Meriden City Center Initiative

Public Involvement Process
Commercial Center Market Assessment

	Introduction & Purpose

	Commercial Center Summary

	Office & Institutional Uses Summary

	Rental Housing Summary

	Ownership Housing Summary

	Sports & Leisure Summary

	Light Industrial/Flexible Office Summary

	Market Potential Matrix
Environmental Impact Analysis
Harbor Brook Realignment
Preliminary Design of Transportation Improvements
Conceptual Land Use
Design Guidelines
Fiscal and Economic Impact Assessment
Appendix A: Property Acquisition Plan
Appendix B: Residential Relocation Strategy
Appendix C: Preliminary Opinion of Cost Summary

Sports & Leisure Summary

Downtowns look to a broad range of anchoring activities to generate traffic and create the 24/7 atmosphere that residents and visitors enjoy. Shopping and dining occupy one part of the spectrum, but often they can’t be expected to sustain the whole area.

Sports Facility
As conceived, the Hub portion of the redevelopment area will be improved with a green and the newly uncovered Harbor Brook, which will act as a passive recreation amenity for the community and a public space anchor. In close proximity will be the Meriden YMCA, long a focal point of the community and generator of foot traffic. To this the community might choose to add an indoor, year-round sports venue - for example, soccer and possibly other facilities for basketball and baseball. While not a profit center, such a facility would have a regional pull and generate traffic for other businesses in the area.

According to ESRI Business Information Systems, a proprietary market database, market potential appears particularly high for soccer and above average for baseball and certain other sports/activities in Meriden. While playing fields would not be appropriate for the subject location, an indoor facility accommodating one or more sports year round and possibly other events might be considered. Indoor sports facilities are growing in Connecticut, with the list of indoor soccer facilities sanctioned by the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association now numbering twelve in all. Bristol is seeking to redevelop a vacant downtown shopping center with an indoor sports facility as one element.

Design challenges notwithstanding, an indoor sports venue of similar facility would be a good fit with the outdoor passive recreation planned for the area. It would serve not only a fairly well defined near-in market (children and young adult soccer players) but also be a draw from around the city and mid-state area to Meriden’s revitalized downtown for families with children. As these venues are generally in operation throughout the day and evening hours, they generate good traffic if parking can be accommodated.

Movie Theaters
Despite a better than average movie attendance record for downtown residents, it is unlikely that the commercial center location is strong enough to attract a movie theater. This is largely due to competition already established in the area. Meriden already has an existing ten-screen theater on Pomeroy Avenue. There are also theaters in Berlin and Southington as well as a new theater under construction in Wallingford on North Colony Road. According to a real estate representative of National Amusements, which operates the Showcase Cinema chain, new theater locations are ideally sited not closer than five miles to the nearest competitor and in markets where there are 150,000 people within a five-mile radius. The Meriden five-mile radius from the subject location is just 91,000 people and a theater is already in operation about two miles away. The Berlin theater is just over five miles away and the new Wallingford theater less than five miles away. Thus it is most likely the marketplace is saturated with movie theaters at present.

Of note, however, is that South Norwalk and New Haven have attracted new movie theaters to their downtowns, although New Haven’s is too new to evaluate market support. While South Norwalk’s seven-screen theater shows mass market first run films, New Haven’s shows limited release, first run art movies that are less well represented in suburban theaters. The developer of the New Haven five-screen theater, which opened in November 2004, specializes in redevelopment of historic buildings, in this case including residential rental units and a restaurant in addition to the theater in the vacant United Illuminating office complex.

Bookstores
Bookstores often are developed in concert with movie theaters. Unfortunately, the potential for books, periodicals and music stores is limited due to proximity to the mall, where there is a Walden’s bookstore. However, it is noteworthy that Wallingford has attracted an independent bookstore to a vacant bank building downtown within the past year, complementing the variety of restaurants and other retail operating nearby.