Applicant Villanueva: Spot is a "gold mine" 
Landlord Marty Halprin: Time to look for another potential tenant. A new smoke shop won’t be able to open up next to a methadone clinic and a strip club — after city zoners stamped out the latest bid to convert a vacant storefront into a tobacco sales “gold mine.”
The Board of Zoning Appeals took that vote Tuesday night during its latest monthly meeting, held on the second floor of City Hall.
Commissioners cited concerns that the presence of the shop would deteriorate an already fragile public safety situation along an industrial strip on East Street, in the Mill River district at the edge of Wooster Square.
The move to deny the application comes as New Haven reckons with an explosion of smoke shops across the city. Alders are on the brink of passing a new set of zoning regulations that could effectively bar new smoke shops from opening in town (except for on one block of Water Street by I‑95). And, at the very same time as Tuesday night’s zoning meeting, across the hall at City Hall, committee alders held a public hearing on a proposed new Health Department licensing program for existing smoke shops.
The local legislation plan mirrors efforts in other Connecticut cities and towns, like Stamford and Westport, to curb the proliferation of the shops since the state legalized recreational cannabis use in July 2021.
Back at Tuesday’s BZA meeting, meanwhile, smoke shop applicant Jose Villanueva sought a variance to turn the former Jack A Halprin Inc. office at 301 – 311 East St. into a vaporium that would primarily service customers of the methadone clinic and the Catwalk strip club, which are both right next door.
In particular, Villanueva had applied for a use variance to permit a tobacco shop use within a light industrial zone at 301 – 311 East, which is owned by Halprin’s company.
In cross examining Villanueva, commissioners questioned the decision to push for a late-night smoke shop on a block that they consider a “hot spot” of illicit activity.
Catwalk, which shares a parking lot with the office and leased its space from Halprin years ago, was the site of a double murder more than a decade and a half ago, which Halprin’s company was found liable for back in 2018 by the Connecticut Superior Court. Next door to Catwalk is the New Era Rehabilitation Center, an addiction treatment facility that provides outpatient support and mental health services.
Villanueva told the board that security was his “main goal” and that “there’ll probably be 16 cameras all around anyways.” He cited his previous business ventures in the city, including a print store and a barber shop that he’s run, that gave him the chops to get the thing off the ground, which he said, given the location, was a “gold mine.”
He said that he wouldn’t sell THC products, leaning instead into tobacco and vapes. And he acknowledged that the board, in general, is “very skeptical when it comes to these smoke shops,” but that this one would be different.
The commissioners weren’t buying it.
“Look, we just had a shootout right down the street on Grand Avenue, so not so far, where a warrant was being served and someone was killed and officers were injured,” said Chair Mildred Melendez. “So yeah, that is a hot topic in the city.”
After minimal Q&A, the board voted unanimously to deny the application, saying Villanueva had been unable to demonstrate why the variance on the building was necessary.
Zoners, including Adam Waters, aren't convinced. On Wednesday morning, landlord Marty Halprin was at work clearing 301 East St.‘s parking lot of snow when the Independent caught up with him to let him know that the BZA had rejected Villanueva’s application.
He said he respects the board’s decision, and will now keep trying to find a different neighborhood-appropriate use for the roughly 1,200 square-foot empty office space.
“It’s a tough retail market” in New Haven, especially for office space, he said.
Halprin, a retired battalion chief with the Milford Fire Department and former Woodbridge first selectman candidate, said that he and his dad used to run their family’s home inspection business out of this very East Street office space. That was almost two decades ago. Besides some intermittent office use, the space has been virtually empty ever since. “No one’s really used it for years.”
Halprin said really the only reasons why he comes to this space now is for storage, access to the basement, or “nostalgia.” The empty office space still has desks, chairs, wood-paneled walls, and a host of relics from his dad’s days as a “tag sale junkie,” as Halprin put it.
Outside, and inside, the Halprin office on East Street. 
Right next door to the strip club and methadone clinic.