZA to speak in favor of a subsequent special exception request.

When a site is 24 hours,” he said, it’s manned with people there 24 hours a day to keep an eye on the property and surrounding area.” He said a 24-hour store is better lit than one that closes late at night, and that the landlords would be willing to share security camera footage with city police.

No neighbors, including those who spoke out at BZA, were present at Thursday’s meeting. The business owners in the room all praised the idea of a 24-hour national-chain convenience store coming to the neighborhood, and lamented the BZA’s recent disapproval.

The 24-hour convenience store is a legitimate business,” Gallo said. We may see the demise of some of the mom-and-pop” package stores across the street.

As president of the merchants association, Sloane said the group is fully in support of the new convenience store, and if that store will only open if PMG gets the 24-hour special exception, then the group supports that too.

We absolutely support it,” said city Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson. He said that he did not realize that there was going to be opposition to the special exception request at Tuesday’s meeting. If he had known, he said, he would have sent someone from his department to speak up on the proposal’s behalf.

East Rock Alder Festa and Economic Development Administrator Nemerson.

After the meeting, Festa told the Independent that she is still on the fence as to whether or not the neighborhood really needs a 24-hour convenience store at its center.

If the residents feel 24 hours is not a good thing for their quality of life,” she wrote via text message, then it needs to be respected. If this project moves forward with the store closing at 11 p.m. and things go well and safety is maintained, there is no reason for the developer to ask again for a 24 hour exception. Trust needs to be earned and the residents want to be sure that they have good neighbors.’ They deserve that much in a challenging area.”

Solutions: Paid Parking?

At the end of the meeting, Nemerson and the group came up with a list of immediate follow up items that might work to address some of the business owners’ most pressing concerns about the state of the neighborhood.

First, he said, he will talk to the New Haven Parking Authority about adding a pay box to the State-May parking lot so that drivers will have to enter their credit card and license plate information upon parking. Currently, the lot is free for anyone to use.

Nemerson said that some payment and authentication system will discourage parkers from staying there for days and weeks at a time, and will provide the parking authority with a financial incentive to maintain the lot.

If we could have one clean, curated, stable place in the middle” of the neighborhood, he said, that might have positive knock-on effects for the surrounding blocks.

Second, he said, he will reach out to Building Official Jim Turcio about a half-built commercial laundry building at the corner of State and Warren.

If it’s a half-built building,” he said. It has to be boarded up.”

State Street between Warren Place and May Street.

Third, Festa said she will keep reaching out to city police and asking for more frequent law enforcement visits to the stretch of State Street between May and Warren, where there are two package stores side-by-side and people frequently gather to drink on the sidewalk.

Fourth, Nemerson and Festa said they will reach out to the city parks department to add Grace Street as a priority location for tree trimming.

State-owned property beside I-91 in Cedar Hill.

Fifth, Nemerson encouraged the group to ask State Rep. Roland Lemar, who represents the area, to walk the neighborhood with a state Department of Transportation (DOT) maintenance worker and inspect all of the different properties adjacent to the highway ramps and underpasses that are littered with trash, overgrown with weeds, and that are frequent destinations for drug dealing, prostitution, and homeless encampments.

DOT maintenance people control a lot of land” in this neighborhood, Nemerson said. He said that the city, the alders, and the residents and business owners should all work together to pressure the state to clean up state-owned parcels near highways, particularly in neighborhoods like Cedar Hill, which has multiple underpasses and on-ramps at its center.

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