Allan Appel Photo
68 Chapel owner Benito Urgiles & Sgt. Anthony Zona.
Benito Urgiles asked zoners for permission to turn his now boarded-up ground-level space on Chapel Street at Ferry into a clothing store. He said he can’t find residential renters for a space that has been vacant since 1957.
Fair Haven’s top cop rose to declare: Terrible idea.
The scene was the Board of Zoning Appeals Tuesday night; the cop, Fair Haven District Manager Sgt. Anthony Zona.
Zona said he is concerned not just about the absence of parking, the narrowness of the roadway, and the nearby bus stops. He said he worries more about an ancillary function of Urgiles’ proposed store: cashing money transfers to South American countries.
The clothing store would also offer immigrants the opportunity to send money to Mexico, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guatemala.
“I have a high Latino population. They do carry a lot of cash. They are targets of violent robberies. To put a cash transfer place there is to be an invitation to robbery,” Zona said.
He said he has spoken to many people in the neighborhood, and his view is the consensus.
To deny the request is “crime prevention through environmental design,” he said.
In the end, the five commissioners expressed sympathy for Urgiles’s situation but voted unanimously to deny his request.
Technically the reason given: Urgiles doesn’t have a “hardship.” He could open his store at other available locations nearby on Ferry Street.