Project Details

Shops At Yale - 7 Grand Openings

While working for Town Green District and the City of New Haven, I was also still working for the Yale Corporation, both as a web administrator for their Wordpress website, as well as a filmmaker for their social media channels as a 1099 contractor. In the 2000's, Yale purchased a variety of commercial real estate assets in the surrounding downtown area, mostly from Joel Schiavone but from whomever wished to sell. In the process of this, a wide variety of retail storefronts became under the control of their board. This gave the Yale Corporation the abilty to hand select the occupants of these locations.

Fast forward to 2014, when Yale choreographed the grand opening ceremony of 7 different locations, a mix of restaurants and small shops along Chapel Street and in the Broadway district. Shops at Yale reached out to me for assistance with coverage of the event. Connecticut's entire senatorial representation would be in tow, along with a small marching band, in addition to the mayor (Toni Harp, at the time) along with a variety of other notables and local dignitaries. The large scissors were ready and so the ribbon cutting marathon began.

I completed the video in record time. I had the animations and the logos of each of the locations prefabricated and ready to drop into the video. The event was over by 4pm and the video was ready at 6pm, per the specifications of my liason at Shops at Yale, who asked that this be ready as soon as possible. A day or two later, I received an email stating that "the boss" wanted to meet with me to discuss a few minor changes before proceeding any further. I complied and met at their office the following Monday at 10am.

The "boss" turned out to be Bruce Alexander, a man I knew as the catalyst behind the Broadway redevelopment and a number of other major changes to downtown New Haven throughout the years. He had also been Vice President of Yale University since 1998. I walked into his office and knew exactly who he was. He looked a little bit like Mr. Rogers, but he was serious and seemed like he was in a huge rush. I had a tea that I brought with me into his office and rested it on a desk nearby. We sat down at my laptop and I opened up Final Cut Pro. He offered me suggestions and I organized the content as he described in realtime as he watched. Some of his ideas worked, while others did not, and he could see why certain changes he recommended weren't going to make the video better.

We finished in record time, just 15 or 20 minutes after I set down my laptop. He seemed really happy with the results, much more jovial than when we began. I think that's because we finished things more quickly and with less hassle than he anticipated. He brought my tea out to the office pantry and transferred it into a to-go cup, and as he walked past his secretary he said, "Look, I'm a barista!"

I wonder if that was because he recognized me as the kid from the coffee shop many years before. I'm almost positive I'd made him a latte or two over the years. I still wonder about that to this day. And even though I was sad when they demolished Cutler's Record Store, and I knew that was his decision, in that moment I felt a sense of accomplishment for making him happy and giving him a product he felt satisfied with. My understanding is that this video was only shown for the Yale Board of Directors and was never properly released to the internet or social media.

My respect for Bruce Alexander increased, especially understanding his perspective regarding the preservation of institutional businesses that represented the nostalgic past that I also valued. He was quoted when the Yankee Doodle closed in 2008 as saying "if they had been in one of [Yale's] properties, we would have made efery effort to keep the business going so future generations of Yale students could enjoy the same pigs in blankets we did."