Neighbors Press Developer On Family $

Should a Family Dollar make upper Whalley Avenue its home — a prospect some neighbors have opposed— the building it moves into will get a facelift that includes masonry repair, a paint job and a redone façade, landscaping and a repaved parking lot.

So a developer, who seeks to purchase the former home of CVS on upper Whalley, told neighbors at a Westville/West Hills management team meeting.

“We’re going to redo the front façade so that it doesn’t look like a 1985 CVS, which is what it is today,” promised Daniel Plotkin, of Northeast Retail. ​“When we’re done it will be a significantly improved property.”

“We’re aware that the tenant we are proposing for this property, Family Dollar Stores, is not everybody’s favorite,” he said. ​“Some of you may feel it’s an inappropriate use, there’s too many of them, the two that we have are not well operated, etc. I understand that, and I’m sympathetic to it. I confront this kind of resistance often and we do the best we can to mitigate it and make the projects the best that we can make them.”

The 9,000 square foot building at 1168 Whalley Ave went vacant after CVS moved into a new store a block south of its old location. If Plotkin succeeds in moving in a Family Dollar, the old property will be worth more money and taxed at a higher rate because of improvements, he said.

“And it will provide a store that the community is going to use whether many of us like it,” he said. ​“Every Family Dollar that opens does a lot of business. And Family Dollar goes to great lengths to understand that where they decide to put a store that there are sufficient customers there to shop in it. And in our experience with Family Dollar, we’ve never seen them close one because it didn’t do well.”

Attendees at the meeting last Wednesday night asked whether Family Dollar is prepared to be a better neighbor than it has been in other parts of the city where stores are cramped and dirty. Not that neighbors had warmed to the idea of a Family Dollar, which Plotkin went to great lengths to describe as the only option for the vacant storefront.

“Is there a way to get a representative of your tenant here to explain to us how this store will be managed better and differently than they have been managed in New Haven?” one neighbor asked Wednesday. Plotkin said he’d certainly try.

A Family Dollar, Not A Starbucks

In a previous meeting, neighbors decried the news that a Family Dollar might come to the neighborhood. Some snubbed the idea because of the retailer’s reputation in the city. Others expressed hope that the redevelopment and rehabilitation of businesses in the corridor could attract a higher-end occupant rather than another discount retailer.

Plotkin said the nature of retail has changed dramatically in recent years, with mid-range stores and independent drug stores being bought out or simply disappearing in part because of the internet. He said that leaves high-end retailers who want to be in tony Fairfield County communities like Darien and Greenwich. Discount retailers like Family Dollar want to be in urban environments like New Haven where incomes are not as high,he said. (City officials for years pressed the owner of the building at Church and Chapel downtown to avoid renting to a discount store, in hopes that an upscale retailer would move in instead. That never happened, and eventually the owner in 2014 rented to a Dollar Tree, which has remained in business.)

Plotkin said Northeast Retail, which is based in Windsor, has built buildings and owned developments in Hartford, Bridgeport, Norwich, and Springfield. Family Dollar can pay the type of rent that will allow Northeast Retail the capital to buy the building at 1168 Whalley Ave. and make it viable again, he said.

Plotkin said the Whalley Avenue building is in a bit of a tough spot in terms of redevelopment. It’s only 9,000 square feet, which he said is too big for some retailers and much too small for others. It also is on a half-acre site and has limited parking.

“There are no retailers out there today that would drive a wholesale redevelopment of that project,” he said. ​“In other words, knock the building over, buy houses around it … and create a bigger site, or kind of what the CVS developer did.”

He said Northeast Retail couldn’t, for instance, move its own business to the 1168 Whalley Ave. building and expect to get the financing necessary to buy it and rehabilitate it.

“What ends up happening with buildings like that — and this is an issue across many cities like New Haven — is that you have to have a tenant that will drive financing that will allow a buyer or an owner to borrow the money that it’s going to take to buy the building and to fix the building to make it appropriate for a tenants use.”

Lizzy Donius, director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, expressed skepticism of Plotkin’s assertion that Family Dollar is the only game in town for the Whalley Avenue building.

“Just to follow up, though, there’s only a handful of tenants that you represent in this way,” she asked.

According to the company’s website, Plotkin handles site selection, development and construction management for Town Fair Tire, Advance Auto, and the Rio Bravo/Frontera Grill/Ocho Café chain of Mexican restaurants. One of Plotkin’s partners, Michael Sarasin, who also attended Wednesday’s meeting, does site selection and development for some Family Dollar stores in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, according to the site.

Donius asked if Northeast Retail had shopped the Whalley Avenue building to retailers outside of its established portfolio.

“There is only a handful of retailers that we represent,” Plotkin said. ​“It’s a different part of our business. Representation means we go out and find those tenants stores that they can lease from other people, not from us. I represent Town Fair Tires, so I do their real estate work. I go out and find stores for them to lease and negotiate their leases. And that’s my role.”

He said in this case Northeast Retail is not acting as middleman between the retailer and a potential owner. In this case, Northeast Retail would own the Whalley Avenue building.

“The role that I have here tonight is kind of a sideline for us,” he added. ​“We do one or two of these a year. We’re not a big operation. And it’s enough to send our kids to college and do the things that we need to do.”