The road to gentrified New Haven

By John Schochet

Back in the day, when I was a junior in high school, I had lived my entire life in a small suburb of San Francisco. I had heard that Yale's urban campus was unsafe, but I remained interested in the Old Blue, and visited the campus with my family during spring break. We arrived at the Colony Inn late at night, and early the next morning we set out for the Admissions Office for a campus tour, having not yet eaten breakfast. Nervous about allowing me to spend four years in New Haven to begin with, my parents did not see a single "safe" place to eat breakfast between the Colony Inn and the Admissions Office. I'm sure that they would have been happy with Claire's, but we didn't know that at the time. My family did eat eventually, but only because our tour guide directed us toward Au Bon Pain.

Next year, everything will change. Similar families walking the same route will, upon reaching High Street, feel the warm glow of suburban "safety" as they saunter into New Haven's very own Starbucks.

We all know that Claire's and Atticus have coffee which is as good as or better than Starbucks' blend. But when it opens, people will nevertheless pay more and go to Starbucks. Why? Because it's a chain. Visitors to the city whom Yale cares about—also known as prefrosh and parents—don't know which local businesses are good and which ones are not.

Prospective applicants from the suburbs venture to New Haven having been warned by their friends, parents, and guidance counselors that Yale isn't in the best of neighborhoods. It doesn't matter whether this warning is accurate; as long as people come with that preconception, everything but the Yale campus will look like urban decay. Starbucks and other recognizable chains are reassuring to visitors who are nervous about New Haven because of what they've heard elsewhere.

Yale Properties needs to figure out what it really wants to see in New Haven. Places like Starbucks and the Gap are associated with the suburbs because this country is only now emerging from a period during which the 'burbs represented wealth and safety. Today, cities are on the rebound. Whether it's New York's Upper West Side or Philadelphia's Society Hill, city neighborhoods are once again places where affluent people want to spend time.

Nonetheless, the stereotype of nice suburbs and declining cities remains strong in Connecticut, a state which has some of the nation's poorest cities and richest suburbs. The Yale Administration, Yale students, and New Haven community members would all like to see the Elm City jump on this bandwagon of revived urban life. But no one seems to be sure exactly what New Haven as a revived city would look like.

From the perspective of the visiting pre-frosh and family, Starbucks and Urban Outfitters would go a long way toward improving the face value of New Haven. Yale students and locals, however, are probably better serviced by Mamoun's and Yorkside.

The perception of New York's "revival" (the one featured in Newsweek, at least) is based more on the Starbucks which appear every two blocks on the Upper West Side and the Disney Store in Times Square than on the parts of the city that Yalies find interesting. Most newly-gentrified cities have gained their status by becoming urban versions of Westport. Cities can suit the needs of visiting avant gardes, their residents, and college students with local businesses. But Newsweek—or, in New Haven's case, high school guidance counselors—will not declare a city "revitalized" until the familiar shrine of Starbucks and the yuppie chains which follow it appear on the streets.

Yale and New Haven have to make a decision. Do we want to court upscale chains, become an urban Westport, and appeal to visiting pre-frosh families? Or can we buck previous urban revival trends and redevelop without the assistance of Starbucks? I don't know what the answer is, but Yale Properties is not even asking these questions.

John Schochet is a sophomore in Jon-athan Edwards.

Back to Opinion...