Paul Bass Photo
If Whalley Avenue turns a corner, a row of flower beds may prove an early sign.
The operative word on the avenue is “chrysanthemums.”
The beds of mums showed up recently by Whalley Pizza at Whalley and Winthrop, a corner known as much for shootings and loitering and rundown property as for bustling business. A murder took place there 11 days ago.
Yet somehow the flower beds remained undisturbed.
New sidewalks appeared around the beds. They remain clean, too.
Up the block newer signs have appeared at older businesses.
Neighborhood boosters lined up with city officials Monday to mark these and other improvements. They said that New Haven’s former Automobile Row — which has struggled to keep ahead of blight at the crossroads of four diverse neighborhoods (Dwight, Edgewood, Beaver Hills, & Dixwell) — is on the upswing.
The city put $200,000 into beautifying the corridor, which runs along Whalley roughly from Broadway to Pendleton Street, testing a plan to improve neighborhood commercial districts. Members of Whalley’s special service district responded by agreeing — get this — to raise their own taxes to help.
And they planted flowers.
John Vuoso, at left; Start Bank’s Lawrence J. Jeune Jr.(center).
John Vuoso (at left in photo), who owns a bunch of Whalley properties and heads the board of the special district, put up the $800 for the flowers to fill the newly constructed beds.
“This is just for now,” he said. “So they wouldn’t look awful.”
He spoke to business owners about the flowers. He urged them to help keep the beds and the sidewalks clean. Three months later, he reported, that has happened.
“If you look at each plant,” Vuoso noted, “not one has been touched. There’s ownership.”
From left: John DeStefano, Peter Dodge, Sheila Masterson at Monday’s up-on-Whalley event.
The plan is to put together a more elaborate flower display. Proprietors of two of the district’s bedrock businesses, Peter Dodge of Edge of the Woods and Pat Minore of Minore’s Market, have agreed to design it. (“I think it’s great that the vegetarian’s collaborating with the pork guy,” quipped special services district Executive Director Sheila Masterson.)
Vuoso also pitched the business owners on agreeing to raise the levies they pay to the special service district by 10 percent for the second straight year. They agreed to that, at a time when raising taxes is anathema in American public discourse. The district’s budget has risen from around $60,000 to nearly $100,000 in recent years.
He phrased the pitch thusly: “The street is looking awful. You have to spend money in order to make it better.”
The neighborhood buy-in was key to the city’s decision to contribute $200,000 in improvements, said economic development chief Kelly Murphy. Her department, the quasi-public Economic Development Corporation, and the special services district signed a formal agreement in 2008 to work together on the improvement plan. The results have included the sidewalks and flower beds; a cool faux-brick crosswalk to be replicated citywide (read about that here); as well as more attractive new signs and storefronts.
The latter came as a result of work with Clay Williams (pictured), who runs a facade improvement program in the city economic development office. He offers store owners 50 percent of the cost of front door, sign, window, and lighting improvements up to $30,000 if the merchants put up the rest and have their design plans approved by the city. He’s been making about three of those grants a year in the Whalley district, including the upgraded Minore’s and Best Gas signs.
As Mayor John DeStefano noted at Monday’s event, keeping Whalley “vital” is “something you’ve got to work at every day.”
Two key developments could lift that enterprise by year’s end: Start Bank, the new community development bank being built out of the ashes of the New Haven Savings/NewAlliance merger, is hoping to open its main branch at 299 Whalley by Dec. 13, assuming federal approval comes through. (Branch manager Lawrence J. Jeune Jr. and his staff were on hand at Monday’s event.) And word (unconfirmed) is that a new supermarket will ink a deal in coming weeks to replace the shuttered Shaw’s.
After a failed bank deal, Chuck’s may reemerge as a diner.
Meanwhile, two properties remain empty and boarded up right by the Winthrop and Whalley corner. Vuoso owns both of them.
One is the old Newt’s Cafe. Vuoso said he intends to tear it down, make it a parking lot.
The other building housed the famous former Chuck’s Lunchette (renamed Chuck’s Luncheonette in a brief later incarnation). Vuoso said he had a deal pending with a buyer who wanted to put a bank branch in the Chuck’s building, the interior of which he gutted and rebuilt. That deal fell apart two months ago, Vuoso said. “Somebody offered me too much money” and then couldn’t get all the financing.
Now, Vuoso said, he plans to reopen the joint as a diner again. Maybe even call it Chuck’s. Try to make it a popular neighborhood joint for all walks of life again. “A meeting place like it used to be. Nice and clean. It’s not going to be a $15-a-plate type of place.”
Who knows? You might just hear the ghost of a cigar-chomping cook calling out insults along with pastrami orders from behind the grill.
nice! we need more of these throughout the city. without beautiful and clean neighborhoods, our kids do not stand any chance.