Delaney’s Lot Sold; Revival Explored

Ronald Groves, who owned the property at the corner of Whalley and Central avenues in the heart of Westville’s commercial district, has sold the property for $400,000 to a company formed by Lior Israel, the owner of a local excavating and construction business.

Israel told the Independent Thursday that he hopes to build a new three-story structure on the vacant lot there with apartments on the upper floors and three restaurants on the first floor — including a 5,000 square-foot new version of Delaney’s Restaurant and Tap Room, run by the same person who managed it before a fire devoured it on Aug. 25, 2014.

The property has been a vacant lot since the fire.

Israel, whose excavating company is based in New Haven, said he has done construction projects both here and abroad, including acting as general contractor on a $2 million planned conversion of a former State Street church (across from Modern Apizza) into six condominiums.

He said he has been actively seeking tenants for the old Delaney’s property and hopes to have several restaurants in place in coming weeks. ​“I’m going to build it from the bottom up myself,” Israel said. ​“We’re looking forward to putting Delaney’s back in the neighborhood.”

The sale heartened Lizzy Donius, who runs the Westville Village Renaissance Associaton (WVRA). She had already met with Israel.

“We’re super excited to have a buyer at the Delaney’s lot,” Donius said Thursday. ​“It’s just been a heartbreak for all of us what happened with the fire. We’d like to see something, a couple of stories, multi-use, with some spaces on the first floor that could be restaurants. We’d love to see more nightlife, hopefully something that brightens up this whole corner. But also I’d like to see something that had a little public space to it, maybe where Central Avenue is.”

Groves (who remains in the picture, acting as Israel’s commercial broker) said he has been speaking with Peter Gremse, the former Delaney’s manager, about running his old restaurant there under the old name. He said Gremse ​“would like to work it out” and return to the spot. (Gremse, who for a while ran another restaurant a block away after the fire, did not return calls seeking comment.)

Groves said the building would probably need zoning relief because the old Delaney’s (with a long history, including a stint as the Cape Codder) was built before zoning rules took effect that would have forbidden upstairs apartments. Westville neighbors are expected to support such zoning relief; WVRA recently commissioned a study that called for zoning changes that would allow multi-use buildings in the district ​“as of right,” without a need for variances or special permission.

But even before seeking zoning relief, Groves said, he and Israel need to nail down the restaurant and/or retail tenants to commit to occupying first-floor space. At that point, the owner would draw up plans to seek approvals, he said.

“If anybody is interested [in renting commercial space], give us a call.”

“Place-Making” & Public Dollars

City Economic Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson met this week with Gremse to discuss the project. He said the city supports the idea of a multi-use, multi-story building, certainly over, say, an as-of-right one-story drive-through chain restaurant or store.

The big hurdle isn’t zoning, Nemerson said. It’s making the finances work.

In fact, he said, the sale of the property may have made the project more difficult to pull off. He said the city was hoping Groves would have kept the property and pursued the project himself as the owner, because, he said, Groves obtained $800,000 in an insurance settlement after the fire. If Gremse succeeds in obtaining $500,000 to $700,000 in his own insurance settlement, Nemerson said, that would provide significant combined initial capital to pursue what could cost $2.5 million to build.

In any case, he said, the city will probably need to contribute some money toward the project to enable it to be built, because the rents that restaurants or stores can afford to pay probably won’t be enough to support the full cost. He said the Harp administration is prepared to pursue public aid, perhaps seeking state economic development dollars.

“This is not going to work on its own,” Nemerson said. ​”We put money into businesses that we think are catalytic to a community. Westville Village is important to New Haven. This was a driver. It kept people there on the weekends and on nights. You have to look at the reality — if you pull out a 200-year-old building that’s been invested in in dribs and drabs and became economically powerful, and then is destroyed, there is a loss of equity.”

Nemerson argued that public money is needed to make a more expensive project work at the corner that would better fit into the overall vision of a dense, multi-use, distinctive commercial district. ​“Having that as a vacant lot or a parking lot or a fast food franchise has a different value from recreating an old-fashioned hangout that’s a Cheers-like hangout. Never mind Cheers. It was Delaney’s. Its own brand.”

A different builder is looking to convert the vacant former Key Bank branch across Fountain Street into a new restaurant with a Delaney’s feel, without public subsidy. Nemerson was asked if putting government money into commercial real-estate projects like this constitutes ​“picking winners and losers” rather than allowing the free market to determine which forms of businesses can succeed in the marketplace.

Nemerson rejected that notion. The ​“winners and losers” argument refers to public subsidies for ​“a solar energy plant or an electric car plant,” involving a government be on what technologies will prevail in the future, he argued. This is about ​“placemaking,” he said.

“Communities every day are making decisions about what constitutes a successful and functioning city. Zoning itself is a way of ​‘picking winners and losers’ by saying, ​‘You can build 20 stories on this block and only three stories on that block,’” Nemerson argued. ​“If all we want in a city are McDoanld’s and CVS on blacktop, we can give people a map and say, ​‘Go to the Boston Post Road.’ But even the Post Road is trying to create restaurants that look like real places. People want walkable places that have meaning to them”

“We have to celebrate the whole idea of placemaking,” Nemerson continued. ​“Anybody who was at Delaney’s or the Cape Codder — that old building with its creaky wood floors and its solid bar on that particular corner, there was a whole sense of human connection on that place. Yes, we will absolutely help to create a place like that, even if it takes some public money. If you don’t have that, what do you have left?”