Good news for downtown residents driven crazy by nightlife noise: Police have “put the kibosh” on massive juice bar parties for throngs of younger teens. But some neighbors, like Anna Souchuk (pictured), still find noise so loud they’re considering moving out.
At a public meeting Tuesday, neighbors met with night club managers and state liquor officials in attempt to create dialogue. But without key “culprits” at the table, conversation returned to previous paths: Neighbors complain of music, motorcycles and trash, leaving the burden shifted back to Sgt. Martin Tchakirides (pictured), who promised cops would “pour the love” onto offending bars.
Souchuk, a Yale graduate student and vocal objector at the last meeting on this topic in April, said not much has changed since then. She pays visits to a nearby bar in PJs, pleading with DJs to turn the music down. But her apartment at 900 Chapel St. still throbs with club music.
“I pay $2,000 in rent and I feel like I should be able to sleep at night for $2,000,” she said. She just moved in in February and appeared ready to end her downtown stay. “Should we move out of downtown New Haven?” she later asked.
One former downtown resident, Katie Lipcan, already has. “Because of the ongoing problems with late-night revelers, we broke our lease early and fled New Haven (we are currently sleeping peacefully in Branford),” she wrote in an email to Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark, who organized Tuesday’s meeting in City Hall.
Clark doesn’t want to see that happen to more people. She sees businesses as a sign of success. So she and the downtown management team organized Tuesday’s meeting, hoping to ease discord between clubs and residents.
But without the “culprit” bars at the table (invitations reached only a few, and the two that showed up, BAR and Hula Hanks, have reputations as being “quiet”), the debate didn’t happen.
A new noise ordinance recently passed by the Board of Aldermen sent a ray of hope. But, as Tchakirides noted last meeting, any ordinance takes at least a week to enforce, and the penalty —‚Äù a $100 fine —‚Äù isn’t much of a deterrent.
So conversation fell back to what Tchakirides, the downtown district manager, and fellow police can do: Keep fielding calls from neighbors, keep asking bars to close windows, and hope the two can get along.