Trading On Hope

Downtown Businesses Struggle To Reach City's Bright Future

February 20, 2005
By JEFFREY B. COHEN, Courant Staff Writer

If only Beth Belanger had a magic wand.

Because if she did, she could keep the doors of her New York New York Downtown Delicatessen open, she said.

"I could go, Sage-Allen building - whoosh! - and it's all lit up, it's all full and there's retail downstairs, and even the New York deli's over there," Belanger said, standing in her breakfast and sandwich shop amid millions of dollars of construction on Main and Trumbull streets. "And - whoosh! - the Civic Center is done, and there's a parking lot here instead of this empty lot across the street."

She doesn't have that wand, though, and two years after buying their Asylum Street business, she and her partner closed for good Friday. The foot traffic is low, the parking is awful, the rents are rising, so they're taking their business elsewhere, they said.

But in the small-business world, too late for one may be just right for another, and the deli will soon be a sushi restaurant - Toshi Japanese Restaurant of Avon. Toshi co-owner Teresa Lew is eager to move in.

"Three years ago, we started looking downtown, but now, maybe it's about the right time to start," Lew said.

Bets aren't won if bets aren't lost, and in the ever-changing street scene of downtown Hartford small businesses, despair and hope seem to exist in equal parts. Many small-business owners say that although the future is bright, the present is tough. Some owners are just hoping they can hang on until new hotels, apartments and a massive convention center open this year and next.

Nancy Tedd owns the No Fish Today restaurant at 80 Pratt St. For the past three years, she has had to take out a loan to make it through the summer. She just got out of the red last week, she said.

"The same thing's going to happen this summer, and my son says, `Why? Why, Ma? For what?'" Because, she answers, Hartford's about to change.

"That's the thing," said her son, Steve Tedd. "If we last till then."

"If it wasn't for the Civic Center and Hartford Stage, we wouldn't be here," he said.

Healthy Turnover?

Some businesses - including the deli, Xando's coffee shop, Song Hays restaurant, Hot Fashion clothing and a jewelry store - have closed.

Other new businesses - Toshi, a Japanese restaurant called Ginza, an Irish pub, a coffee shop, an antiques gallery, two gourmet groceries, a Vietnamese bistro - are taking a chance that five years from now, Hartford will have risen.

"Oh, yeah, we're definitely betting on Hartford, no doubt about it," said Duncan McKee, co-owner of the Hurst-McKee Gallery at 57 Pratt. He opened his antiques store in December. "I feel this is a safe bet, but any business is a gamble."

Ron Morneault, president of Business for Downtown Hartford, said thriving downtown is simple: Know what the market wants and know how to provide it. Do that, he said, and a business will succeed regardless of what's happening downtown.

"You're either going to make a lot of money here, or you're not going to make any money at all," said Morneault, who has owned his Asylum Street store, Tuesday's, for 35 years. "You're either doing a lot of business here, or you don't belong here."

"If you're going to wait for development to come, you're going to fall off that cliff real fast because there's nothing in between," he said. "You're either making it or you're not."

Ruth Schaefer loves to be optimistic about Hartford, she says, and it's not without reason. The Asylum Street building her company owns, where knishes are on the way out and raw fish is on the way in, has never lacked a first-floor retail tenant, she said.

"I do think there are places that need to be downtown, and they will be downtown," Schaefer said. "There are other places that could do the same things outside of downtown Hartford, and maybe that's where they need to be."

That sort of business realism doesn't take the twists out of Cynthia Ramirez's gut. She came to downtown Hartford in late 1997 and opened her frame store and gallery called State of the Arts, at 421/2 Pratt St., in 1999. She invested about $100,000 in the place, and the idea of walking away is hard to swallow, she said.

Nevertheless, she may still have to walk.

"I know in my gut," she said, tears welling, "I probably won't be here in two or three years, because I know they're going to triple my rent."

"What your landlord says is, `All these people are going to be coming in, your rent needs to be this much higher,'" Ramirez said. "Yeah, if I'm pulling down three times as much as what I'm pulling down now, I can afford to pay three times as much rent. But I don't see that happening."

"I've done this for 25 years. I've been in Madison, I've been in Westport, in East Hartford, and this is by far the hardest market to be in," she said. "And I did it purposely because I thought it disgusting that there were no galleries downtown."

Waiting For The Wave

Short-term endurance is what's needed, said John Palmieri, the city's director of development services. The newly renovated Hilton opens in March, the convention center will open in June, the adjoining Marriott will open shortly thereafter. In 2006, housing and retail will open at the remade Civic Center, and hundreds of new apartments will be available throughout downtown. Eventually, the people will come, Palmieri said.

"In the meantime, it's a tough slog and to be positive is probably to be disingenuous," he said.

Even if businesses survive, they'll probably have to contend with a new reality, he said. Big developers will want national tenants who can afford to pay the rent for five years even if one year is a bust, he said.

"They're not looking for the mom-and-pop, they're not looking for the small guy who has a good operation and thinks he can succeed," he said.

"Some people came into the city hoping they could get on the crest of the wave, but the wave hasn't yet gained momentum," he said.

R. Nelson "Oz" Griebel, president of the MetroHartford Alliance, sees the downtown of today and sees real challenges for businesses. Parking issues have been worsened by the removal of the Civic Center garage while that project is under construction, he said. But small businesses are always a challenge, he added.

"But the legitimate question that the tenant has to ask himself is, `Is this the best place for me to do business?'" Griebel said. "That's a business question. That's not a social question or a public policy question."

Hyung Kim and his wife, Junghee, answered that question for themselves last June when they opened their Rose Gourmet in the building they bought at 69-71 Pratt St. They're not newcomers to the business - they owned a similar gourmet small grocery in New Jersey for six years, and for 10 years before that in New York City, they said.

But business in Hartford is the hardest yet. Parking is awful, he said. Nobody walks in Hartford. Deliveries are hard to get.

Like others, he sensed positive change in Hartford.

"We saw a lot of investment in Hartford, a lot of development," he said, recalling his decision to move to the city. "But [the development] is still going on. This is not a good time for business."

The sentiment is the same one street over at McKinnon's Irish Pub. When owner Matthew Corey opened the place on Oct. 25, 2002, he thought he had the timing right. Soon, he thought, Hartford would be booming.

Now, the man who makes his living as a professional window cleaner downtown says another two years of this kind of business, and he'll close the pub.

"I don't draw a penny from this place. This place is carrying itself, thank God," Corey said. "But if Hartford stays the same for the next couple of years, I'm going to pull the plug. The money this place makes does not warrant my time. It's just not worth it."

The problems are the usual ones: The parking is bad, few people stay in Hartford after work, after Wolf Pack or UConn basketball games, after the theater. He's optimistic, he said. But he's a realist, too.

So is Daryl-Ann Hurst, a Los Angeles native who says she knows downtown revitalization when she sees it.

"I saw the renaissance in downtown L.A. in the mid-'80s, when nobody wanted to be in downtown L.A., businesswise," she said.

So when her partner, Duncan McKee, brought her down from New Hampshire to show her what is now their antiques store, she was hooked. She said she could afford to be a bit of a pioneer because all of the new apartment dwellers will need to decorate.

As they were getting ready for their last lunch rush Friday, Peter Slattery and Beth Belanger said they are looking for a new place outside of Hartford to relocate their deli. Maybe they'll be back in two years if the opportunity presents itself once Hartford rises. But, they say, they can't afford to wait.

"I can honestly say that, leaving here today, I don't feel as though I've failed," Slattery said Friday. "It's almost like a little sense of relief. It just seems that the longer I stay, the deeper the hole gets."

"I don't wish any ill will on anybody," he said, referring to the new businesses who see downtown Hartford as an opportunity. "But, God, I hope they make it."