Finnegan Schick Photo
If you open an Upper State Street honor box looking for a copy of a dead newspaper called the New Haven Advocate, you are likely to find a dead bird instead.
Pictured above are the most recent contents left in the box on the corner of State and Bishop streets for the free weekly newspaper, which died in 2013
On the same corner is a clothing store called Vintanthromodern. By the doorway sit two flower pots and the green-white façade is fresh with year-old paint. Yet nearby on the curb stands the black newspaper box filled with trash, liquor bottles, and cigarette butts.
The box belongs to the Hartford Courant (itself owned by the Tribune newspaper conglomerate). The Courant was the final owner of the Advocate, an alternative weekly that launched in 1975. The Courant finally shut down the paper the December before last amid financial struggles and mismanagement. The company put a new sign — “CTNow” — on many of its New Haven honor boxes, and has been filling them with a Courant calendar-entertainment guide by the same name. Other boxes retain the Advocate name, and the Courant doesn’t bother filling them with papers. They gather trash instead.
“They’re really ugly,” said Melissa Gonzales, who owns Vintanthromodern. “It’s really quite shameful that the Advocate hasn’t decided to discard or collect them, and to leave them as essentially trash cans.”
People who leave their city-issued trash barrels out for extended periods of time are fined, said Gonzales. “Why doesn’t [CTNow] fall under the same rules?”
CTNow Director of Marketing & Communications Jennifer Humes said that for proprietary reasons she would not reveal how many old Advocate boxes are not used by CTNow.
Vintanthromodern, which changed its name from The Haven Collective after a legal altercation with a yoga studio by the same name, moved onto State Street in October 2014. The property is owned by Robert and Susan Frew, who own many buildings in East Rock.
Vintanthromodern owner Gonzalez (pictured) said her target customer is an East Rock resident who visits the store on foot or by bike. It is important for her business to have an appealing sidewalk outside, she said.
“This is a very pedestrian-friendly area,” Gonzales said.
Martha Smith, who has lived in East Rock for ten years, said business on State Street has improved. With the State Street Bridge almost completed and a new apartment building complex coming, Smith said, the area will soon have more business and foot traffic.
“It doesn’t do much for the curb appeal,” Smith said at an East Rock Management Team meeting last week, where complaints about the trashed Advocate boxes surfaced. “I would like to see them gone.”
At the meeting, Susan Frew said a CTNow box obstructs the vision of drivers turning left on Bishop Street and Whitney Avenue.
Gonzales said the demise of local newspapers has made unused honor boxes a huge problem in many urban areas. Cities like New York and Los Angeles have successfully converted metal vending boxes into small lending libraries.
Unlike metal New Haven Register vending boxes, the Advocate boxes are plastic and often leak when it rains. Turning the boxes into lending libraries could destroy the books, Gonzales said.
Gonzales is skeptical of turning the boxes into libraries or even flowerpots. Ideally, the Courant would put newspapers in the boxes or remove them altogether, she said.
If East Rock needs someone to lead a movement to repurpose the boxes, however, Gonzales said she is the woman to do it.
“I would love to spearhead an ultimate use for them if absolutely nothing else can be done,” she said.
The boxes are chained to utility poles, and could be easily cut with bolt cutters. Cutting the boxes could be illegal; Gonzales said she is hesitant to do it.
CTNow made it clear that tampering with the boxes without consent is illegal.
“[Residents] cannot remove or alter the boxes without consent from the Hartford Courant Media Group,” Humes wrote in an email message to the Independent.
Martha Smith speaking at an East Rock Management Team Meeting
Smith and Gonzales suggested many ways to improve State Street: putting benches at bus stops, placing recycling cans on the street, planting flowers, and cleaning up debris.
“The city does have a responsibility to keep streets cleaned,” Gonzales said.
City Hall spokesman Laurence Grotheer said that because the boxes are private property, the city lacks the right to remove them, even if they become a nuisance.
To beautify the Upper State Street area, Gonzales joined forces with Manager of HVN Lady Project, Kara Rynecki. Together they planned for an “East Rock Clean-Up Day” on June 6. A lack of community support made them postpone the cleaning to a later date.