If you build 11,000 square feet of commercial store space in the isolated West Rock neighborhood, customers will come. Won’t they?
The Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) is banking on it. But it’s not quite sure how their plans for 122 Wilmot Rd. are going to work quite yet.
At this month’s HANH board meeting, commissioners approved up to $68,880 for O’Riordan Migani Architects of Derby to devise a plan to build the store space in combination with 37 units of senior housing on this bucolic but isolated stretch of partially abandoned public housing projects by West Rock State Park.
Th 122 Wilmot plan is a crucial part of the West Rock Development plan, HANH’s most recent and ambitious attempt to replace the now-being-razed Brookside and Rockview apartments with a Monterey Place-type rental and homeownership mixed development.
HANH has experienced some setbacks in trying to get the plan going. And the recession makes for bad timing. Still, work on the $144 million West Rock Development enterprise is proceeding with the first phases, including the ground work for 122 Wilmot.
According to HANH Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton (pictured above), the agency hopes to attract a pharmacy, bank, and food store to the commercial plaza. “The right mix of businesses,” she added, “might also serve not only the elderly and larger West Rock residents, but the Southern population as well.”
Jimmy Miller, HANH’s former executive director and now the executive in charge of West Rock, added, “122 is at the very center of the West Rock community. Improving this site is absolutely essential to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the community.”
He said 11,000 square feet of commercial space will “put more eyes on the street, and more eyes on the street will enhance security.”
HANH bought the property from its owners for $750,000 in December. In early 2008 it negotiated the eviction of the only extant tenants in the squat brick building there: three small store-front churches, each of which HANH paid $20,000 for moving and relocation expenses.
Now HANH’s hired O’Riordan Migani to develop a design. It also has an RFP out to fence and light the extensive parking lot around 122, and an additional RFP out to retain a broker to assist in marketing the property to likely future tenants.
The task is not going to be easy. Historically, the lack of stores in the immediate West Rock area has added to the residents’ sense of isolation. However, if the only customers are those in nearby Westville Manor and the future residents of the 475-unit West Rock Development, will that be a sufficient market? What kinds of establishments can thrive out there?
Miller and DuBois-Walton have these questions very much on their minds. In email messages, they both expressed hopes that the stores attracted to the area to serve the frail elderly and larger West Rock community will also appeal to students from nearby Southern Connecticut State University and provide a link to people in nearby Hamden as well. However, Hamden has long erected fences by the edge of the neighborhood to prevent people from crossing the city-town border.
Miller said he hoped that the stores would employ 30 to 40 local people.
Miller said HANH had hoped to have secured leases for at least some of the space before building the facility. But given the current economic downturn, he called that unlikely. “It may be necessary first to build the space in order to attract businesses to the area.”
All the tenants of 122 Wilmot must vacate the premises by April 2, 2009, at which time demolition of the building will begin. The next question: What will rise in its place?
If you plan for cars and traffic, you'll get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you'll get people and places. Avoid developing an ugly, sprawling strip-mall built exclusively for cars to pull in and out of, and begin developing a dense, mixed-use series of buildings that look attractive. There's not much that's uglier than a single-story strip-mall with a parking lot between the building and the road, and I moved away from the suburbs to get away from that, as I'm sure many others have done as well. Put appealing stores like a quality food market, a restaurant, and a coffee shop, and a general store/pharmacy on the bottom floor (a place where you can go to get stuff you'd normally have to drive to Wal-Mart or something to buy), and have people live in two or three floors above the stores in townhouse configurations. At the same time, make the surrounding area more walkable so those in the community can access those stores. This is how I would design my ideal neighborhood. Those things, along with a city square, for neighbors to go out and meet, or a beautiful place to sit and read a book when weather is warm.
<p>These ideas of "New Urbanism", when properly used, create a better quality of life. If all neighborhoods in New Haven were built this way, along with traffic-calming devices and methods, it would be easy to walk to the store and get whatever you needed within your own neighborhood instead of having to drive everywhere. This is very important, especially when a lot of seniors are living in an area. There are instances in communities where seniors can't go anywhere unless they know someone who drives, because they are not near mass transit, and there are no nearby stores that are of any use to them, so this is important to keep in mind. As an added benefit, the residential occupants of each mixed-use building keep the street from going "dead" at night, like our "strip-mall streets" of today, where street activity drops after business hours. This street liveliness magnifies exponentially when you have things like outdoor cafes on sidewalks. So, remember, when you go to build, don't forget to build mixed-use from here on out, and that goes for every neighborhood everywhere. I'm not sure if I wrote this all very well, but I hope someone from the city reads this and begins to influence policies that are in line with this New Urbanist vision, as the sustainability of our city (and ultimately, of all cities) really depends upon how well and how quickly we create dense, walkable communities in which citizens can <b>really live</b> (as oppose to merely inhabit).</p>