Thomas Breen file photo
Harvest Mart advertises its wares, with the help of a novelty-sized blunt.
Hassan Alsufyani wanted to open up a convenience store at the entrance to Westville Village.
But local zoning law prohibits such a use at that spot — so he now sells strictly tobacco, bongs, e‑cigarettes, and vaping products instead.
Such is the unwelcome fate — for store owner and, apparently, customers alike — at Harvest Mart at 841 Whalley Ave.
It’s not your normal vape and hookah establishment that features, as you enter, two large refrigerators (which are largely empty) and sitting atop them some 50 rolls of piled up toilet paper.
But that’s because Alsufyani, the operator of the mart, debuted his business a few months ago at the gateway to Westville originally to be a convenience store.
That plan died when he was denied zoning permission to operate as such. Then, he said, he appealed to the health department for permission at least to sell water and other beverages, but he was turned down there as well.
Thus the vape store, whose several LED signs now twinkle in the window, to the distress of some residents and officials.
“No drinks, no water, no food,” Alsufyani bemoaned on a recent afternoon in the attractive, well-lit store, its shelves teeming with colorful vaping supplies, novelty lighters, and, right beside tins of aromatic tobacco, a copious supply of Tylenol and Advil.
There are, he said, few customers thus far for these new wares. Another serious problem, he added, is that the store has been burglarized already several times in its short life.
This is not at all what he had wanted, said Alsufyani, a soft-spoken young man of 20 originally from the Bronx.
He and his partners, he recalled, had come to New Haven to visit a friend. They were not specifically looking for locations for a convenience store. There they were one afternoon enjoying a Mediterranean meal at RAWA. They looked across Whalley Avenue, and, lo and beheld, here was the empty and spacious storefront that is now Harvest Mart. (The storefront, which has sat vacant for years, was most recently a chocolate shop.)
Alsufyani had already purchased considerable inventory for the convenience store, he said , when he was told zoning ordinances would not permit that use in this location, and he was shut down.
Allan Appel photo
Hassan Alsufyani: “I wanted to do a convenience store. I did vape only after I had all that money in."
The smoke shop came about only reluctantly. There is another vape-ery hardly more than a hundred yards down in the back of the Citgo gas station further down Whalley, and others farther out, he said, gesturing down the avenue.
“I wanted to do a convenience store. I did vape only after I had all that money in,” he said.
And then came further rejections from the health department for a license to sell food and drink, which, Alsufyani asserts, other smoke shops in town are purveying. “The health department denied three times. I was thinking of getting a lawyer, but business is bad.”
City zoning director Nate Hougrand confirmed for the Independent that local land use law does not permit a convenience store at 841 Whalley. It does, however, allow for a smoke shop.
“The subject parcel is located within the BA‑2 zone which doesn’t permit the use of a convenience store but allows a tobacco shop as-of-right per the Use Table in Section 42,” Hougrand wrote in an email comment. “We are currently working on an amendment to the [city’s zoning ordinance] regarding smoke shops and the sale of tobacco, vapes, smoking apparatuses, etc. as a response to the complaints and issues surrounding the number of smoke shops being established within the city with the hope of submitting this amendment to the [Board of Alders] in the next few months.” The Board of Alders is the city’s zoning authority, and is ultimately responsible for amending the zoning code.
In a separate email comment provided to the Independent, city Health Director Maritza Bond said that, in April of this year, her office ordered Harvest to “close their business because they were selling food and beverages without a food service license.” Bond said the Health Department has not yet received an application from Harvest for such a license.
All of which leaves Alsufyani running a store he’s not thrilled by.
With few customers, he said, and new expenses for what he called safety devices he is installing to prevent further break-ins, the future of the business at this point is not so bright.
“I’m not sure I’m going to stick it out,” he said, meaning to stay in business the full extent of his lease. The landlords of the property are Prashant and Varsha Mehta.
Alsufyani said he would give it another month or perhaps month and a half to see if the business will pick up.
“If vape shops were [properly] regulated,” Westville Village Renaissance Alliance President Lizzy Donius told the Independent, “this location would probably not make the cut.”
She was referring to the store’s location cheek-by-jowl with the Children’s Community Programs of Connecticut, a foster care and social service agency, and also the Westville Community Nursery School.
And then there are the lights.
“It has a half-dozen LED signs,” Donius said about the Harvest Mart, “some large and blinking, that make it less than an ideal gateway to the village, and almost certainly violates the existing ordinance.” Vape shops operate in a kind of legal gray zone, and are a growing problem, said Donius, not only in New Haven but around the country.
Lt. Brian McDermott, who serves as the police district manager for Westville and West Hills, confirmed there had been at least three robberies of the store thus far in 2024. “Smoke shops are currently a preferred target for commercial burglaries both in New Haven and statewide,” he added. “The common use of cash in transactions is a factor for this preference.”
He termed the shop inconsistent with the vision for the area as articulated by Donius and the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance. He said “the business is inconsistent with the atmosphere the Westville Village business association has worked to create. … The association has made an effort to avoid convenience stores, fast food establishments, and other high traffic, quick transaction businesses, such as smoke shops, which are easily accessible in other parts of New Haven.”
Outside the shop itself on Thursday morning, a customer named Carlos was much more sanguine about Harvest Mart’s tailored offerings.
He had just bought a glass ash tray at the smoke shop, and was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, watching videos on his phone. He said he lives on Fountain Street, and welcomes Harvest Mart to the neighborhood. The smoking accessory products are “good quality,” he said, and it’s “a nice environment,” not somewhere you have to worry about going inside. It “makes it easier for people” who smoke to buy what they need.
Thomas Breen contributed to this report.
Outside, and inside, the Harvest Mart at 841 Whalley.
