The Fair Haven small business boom goes riverine.
Come the spring, this building on the grounds of the Fair Haven Marina will be open and operating as an independent store and restaurant. The aim is to serve, boaters desperate for their early morning coffee as well as landlubbers who forgot to buy milk and eggs the night before.
The City Plan Commission gave the eight-seat deli/restaurant/store its site plan and coastal site plan approval Dec. 17. The project now is all set to go, with an opening tentatively scheduled for the middle or end of March.
According to Lisa Fitch, whose family owns the Fair Haven Marina, the store will be rented to an independent operator who will stock it with high-quality grocery items for local residents as well as provide coffee, sandwiches and such for local boaters who use the marina.
Although the final decision has not been made, Fitch said she was leaning to rent the new restaurant to Madi and Mia, who currently run a food business on lower Orange Street.
Click here for the marina’s websitesite, on which there is a link to the likely-to-be-chosen food purveyors.
“Our idea,” Fitch said following the vote, “is to have really good food so the place will not only be convenient to local people, especially young families out for a walk, but will also ultimately be a real destination for boaters to come to our area. Our river is so fine and this spot so beautiful, there’s no reason we should not be attracting more boat traffic.”
Fitch said the store would also fulfill a longstanding local need, namely that “If you want something to eat now, you have to get in the car to go to Route 80 or go up on Grand Avenue.”
Currently the only eatery along Front is the Waucoma Yacht Club, whose beer and bar fare are available only to members.
Click here for a previous story about the proposal in its earlier stages and the the many young families coming to riverine area who have craved a local spot to get their small children a juice or ice cream cone.
For them, the Fitch family’s commitment to neighborhood and to prioritize access to the water, as opposed to selling the marina to developers, have made the Fitches a kind of local real estate hero.
Canoe and Kayak Storage Too
The deli, said Fitch, is part of a general upgrading of the grounds of the marina that will include new docks for the marina’s customers. Also, on the south side of the marina, adjacent to the Waucoma, Fitch is putting in a canoe and kayak storage rack. “You’ll be able to store your canoe or kayak for maybe $200 or $250 a year, and launch from the ramp.”
That’s a feature that could enable many local kayak owners to get their boats out of their garages, and free up that space for other things. Fitch said that for insurance reasons the marina would not enter the business of renting canoes and kayaks, only storage.
Other features of the upgrade include placing picnic tables at the south end of the yard, and at the north end, in a second building currently under construction, having another small store that sells common marina-type items such as life vests, batteries and so forth. On the upper floor of the second building, still in construction, will be the new offices of the marina.
Behind the new deli there will be a new dock with more tables, from which to enjoy the fare and the view.
Old Barge Preserved As Well
For those Fair and New Haveners concerned with local history, the marina upgrade will not adversely affect the fate of the old oyster barge restaurant (at left in picture) that sits shuttered and a little forlorn at the south of the yard.
“I love the area and especially our local history,” Fitch said, “and the barge is part of it.” While the marina has no plans to fix it up and is currently using it for storage, the old Barge restaurant, she said, will not leave Connecticut. “The food museum in New York made an offer for us to sell it to them,” she said, “but it really belongs at the Mystic Seaport.”
So she said her family resisted the New York offer, and is saving the barge for Mystic. “They don’t have the money now, but I hope they will when the economy gets better.”
The barge was built in New York in the 1920s and came to New Haven not long after. It was a speakeasy and then restaurant/bar for decades, after being moved onto the land. Fitch said that in the late 1970s and 1980s, Mystic Seaport acquired many of the facades of the old oyster shacks along Front Street where Quinnipiac River Park now stands. “Those buildings are now up in Mystic in the museum’s display. The old barge belongs there too.”
If anyone doubts her creds regarding the barge, Fitch said the façade of the new building next to the deli that will house the marina office is being designed to echo the façade of the barge.
“Maybe we should even try to find one of those old oyster boats, a sharpie,” she added, “to place on the grounds as well.”
Great news! Madi and Mia's runs one of the best downtown eateries, so would be a great choice to fill the spot. But they will need customers to really thrive there -- and more than just the number who live on immediately surrounding blocks.
In particular, if intersections in this area were made easier for pedestrians and bicyclists to use, then the customer base for the new store could quadruple, or better. The effective radius people will travel to get there is based, in large part, on how comfortable and pleasant it is to walk in the area.
This isn't just a theory: Take an elderly resident in the area, or a family with kids, for example. They might cross one or two streets with 35mph traffic and normal crosswalk (curb to curb) distances to buy a coffee; bring the speeds down to 20mph and narrow crosswalks down to the standards used in most European cities, and they'll cross four or five, or more. Actual studies have proven this time and time again. Grand Avenue near Front Street, and Quinnipiac Avenue on the other side of the river, are examples of the first scenario, while places like Orange and Audubon Streets are good examples of the latter.
The Fair Haven Master Plan that the City and neighborhood have been working on for a couple of years, with the help of visionary Alderpersons and City staff, provides a good blueprint for getting this done. I'd start immediately with bike lanes on the Grand Avenue bridge and better crosswalks along Grand near the schools. Taking the lead of what is done everywhere in Europe, the city could very cheaply use sand barrels and paint for now, until more permanent granite medians could be built.
Coffeeshops and grocery stores increase the value of urban real estate, not just walkable, safe streets. But the two are definitely related.