As the country absorbed the news of the latest Wall Street bailout, New Haven’s movers and shakers threw a party, determined to put a hopeful face on the last chapter of 2008.
They gathered Monday inside the “Heirloom Restaurant” at the newly upgraded $249-$289-a-night “The Study at Yale” (formerly the Colony Inn) to unveil a downtown marketing campaign for the holiday season.
The recession was on people’s minds: Speakers at the event said that amid hard times, New Haven is going to proceed with a jam-packed month of shows, concerts, shopping, and celebrations.
“We all know this is going to be a tough year for the economy,” said Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander. So he charged New Haveners with two assignments for the coming month: “First, give more to charity. Second, go shopping… It is patriotic this year to shop and get the economy going.”
Alexander founded Market New Haven, the civic community’s marketing effort. At Monday’s event, dignitaries displayed four new slogans that describe four prongs of the holiday season campaign.
“Dazzle New Haven,” reads one of the slogans. It describes special one-time events like the Dec. 4 tree lighting on the Green.
Peyton Patterson — whose NewAlliance Bank has remained steady while other financial institutions have been collapsing amid the financial meltdown — announced that her organization will back a repeat of last year’s heralded “Unsilent Night.” Staged by the International Festival of Ideas, it’s a classic New Haven-style event. The “boom box procession” fills downtown streets with the “audience” “carrying boom boxes, each playing one of four musical parts to create a magical evening of ethereal sound.”
Patterson gave New Haveners credit for putting together so much activity during
“this very, very difficult time.”
“It makes you proud to be in this wonderful city,” she said.
Through Christmas, Thursdays will feature extended evening hours at downtown stores, caroling, horse-drawn carriage rides. The schedule includes “Luminaria,” the Casey Family Services-sponsored event “during which more than one thousand luminarias will cast a magical glow upon the upper New Haven Green, Upper Chapel Street and York Street.”
The new marketing campaign’s other slogans include “Encore New Haven,” to describe shows at area theaters, like “A Christmas Carol,” which opens Thursday at the Shubert. “Uniquely New Haven” refers to the “over 50 shops and boutiques” in the Broadway, Audubon and College/Chapel districts.
Finally, “Sweet New Haven” trumpets downtown’s restaurants.
Details can be found on the marketing campaign’s web page.
The recession — including the recent round of foreclosures, City Hall and private-sector layoffs in New Haven — felt a continent away from the Study at Yale.
Monday’s event was an opportunity to showcase the lavish 124-room hotel on Chapel Street between Park and York, which reopened its doors Oct. 21 under new management. A run on New York’s Strand bookstore helped fill the new bookcases with authentic papyral trappings. (Click here for a previous story on the transformation.)
Director of Sales and Marketing Anthony J. Moir reported that so far business has been good at the hotel, especially on weekends. It reached capacity housing visitors to the rededication of Yale’s architecture school. The recent New Haven “Restaurant Week” brought six national travel writers to the new hotel. Check out Village Voice writer Michael Musto’s rave on the Elm City — he called us an “upscale” getaway from down-at-the-heels New York.
Whew.
Recession or no recession, Yale’s not going away — which everyone from hoteliers to construction workers is banking on to help New Haven weather tough times beyond the holiday cheer.