City officials parked themselves on Crown Street Thursday afternoon not by pulling up to the curb and feeding a meter, but by taking seats under an umbrella — on a fancy new “Parking Terrasse.”
Mayor John DeStefano, Jr., traffic tsar Jim Travers, economic development chief Kelly Murphy, and Meat & Co. owner John Ginnetti revealed the latest addition to the Complete Streets movement — the Parking Terrasse — Thursday at 120 Crown St.
“This is our first attempt at really doing something different with parking spaces,” said Travers, who met with Ginnetti, the owner of Meat & Co., to discuss how they could engage the community and “really create a sense of urban contemporary lifestyle” on Crown Street, where Ginnetti’s business is located.
They decided to place the Parking Terrasse — a parking space, cordoned off by large planters and set up with café tables for al fresco dining — in front of Ginnetti’s sandwich shop for a one-month trial run.
Travers came up with the idea for the city after seeing it in action in Montreal.
“You’ll see nearly blocks filled with restaurants that take up spaces just like this, and the sense of community that exists there is really what we’re looking for,” said Travers.
Sidewalks have gotten busy, said the mayor, and they are “actually stages that people want to sit on and do things on.”
“What businesses and people have told us they wanted is to be able to be outdoors, and what Jim and the Transportation, Traffic and Parking have done is say, ‘Let’s use parking spaces differently,’” said DeStefano. “The streets don’t just serve cars — they serve people.”
Ginnetti agreed with the mayor that people want to be outdoors, and said he wanted his customers to enjoy themselves and have the outside be a part of their experience.
“Sitting on the street, eating a sandwich is something we can do in a place where just a few years ago … it was very dark and sort of foreboding. Before we’d open, we always had our doors locked,” said Ginnetti. “I’m proud to be part of a city where the sidewalk isn’t something we fear, but something we celebrate.”
DeStefano also spoke briefly about how the city has changed.
“Cities are different than they used to be 20 and 30 years ago — even 10 years ago here,” said DeStefano. “We’ve got density and we ought to promote it. Using spaces differently is an important part of that.”
DeStefano said he sees no problem using parking spaces for innovations like the Parking Terrasse because “this is what people want to use the downtown for.”
“We’ve got plenty of space — we’re not going to turn over hundreds of thousands of spaces,” he said. “I think people like built space. I think they like active use of sidewalks. I think that’s why they come downtown.”
Murphy said part of the new Parking Terrasse initiative is to build vibrancy.
“People want to come to exciting and interesting places,” said Murphy, who referred to the city’s parking problem as a “problem of good,” since, she said, it means people want to be here.
Travers said he would love to see other restaurants take advantage of this new parking initiative. He is also looking to make structured facilities — where he said the city would rather have cars located — more inviting, in order to “create the vibrancy that’s going to exist on the street.”
Great work! There's an even better, permanent, one coming to Whitney & Audubon soon.
We need a lot more of these, particularly on streets where the sidewalks are too narrow. There are some good spots on Chapel from Orange to Church, Chapel from York to Park, Grand in Fair Haven, Orange St, Crown, and elsewhere.
Unfortunately they don't work well on wide streets like Church, Elm, and George (which were converted from city streets into what are essentially high speed highways, under McGrath in the 1950s) but that's all the more reason to narrow these streets and/or convert them back into two way streets.
This project, an idea mostly from the past decade, exemplifies why it will take energetic and visionary leaders to get this done in New Haven.
There's no additional cost to projects like this that improve our city, reduce the cost of living, and grow jobs and tax revenue - there's only vision and political will.