Westville activists joined State Rep. Pat Dillon in Hartford to lobby for “Main Street” revitalization money as well as for measures to crack down on “nuisance bars.”
It was a two-in-one lobbying trip Tuesday for neighbors Kate Bradley and Thea Buxbaum (shown surrounding Dillon above) and Sharon Lovett-Graf and Anne Lozon. The four are among a core of neighbors who have worked hard the past few years to build up the center of Westville as a cultural and distinctive business neighborhood. New artist housing has been going up; new stores have opened. But a spike in crime and problems surrounding the Owl’s Nest bar have caused alarms about future progress.
Enter Pat Dillon. Working with the neighbors, she introduced two bills at the state legislature.
One, House Bill 5008, would give the Westville group start-up money to apply to become a “Connecticut Main Street” center. Click here for info on the statewide group of that name, which helps 10 designated commercial areas around the state with economic development plans, with a focus on historic preservation. The Westvilleans hope to expand the kinds of businesses in the Village and make the area more pedestrian-friendly.
Dillon and the neighbors testified on behalf of the bill Tuesday before the legislature’s Commerce Committee.
“Our Westville neighborhood may look like a cute little small town to someone driving
through on their way downtown, but it is in trouble,” testified organizer Thea Buxbaum.
Anne Lozon, another neighbor who made the trip to Hartford, is upbeat about the progress made in Westville Village. She has worked for years with this group. “But we’re really nervous about the current surge in robberies, and we have some vacant storefronts,” Lozon said Wednesday.
The neighbors then followed Dillon to the Judiciary Committee to show their support for Bill 6284, part of the city’s response not just to the Owl’s Nest but to a series of problem bars around town. (Click here and here for past Independent stories; click here for a different take, from the latest issue of the Advocate.)
They didn’t stay for the hearing itself on the bill, but they spoke to legislators beforehand. Dillon, who did attend the meeting, said the neighbors’ lobbying influenced the committee to raise the bill as well as two other measures. These measures, according to Dillon, would “expand the jurisdiction of the Liquor Control Board to regulate a license; expand the definition of ‘premises’ to a parking lot under the control of the licensee maintained for the patrons… and make the nuisance property owner liable for damages to an adjacent property if they fail to maintain their own premises. This gets to the plate glass breaks, etc., suffered by Westville Village merchants from the patrons of nuisance bars.”