Happy Holidays! = Bar Crawls, Valet Crunch

Eating, drinking, shopping, and soon enough being ho-ho and merry are all roaring back post-Covid, which is good news for Downtown and Wooster Square and the city’s economy. 

However, that also means parking woes and complaints from both merchants and residents are on the rise. And don’t forget about the dreaded 8,000-person bar crawl.

Of particular real public safety concern is a new style of crawl of sometimes thousands of drunken revelers that have surprised the police: pop-up events that seem to have fallen through the cracks of the special permitting process.

Last Tuesday night those were some of the issues on the minds of attendees at the monthly Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team (DWSCMT) meeting, which was convened at the Ives Main Branch Library on Elm Street.

District Manager Lt. Brendan Borer spoke about ongoing meetings prompted by an Oct. 28 Halloween bar crawl in the Crown Street night club district that involved about 8,000 people.

The bar owners and promoters didn’t consider what they were doing a ​“special event” — and apparently weren’t required by current ordinance to do so, unlike with, say, a parade. That meant that organizers didn’t give city officials a heads-up about logistics, including numbers of people involved, routes, venues, or traffic control requirements.

“I learned about it from flyers or from the bar owners,” on short notice, Borer said. ​“We can’t have pop-up events without any sort of regulation. We are trying to get organizers to seek permits so as to reduce the chaos.”

Right now it appears you can organize such activity without a permit, said Kathleen Krolak, a city economic development officer who was in on the meeting with Borer.

Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell said she hopes no change in city ordinance will be required, because that process takes time and the party season is already upon us.

Borer said that in his opinion, roving boozers who interact with traffic qualify the crawl as an ​“event.”

That should require planners to come before the city’s special events permit committee of the different agencies involved, argued Krolak.

A group of Downtown and Wooster Square alders is also involved in finding a solution, and expeditiously, Krolak said. ​“This is a huge problem. The police department can’t just hear about it when it happens.”

That’s the case for longtime area resident Miriam Grossman. ​“The noise on Halloween was terrible,” and the response from the under-resourced police department too little, too late, she said.

Another holiday season scourge raised at the meeting: valet parking on Wooster Street.

At October’s DWSCMT meeting, Krolak had been asked by concerned residents to check into legalities of the practice. Many of the storied Italian restaurants and pizza purveyors on the street have their own parking lots. But some do not. Eateries’ valet parkers appeared to be nesting their vehicles in some spots zoned and permitted only for residents.

Is restaurant valet parking permitted there? participants asked at the meeting. The answer: Of course not! And yet restauranteurs cannot have customers if the customers are unable to park and get out of their automobiles.

So what about on the sides of Brown, Chestnut, and other streets adjoining Wooster, where hourly parking is permitted? And for how long? How long does it take to order and enjoy the saltimbocca at Tre Scalini?

Krolak reminded attendees that this has been an ongoing problem even pre-Covid. She brought the issues to the Transportation, Traffic, and Parking Department, and they are doing enforcement, she reported. That enforcement includes prohibiting Tre Scalini from using a patch of land, owned by the State DOT, across from the restaurant and adjacent to the I‑95 onramp.

One long-term recommended solution: use the often under-utilized (especially on weekend nights) parking lot at the Conte West Hills School nearby on Chapel Street.

Krolak said she had been in touch with the Board of Ed on the matter pre-Covid. Not only would the Board have to consent to the idea, she said. But the Wooster Street restaurants needing the parking would have to enter into an agreement about insurance and hiring staff to valet the cars. All that takes meetings and more meetings; Krolak suggested the local alders be brought in to spearhead the discussion.

Everyone around the table agreed that such an accurate inventory is both necessary and very hard to come by, and that included another speaker at the meeting, Max Teirstein.

Max Teirstein, who works as the city’s sustainability policy analyst and engagement coordinator, then began a discussion about a community feedback survey on where to place up to five electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, should the city be successful in its application for federal grant monies for that purpose.

That triggered another curlicue of discussion around the table, because one of the proposed sites is a curbside location on Greene Street at the north end of beloved Wooster Square.

Farwell asked what the charging station will look like, since that location is in the Wooster Square Historic District.

“I’ve no clue what they’ll look like,” Teirstein replied, ​“but that concern is great and I will bring it to the office.”

Farwell also pointed out that ​“there are no proper curb lines there, and that section of street is very problematical.” She suggested Teirstein look at public parking lots in the area instead.

Teirstein pointed out that having a charging station in the public way, which would be a first in New Haven, would benefit those car-owning Wooster Square-ites who have no garage space adjacent to their residences to install private chargers. 

Also, he noted, a station in a parking authority garage or on a private lot might involve a fee. That would be detrimental to the overall sustainability goals of the city to do all in its power to promote EV use.

“There are a lot of enforcement and policy issues” around charging stations on streets, said environmental advocate Aaron Goode. ​“Cables that don’t retract could be tripping hazards,” he said, by way of example. And then there are maintenance issues.

Farwell chimed in that placing the stations in the Conte School lot (along with the valet parking!) should be considered. Not only does the lot frequently have empty spaces, even when school is in session, she noted, but maybe income produced by a charging station could go to the school.

“Maybe we need a new ordinance to address these issues,” concluded Goode.

The next meeting of the group, when fuller plans to address these issues will be on the agenda, is scheduled for Dec. 19. Resident participants are welcomed and very much needed. Further info and details on the upcoming gathering can be found at: dwscmt@gmail.com