Paul Bass Photo
The Synergists -- music promoter Keith Mahler and restaurateur Claire Criscuolo -- with city's Cathy Graves outside College Street Music Hall for Wednesday's presser.
Downtown boosters stood outside amid the rain Wednesday to proclaim the start of outdoor dining season.
The boosters didn’t get wet. They held a press conference under the protective awning of the College Street Music Hall. That proved an apt location to make the press conference’s central point: College Street’s thriving arts and nightlife scene is boosting the dining scene, and the economy in general.
The city has approved applications for 23 restaurants to have outdoor dining. Another 20 applications are in the pilot. Most of the restaurants are Downtown, with some others in Fair Haven, East Rock and Westville.
New Haven “ramped up outdoor dining during Covid” and has kept up the momentum, Mayor Justin Elicker said. “You see how vibrant our community is because of all these small restaurants and businesses.”
He and others cited the steady return (and increasing number) of live performances since the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic at the Music Hall and the Shubert Theatre across the street as helping bring people and dollars Downtown.
The Shubert reported 109 “lit nights” with live performances during 2022 – 23 season. The number has already hit 137 for the current fiscal year, with more events planned in the final two months.
College Street Music Hall was lit up for 95 nighttime shows in 2023, with 150 events overall counting daytime events, according to Keith Mahler of Manic Presents, which books that venue as well as the Westville Music Bowl.
Mahler released an economic impact study of shows at both venues in 2023. The report, prepared by Quinnipiac University Professor Mark Paul Gius, drew on a survey of 602 attendees about how much money they spent while in town for concerts. Calculating the average expenditure from this sample, then multiplying it by the total number of visitors, Gius concluded that $32.7 million flowed into the city from visitors to the two venues. (58 percent of that total went for ticket revenues.) That number more than tripled the figure from a similar 2018 study, which found a $10.35 million direct impact.
The study featured a squishier number common to economic impact statements: the projected “multiplier effect.” Researchers draw that figure by taking an agreed-upon regional multiplier for guessing how much other spending and job-creation typically occurs thanks to shows staged by performing arts companies. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis puts that multiplier at 1.5511. Gius used that number to add an “induced economic impact” of $18 million from the two New Haven venues in 2023, bringing the alleged total economic impact at $50 million, with an alleged 922 jobs created.
However you parse the numbers, lots of people are coming to do lots of stuff on College Street and elsewhere Downtown, especially at night beginning in the middle of the week.
“When you have this kind of synergy” between theaters and restaurants and shops, “everyone wins,” proclaimed Claire Crisucolo, who runs Claire’s Corner Copia vegetarian restaurant.
Pacifico and Villa Lulu are two of the College Street restaurants returning for another season of outdoor dining. Karol Larrea, who manages both restaurants, said she found the application process frustrating this year, taking more than a month and requiring repeated resubmissions. She recommended that the city streamline the process by having fewer departments involved and not requiring new architectural drawings each year. City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli said his office reviews the status of applications weekly to identify people who need help working through the process. He said the city needs to adhere to “a high safety standard” to make sure that, for instance, pedestrians can navigate sidewalks and to guarantee access for people with disabilities.
Yale, meanwhile, has planned a series of store openings in the Broadway, College Street, and Whitney/Audubon portions of Downtown in coming weeks, announced University Properties Director David DelVecchio. They include a 7500-square-foot outlet of the 2nd Street USA vintage clothing store next door to J. Press on Elm Street and the city’s first plant-based ice cream shop, on Whitney.