Emily Ferraro hopes that homemade roast beef will attract customers to her family’s new deli. Thea Buxbaum, a local developer, hopes that the deli will attract more businesses to complete a long-delayed Westville revitalization project.
Amelia’s Gourmet Deli, near the corner of West Rock and Whalley Avenue and across from Edgewood Park, had its first day of business on Saturday. The Ferraro family was hard at work on opening day, cooking up homestyle fare like their own roast beef and made-from-scratch manicotti. The family plans to run a traditional neighborhood deli, with a personal touch.
Amelia’s is the first new business to open in the recently completed ArLoW buildings, a project founded by Westville activist Thea Buxbaum. ArLoW (Artists Lofts Westville) is a public/private project that provides housing for artists and musicians along with retail space for businesses.
Current economic conditions are making potential business skittish about moving in. Buxbaum said she is confident that Amelia’s Deli will be successful and encourage other businesses to occupy the empty storefronts flanking the deli.
Deli Debut
“Where’s the marinara sauce?” Jeannie Ferraro called out to her daughter, Emily Ferraro. It was shortly past 9 a.m., and Jeannie was finishing up her manicotti (pictured). The roast was already in the oven. Sausages and bell peppers simmered in a big pot on the stove.
Amelia’s Gourmet Deli offers a variety of hot and cold prepared foods, like pasta salads, lasagna, and chicken cutlets. They also have meat and cheese cases and they serve sandwiches, chips, drinks, cookies, canolis and other Italian desserts.
Bustling around the brand-new kitchen in the back of the deli, Jeannie explained that her manicotti was prepared from scratch. Even the noodles were made from her own batter, one-by-one. The extra preparation time is worth it when you taste the food, said Jeannie. “I want this to taste like it came from home.”
“We’re making everything as homemade as possible,” said Emily, busy finding the proper ratio of fruit to yogurt for the deli’s parfaits. “Almost nothing comes out of a box.”
The Ferraro family has been working for months to get the store ready, enlisting relatives to help with building, painting, electrical work, and publicity. “It’s definitely a family affair,” said Emily.
Running a deli is a new experience for Emily, a professional hairdresser, and Jeannie, who has worked as a nurse’s aide for her entire adult life. Jeannie said that she has worked as a caterer, but her cooking skills come primarily from having raised four children. Sal, Jeannie’s husband, contributes his expertise as a longtime butcher.
The Ferraros have big plans for their new deli. They’d like to offer fresh local produce in cooperation with the Edgewood Park Farmers’ Market, right across the street on Sundays. They plan to have fair trade, organic coffee and to start serving breakfast in the near future.
Amelia’s Deli is flanked by two empty storefronts, another small one in the same building and a large restaurant-ready space in the building on the corner. “I would love to have neighbors,” Jeannie said. “I’d feel safer about being open later… but the economy’s bad.”
Jeannie understands how people might think twice about starting a business in the current economy. If they hadn’t started putting together the deli project during rosier economic times, the Ferraros might not have started it at all. “If this idea came to us now, it would stay an idea,” said Jeannie.
Nevertheless, Jeannie is confident that they made the right choice, partly because she’s taken with Westville. “The people are so nice!” she exclaimed. “We thought it might be a nice neighborhood, and we were right.”
Development Delays
While Jeannie and Emily were preparing to open shop, Thea Buxbaum was barefoot in her backyard a block away, explaining the history of her Westville development project.
Buxbaum is the founder of ArLoW, an organization created to provide housing for artists (including rent-controlled units) and space for retailers in Westville. The project is a nonprofit/private enterprise partnership that draws funding from the state and from investors.
To add to their existing sites in the neighborhood, ArLoW built the two residential/retail buildings at the corner of West Rock and Whalley, one of which now houses Amelia’s Gourmet Deli. The other building (pictured), on the corner, is designed to accommodate a restaurant, with big glass windows and kitchen-ready gas and ventilation systems.
Delays in the project’s construction led to missed opportunities, explained Buxbaum. Now she’s having trouble finding businesses to move into the two empty spots.
Ground was broken on the buildings four years ago. Construction “shouldn’t have taken more than 12 months,” Buxbaum said. But the project was delayed for “a million reasons,” including a stall in state funding that led to a cash flow crisis, and the removal of the contractor for “not building it out to the contract specifications.” Ultimately the buildings were completed about three years late.
(More about the construction and delays here, here, and here.)
If the project had been completed on time, said Buxbaum, new enterprises could have taken advantage of what was then a stronger economy. “Three years ago businesses would have had a chance to establish themselves and then weather the downturn,” she said.
Which isn’t to say that it’s impossible to open a successful business now, added Buxbaum. “The opportunities are still pretty exciting.” The buildings have several assets that should attract new enterprises, including newness, location, and neighborhood excitement.
“The cost of operating in a newly constructed space is going to be lower than in an older site,” said Buxbaum.
Plus, there’s the buildings’ high-visibility location, across from the Edgewood Park Farmers’ Market and near the juncture of two busy state highways. Every day, 26,000 cars pass by the corner of West Rock and Whalley, each way, according to Buxbaum.
“People are desperate to be able to walk to get their dinner and to take care of all their food needs in downtown Westville,” Buxbaum said.
“This new business is going to be the anchor to demonstrate the opportunity,” she said. The slow economy won’t stop development, she added. “It’s just going to take a little longer.”