They’d Rather Have A Starbucks

A developer is eyeing a Whalley Avenue property formerly home to a CVS pharmacy in Westville as the possible new home for convenience retailer Family Dollar.

The developer should not expect a welcome mat.

Alder Richard Furlow, during the first Westville/West Hills community management team of the year, delivered the news of the developer’s interest in putting in a Family Dollar — and threw out the idea of mocha lattes to go as an alternative.

The former home to CVS has been vacant since CVS moved a block away into a brand new building at the intersection of Whalley Avenue and Dayton Street. Family Dollar, represented by the Windsor-based Northeast Retail, is the first strong nibble at bringing some life back to the abandoned property.

“Oh no,” someone groaned at the management team meeting, which took place Wednesday night at Mauro Sheridan School. ​“No!” others cried.

Furlow had more news: The store might be able to move in by right. That means that there might be no need for the developer to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals for permission.

That also would mean that any meeting with the neighborhood — should the developer consent to one; Furlow said so far the developer has declined — would be a courtesy.

In an interview, Daniel Plotkin, the agent for Northeast Retail who has been meeting with the city, declined to offer any details about the proposed store. He said he doesn’t want to ​“muddy the waters” given that he is ​“nowhere close to getting this done.”

“Nothing good has ever happened to my business talking to people like you,” Plotkin said before hanging up the phone on a reporter.

Furlow said neighbors might not have the leverage they had in getting CVS to rework designs and definitely not the kind it had in stopping a Cumberland Farms convenience store from coming into the neighborhood if the Family Dollar can go in by right.

But if Northeast Retail needs to make any changes to the building or the parking lot, which has been a sticking point for previous developers, it could open up some daylight for neighbors to launch an offensive against a Family Dollar store — a store neighbors at the meeting said they don’t want.

Furlow said he’s been working with City Plan Director Karyn Gilvarg and the city’s economic development department to look at solutions to restrict the number of convenience stores on Whalley Avenue and throughout the rest of the city, including looking at other cities that have had similar concerns.

“We don’t need a dollar store next to a CVS, next to three other convenience stores that are in the area,” he said. ​“We need to raise the bar and put a limitation on how many can come to the street. We don’t need a convenience store in every block.

“We need another convenience store on Whalley Avenue like we need another liquor store in the community,” he added. ​“It’s enough.”

Furlow said the Family Dollar is of particular concern because of the condition of the store at Whalley Avenue and Sperry Street. Family Dollar stores are not franchised. They are maintained by a central corporate headquarters, he said. Many at the management team meeting expressed dismay about the unkempt nature of that particular store and one that recently closed in downtown on Chapel Street.

Lizzy Donius, director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, said unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be another developer showing interest in the property. She said it is unclear if other developers had been invited to take a second look at the property now that the new CVS is up and open a block away.

“CVS is beautiful. The McDonald’s went through a renovation a few years ago,” she said. ​“This whole corridor is improving. This [Family Dollar] is a step backward, and it negates a lot of the good work that everybody had done. Maybe people who weren’t interested then might be interested now.”

Furlow acknowledged that the neighborhood can’t dictate to the owners what to do with their property. But he said he is disappointed that the neighborhood has been out of the loop, especially given that it has been known for a year that the property would become vacant once CVS moved into its new digs.

He promised to send a letter to city economic development chief Matthew Nemerson expressing his opposition to the Family Dollar if the neighbors agreed.

“What we need now is an economic development administrator who cares about the Westville community as much as he cares about downtown,” he said, drawing applause.

In addition to Furlow’s letter, neighbors voted to draft and send a letter from the management team. Some neighbors also suggested that the letter press the city to look for other businesses that could effectively use the space.

City officials also could be hearing from Development Commissioner Sarahi Jordan Vega, who lives in the neighborhood. She said Wednesday’s meeting was the first time she’d heard that Family Dollar might be going into the former CVS building.

“People that live in the community serve on the city level need to know about these things,” she said. ​“It makes me mad. I will reach out to him.”

Not Out Of The Loop

Development Administrator Nemerson said that Northeast Retail has been in the picture for only the last two months. Prior to recent developments, the city had worked with the owners of the property to consider development that might have resulted in the transformation of the entire block that encompasses the former CVS site and adjacent restaurants and a shoe repair business, he said.

At one point, Chris Guerra, owner of Cilantro Fresh Mexican Grill and Dayton Street Apizza, was considering buying the former CVS property and expanding his business ventures on the block. But he died last May before that plan could bear fruit, Nemerson said.

“Other developers have looked at the site,” he said. ​“Nothing has happened. A developer came forward about two months ago and said he was buying the building and he had looked at a number of different possibilities, and the only one that came through was a Family Dollar.”

Nemerson said the developer looked at other uses such as another restaurant but could find no one who wanted to rent the space except for Family Dollar.

“I don’t think anybody was excited, but it turns out he feels that there are a lot of Family Dollars that are good contributing retail businesses in their neighborhoods,” he said. ​“We’ve asked if we could talk to Family Dollar to hear their strategy for managing it, stocking it, and maintaining it. I don’t think anybody has been wildly enthusiastic about the Family Dollar on lower Whalley Avenue. The parking lot is not maintained; there are no window treatments.”

Nemerson said the city isn’t against having a Family Dollar, but it is concerned about what kind of neighbor the retailer plans to be given the state of its existing store in the city and one that closed downtown on Chapel Street. He said that is especially true if it is going to be there for the next 15 to 20 years.

But he suggested that there might be an opportunity for neighbors to have their say even if the developer ultimately declines to meet with them directly. The developer might have to come before the city because a Family Dollar would be a change of use from a pharmacy. There also might be other regulatory reasons that the proposed site plan for the store would need to come before a body like the City Plan Commission.

Nemerson (who for years tried to stop a dollar store from moving into a downtown space on Chapel Street) said it has been a priority of Mayor Toni Harp’s administration to make sure that the Dayton Street/Whalley Avenue section of the neighborhood have more continuity and a continued sense of place. And the administration is still committed to that, he said, as evidenced by the city taking on the developers of the new CVS with its own development idea for mixed-use, commercial and retail space for that section of the neighborhood.

“That remains our vision for the neighborhood,” he said. ​“But we can’t demand that kind of development the way that some California cities do — the way Fairfield County can do.”

At least not under the city’s current zoning code that in many ways still keeps commercial, residential, retail space separate.

How About A Mocha Latte?

Furlow said he has suggested that the city attempt to get a Starbucks into the space. He expected neighbors to reject the idea Wednesday night; instead, several welcomed it.

“I am for economic development even at the cost of some of you hating me because I don’t like to see buildings sitting empty,” he said. ​“Sometimes we have to take what we don’t like just to move forward.”

But he said he’s committed to working on a long-term solution that doesn’t put neighborhoods in the position of having to accept any business that can afford the asking price.

“In New Haven, we have a policy: ​‘right tree, right place,’” he said. ​“It should be the right business in the right place, too. It should be a good fit for New Haven.”