City Prepares For Phase 2 Reopening

Starting next Wednesday, restaurants will be allowed to resume indoor dining, at 50 percent seating capacity and with tables spaced six feet apart.

Museums will also be able to reopen their doors to the public, so long as they have social distancing markers on their floors and maintain a one-way flow of foot traffic.

City Economic Development Officer Carlos Eyzaguirre (pictured) touched on those business-public health guidelines Wednesday during a brief presentation about Phase 2 of Gov. Lamont’s statewide reopening plan.

He gave those updates during the regular monthly city Development Commission meeting, which took place online via the Zoom videoconferencing platform as City Hall remains closed indefinitely to the public because of the state of emergency around the Covid-19 pandemic.

As recently announced by Lamont, June 17 marks the beginning of Phase 2 of the state’s economic reopening.

While state-designated ​“essential” businesses such as hospitals, child care, and grocery stores have remained open for the duration of the public health crisis, restaurants with outdoor dining, offices, and most retail outlets throughout the state began their partial reopening on May 20 as part of Phase 1 of the governor’s guidelines. Hair salons and barbershops were allowed to partially reopen June 1.

And starting June 17, as part of Phase 2, a vast swath of Connecticut’s economy — what Eyzaguirre described as upwards of ​“95 percent” of businesses in the state — will be able to partially reopen.

The business sectors included in Phase 2 are restaurants with outdoor and indoor seating, hotels, gyms and fitness centers, libraries, museums, social clubs, indoor recreation, and outdoors arts and entertainment events.

Just as in Phase 1, the businesses eligible to reopen as part of Phase 2 must limit capacity to 50 percent, implement ​“strict cleaning and disinfection protocols,” encourage those who can work from home to continue to do so, discourage employees with co-morbidities and over 65 years old from coming back to work, and require employees and customers to wear facemasks at all times.

All businesses also have to self-certify with the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) to indicate that they have read through and will comply with the reopening guidelines. (Click here for a list of all Connecticut businesses that have self-certified as of Tuesday.)

Some of the sector-specific public safety guidelines for restaurants with indoor seating include eliminating buffets and self-serve stations, posting clear signage about social distancing and cleaning protocols, rearranging tables to maintain at least six feet between customer groups or putting up 30-inch plexiglass or wooden barriers between groups, and requiring all employees to wear facemasks.

Some of the sector-specific guidelines for museums, meanwhile, include installing social distancing markers to keep customers six feet apart and to maintain a one-way flow, making hand sanitizer available at entrance points and common areas, and conducting daily health check-ins with employees to make sure they do not have any Covid-19 symptoms like fever, chills, or sore throat.

“Museums play such a large role in our economy,” Eyzaguirre said. New Haven’s many free museums not only add to the cultural vibrancy of the city, he said. They also bring to town visitors who subsequently shop and eat at downtown businesses. ​“Restaurants really rely on that traffic,” he said.

Click here to read through each of the sector-specific Phase 2 reopening guidelines in full.

Racial Justice And Economic Development

While most of Wednesday morning’s virtual meeting was dedicated to presentations on planned new developments at 101 College St. and at the former Coliseum site, city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli (pictured) did kick off the meeting with a recognition of the local and nationwide uprisings against police brutality and systemic racial injustice.

While much of the current local and national dialogue has been focused on policing and public safety, he told the commissions, the city’s economic development staff is committed to being ​“more introspective and taking specific actions to support a more equitable social and economic program on our side of the house.”

For one, he said, the city’s small business program, led by Deputy Economic Development Director Cathy Graves, will compile a list of minority-owned businesses in New Haven.

“That’s been such an elusive” list to put together in the past, Piscitelli said, in part because businesses have to register with the state and not necessarily with the city. Nevertheless, he said, the city is committed to putting together such a list so as to highlight in one place the many minority-owned restaurants and retailers and other enterprises located in New Haven.

Second, he said, the city has proposed a series of updates to its small contractor program in order to make it easier for local small and minority-owned businesses to bid for construction contracts.

He said the Board of Alders Legislation Committee is slated to hold a hearing on the proposed ordinance updates Thursday night.

Some of the proposed changes to the two-decade-old program include lowering the informal bid limit from $50,000 to $10,000 and allowing small contractors to enter the program after being in business for only six months, as opposed to the previous standard of one year.

“Participation in the program represents substantially more than a Contractor’s business name appearing on a list,” Piscitelli wrote in a cover letter sent to the Board of Alders as part of the proposed ordinance amendment. ​“Contractors are notified of bidding opportunities, both public
and private, have free access to bid documents, receive information on networking events with prime contractors and assistance in resolving contractor disputes, and can work directly with a more-established contractor in a mentoring relationship.”

Piscitelli singled out for praise New Haven-based artist Titus Kaphar for his ​“brilliant art” featured on the cover of the most recent issue of Time magazine.

He described as ​“a point of pride” the work that the city has done to help support the opening of Kaphar’s Henry Street factory-turned-artist hub, NXTHVN.

“We very much support and encourage any work the department can do in the way we work on racial issues in this city and country,” said Development Commissioner John Martin.

“We have a really segregated city,” he recognized. ​“Anything we can do to push and encourage” the city to address such systemic racial injustice from an economic development perspective, he said, the commission is willing to do.