Seven stores are celebrating their grand opening in downtown New Haven this week.
Take a walk down Broadway at the Shops at Yale and you’ll already see stores that are attractive to Yale students and shoppers like the Apple store, JCrew and Yale Bookstore. New stores opening range from clothing stores geared toward students to other businesses like a a wine bar and olive oil store intended to appeal to a wider pool of shoppers.
Stores like Barbour and Lou Lou are adding their names to the list. While the additions may come as good news to some shoppers, the Yale Daily News reported that the student body has mixed feelings about the new businesses near campus.
“A lot of the stores are too expensive to a student, which is certainly a problem that people are aware of,” Yale student Alex Dubovoy told NBC Connecticut. "A grocery store would be great, a pharmacy perhaps something like that where students could get prescriptions. Right now the closest drug store to campus is Walgreens which you have to walk all the way down York to get to."
However, shopper Carol Liu, who was visiting with her daughter, said the stores are part of what drew her to the area, and she says the more the better.
"It's great, that's what we were just saying, things aren't open yet but we're going to stick around because it looks great," Liu said.
Between the opening celebrations, Black Friday and ongoing construction, city leaders expect some traffic delays Downtown.
