Sanjay Patil (top photo) and Danny Scarpellino have been selling wine and subs, respectively, on College Street near Crown for the past 17 years. They and other longtime business owners are disappointed that they’ll have to move to make way for a planned 19-story luxury condo tower.
Wednesday night should bring the final city agency approval needed for Hartford developer Robert Landino to build the complex. The small business owners in the project’s path consider it a fait accompli; their landlords have told them to prepare to move next year so they can sell to Landino, who will level the entire block of College between George and Crown, across from where the city’s erecting a new home for Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.
The “Residences and Shops at College Square” would include 276 residential condos selling for between $400,000 and $1 million apiece, covering 15 floors; two floors of parking; and two floors of unspecified retail. Landino, a former state representative, has hired politically connected zoning attorney Anthony Avallone to shepherd the project through the city approvals process. The project is scheduled to come before the City Plan Commission Wednesday night, and the commission is receiving a report recommending approval of a site plan review. The zoning board already gave the developer a variance to build a denser project than allowed by law; click here to read that report.
The only possible remaining approval is from the State Traffic Commission; it hasn’t been determined yet if that approval is needed. Click here for an earlier story detailing the project.
The project would not only bring new tax revenue and a more upscale character to a stretch of downtown. It would wipe out a strip of small businesses with decades of collective roots — a fate that befell many downtown blocks a half-century ago during urban renewal.
Some of the business owners worry about finding new locations nearby.
Patil, for instance, is boxed in. By law, he can’t locate within 500 feet of the new high school. Nor may he relocate within 1,500 feet of another liquor store. That eliminates the area around Temple Street and the Green, because the Wine Thief is in the process of moving next to the Omni Hotel.
Upper Chapel and the rest of College Street are pretty much out of the question, too, because Yale bought up the retail properties there. It doesn’t rent to liquor stores.
Patil questions how the developers of College Square will sell half-million or million-dollar condos near so many bars.
Sue Price has a hunch how. She thinks the city will gradually try to push all the bars out — the way TK’s American Cafe, the sports bar she has run for 10 years, will now have to move. Her lease runs out in December; the building’s coming down to make way for College Square.
She’d like to stay downtown because the area has no other sports bar, she said.
“All my regulars, they don’t want to leave,” she said. “All my Minnesota fans, they’ve been coming here for 10 years. I think luxury apartments are ridiculous downtown. But the city’s going to do it.
“But everything happens for a reason. I’ll be in a nice new building. Hopefully. Or else I’ll make babies.” Price just got married.
Danny Scarpellino had been hanging on at his current location hoping to lure new business from the new school. Now he’ll have to move before the school opens. Like his neighbors, he plans to seek an other nearby location, if he can find one. He’d like to come back in the new building. “That would be nice,” he said, “to be on the ground floor of a building with million-dollar condos.”
“We’re not going to stop the project, little guys like us,” reflected Scarpellino, whose sub shop has been in business at various downtown locations since the late 1970s. “Progress will be made with us or without us. Overall, I think it’s probably a good thing.”
Antonio DeMasi has no qualms about the new project. He knew it was coming when he moved his Italian designer-clothing store, The Suit Maker, into the strip a month ago, renting from his friend, Jimmy Salatto.
DeMasi figured he’d spend eight months seeking to build a clientele. “I look at it as more of an opportunity,” he said. If they like us, they’ll follow us.”
Evelyn Cooperstock already has those loyal customers at her store, Cooper’s Dress Shop. More than four decades worth of loyal customers. She and her late husband built up their clientele since they opened their shop — the first one at the then-new Urban Renewal-era strip — on March 2, 1962.
Cooperstock is now — well, she didn’t want to say how old she is. Nor did she want her picture taken. Not yet, anyway; she didn’t know a photographer was coming. She did want to talk about how she loves her store. She promised to dress appropriately for a picture in time for the store’s 45th anniversary party in March, not long before she’ll have to pull up stakes.
She fully intends to find a new location, though it may not be in New Haven.
Some of Cooperstock’s loyal customers are locals who wait up to four hours for a fitting for a prom, wedding, or bar or bat mitzvah celebration gown in this basement space. Others travel quite a distance. “I do a lot of business with people from Vermont. Long Island? Forget! They come to me in droves. By appointment.”
Tuesday afternoon she was interrupted by one of those loyal New York customers, a transvestite from New York. Brandishing a camera, he showed Cooperstock video footage a recent dance performance he gave in New York wearing one of her gowns. Then he went to a dressing room for a fitting.
Cooperstock said she’s “disappointed” about having to move. “This is like home,” she said. “More than home.“ Urban renewal tore down the building where her family dress shop was based in the early ’60s and brought her to College Street in the first place. Like that wave of displacement, this one has a fleeting sense of roots and homes.
It seems so strange to me that our city's government continues to welcome the creation of high-priced residential units, when really what we need is quality, affordable housing. But as Mr. Scarpellino said, "little guys" are forgotten. Thousands of city residents struggle to afford to live here; yet the city and the developers it attracts continue to cater to the rich. How much can the elastic stretch?