by | Feb 26, 2025 2:38 pm | Comments (2)
Paul Bass Photo
Bless prepares to ride on the Wexler Grant track Wednesday with fellow second-graders completing a pilot bike-safety course.
Eighteen second-graders checked their tires and chains, fastened their helmets, and set off on two wheels Tuesday as the first cohort of a new New Haven safe-biking generation.
by | Feb 20, 2025 4:10 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
Ocean workers clear Monterey-adjacent encampment ...
... which LCI's Taylor Munroe said has been the subject of neighbor and SeeClickFix complaints.
Wynter and two fellow Ocean Management workers hauled a mattress, a bicycle, two shopping carts, a frying pan, a wicker chair, a pile of clothes, and a host of other belongings and debris from a Dixwell Avenue homeless encampment Thursday and into the back of a U‑Haul.
The truck was parked on the sidewalk in front of the decrepit former Monterey Jazz Club — a long-vacant building that the Elicker administration tried to buy two years ago, but that still remains rundown and under megalandlord ownership.
by | Feb 14, 2025 12:40 pm | Comments (0)
Jisu Sheen Photo
I-SHEA on the Conga, Seny Camara on Jembe, and Douglas Wilson III on guitar.
“The telepathy up here is crazy.”
Jocelyn Pleasant, leader of Connecticut’s well-loved Afro-funk fusion ensemble The Lost Tribe, might have been talking about communication between band members, but she also set the stage for an intimate connection between the band and the audience at a performance Thursday night at NXTHVN in Dixwell.
by | Feb 14, 2025 9:35 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Stetson Branch Librarian Diane Brown (at right) with teen librarian Brooke Jones and children's librarian Phil Modin.
Gary Hogan wants you to know that while the Elks’ light may be temporarily dimmed due to the sale and demolition of their Webster Street building, and while a new club house is in the making further up on Dixwell, they are sponsoring a wide range of new literacy and cultural programs in a partnership with the local Stetson Branch Library.
by | Feb 7, 2025 12:02 pm | Comments (19)
Thomas Breen file photo
Future home for workforce training ... and housing and community space?
(Updated with NHPS comments) Mayor Justin Elicker dropped a hint in paragraph 46 of his annual State of the City address about the potential future state of the Goffe Street Armory: as the home for a new vocational school.
by | Feb 5, 2025 1:01 pm | Comments (25)
UNITE HERE Prez Gwen Mills: The struggle begins in New Haven.
Standing room only in Dixwell's Trinity Temple.
Zachary Groz Photos
Marks addresses the thousand gathered, pushing for Yale and elected officials to back the working class.
“It feels like a boom is happening in this city,” thundered Rev. Scott Marks to a roaring crowd of 1,000 New Haveners overflowing the pews, hugging the walls, and huddling criss-cross on the floors of Trinity Temple Church of God in Christ (COGIC) on Dixwell Avenue Tuesday night.
“But my question is: It’s a boom for whom?”
by | Jan 30, 2025 2:00 pm | Comments (23)
Thomas Breen File Photo
The jail at 245 Whalley Ave.
Laura Glesby photo
Raymond Hagan: Will the community have input?
Mayor Justin Elicker came to a Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills community meeting with a question: Should the Whalley Avenue jail move somewhere else?
by | Jan 20, 2025 11:53 am | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photos
201 Winchester and 235 Winchester (below), now under new ownership.
For the first time in more than two decades, a vacant lot and an incomplete apartment building on Winchester Avenue are no longer controlled by NFL cornerback-turned-housing developer Kenny Hill.
by | Jan 17, 2025 3:28 pm | Comments (8)
Laura Glesby Photo
Mandy Management tenants Noela, Mlebinge, and Jacqueline in the Clarion hotel lobby on Wednesday, waiting to go home.
After a two-night stay in a Hamden hotel, a family of nine Congolese refugees moved back to their Dickerman Street apartment on Friday morning — where, for the first time this winter, the heat came on.
by | Jan 9, 2025 12:34 pm | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photos
"Old," leaving the warming center for a bit: "I try not to complain."
David Cox: "This is not where I want to be."
As the temperature outside dipped into the 20s Thursday morning, David Cox sat inside a Dixwell church extended-hour warming center — his legs crossed, bundled up in a coat and scarf and beanie hat, his walker by his side and a window sill lined with Pothos plants behind him.
He didn’t want to be at that warming center. And he didn’t plan on staying long. But for now, with the weather dangerously cold, it was a safe place to be.
by | Jan 6, 2025 10:50 am | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen photo
Varick Church, to stay at 242 Dixwell.
A historic Black church won’t be leaving Dixwell Avenue after all — now that congregants have voted against moving forward with a plan to sell the building and relocate.
by | Jan 3, 2025 9:38 am | Comments (4)
Maya McFadden Photo
Porto working as building manager during the school day ...
Contributed photo
... and as Wilbur Cross softball coach after class.
Andrew Porto takes pride in his daily work keeping preschool classrooms and hallways clean on Goffe Street — before heading across town to coach Wilbur Cross’s softball team.
“This job has been great to me,” he said during a recent interview about his three decades as a New Haven custodian and his two decades as a mentor for public school athletes. And there’s so much more he still wants to do.
by | Dec 23, 2024 4:12 pm | Comments (3)
Santana Brightly's “You Have The Power To Determine Who You Are."
A camera, held by a man in a hoodie, dominates a scene of seeming chaos. Two more hands help hold it up. Someone else’s finger rests on the shutter button. Still another hand shifts the lens. Look more closely and virtually everyone in the crowd is shooting pictures.
The piece, “You Have The Power To Determine Who You Are” by Santana Brightly, was among the works spotlighted at the opening of an exhibit on Saturday at Stetson Library. Santana, a seventh-grade student at Hamden’s Sahge Academy, produced the piece while taking part in a month-long graphic arts workshop in AI Art this summer at Stetson.
Continue reading ‘Stetson AI Art Exhibit Beams Light On Future’
by | Dec 19, 2024 5:40 pm | Comments (11)
Nathaniel Rosenberg file photo
Daily Jackson, loved for his heart and his humor.
Tiny footprints in concrete and a “Daily knock” at the door helped bring Daily Jackson’s memory to life Thursday morning at a crowded funeral service for the 17-year-old Riverside student who was shot and killed in Newhallville earlier this month.
Continue reading ‘Teen Homicide Victim Mourned As "Beautiful Spirit"’
by | Dec 18, 2024 11:35 am | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photo
235 Winchester: Fined for blight, foreclosure in January?
A long-vacant Winchester Avenue property that a developer and the city have fought over for two decades is the subject of $6,300 in new anti-blight fines — and a new “final” foreclosure date set for next month.
by | Dec 2, 2024 11:13 am | Comments (2)
Lisa Reisman photo
The Resiliency Center team, including interim executive director Judy Barron, co-founder Sergio Rodriguez, director Lorraine Rogers, and educational consultant Andrenna Paolillo.
There’s a wall hanging in the entrance hall of the new Resiliency Center, a reconnection agency on Dixwell Avenue that opened as part of ‘r kids Family Center with a recent ribbon-cutting.
It’s headed: “How to Really Love a Child.”
by and | Nov 25, 2024 12:50 pm | Comments (56)
Thomas Breen photo
(Updated) Uzziah Shell, the 16-year-old shot to death this past Friday, had been involved in recent disputes with youth crews in town, according to people familiar with the case.
Continue reading ‘Teen Homicide Victim Was Riverside Student’
by | Nov 20, 2024 8:21 am | Comments (3)
Jabez Choi photos
Ari D.: “I really want to do something that makes a difference."
Ari D. took a step towards making a hoped-for career change from working with cars to working with doctors and patients — as she joined 20 fellow New Haveners for a Dixwell info session about all-remote, customer-service “caller” jobs at the Yale Medicine CARE Center.
by | Nov 18, 2024 10:44 am | Comments (13)
Jabez Choi photos
Sherry Chapman: “The trauma to families is immeasurable and life lasting."
342 flags marking each life lost on CT's roads since last November.
Carri Roux had expected to find her son, Luke, back at the house after she finished walking the dog. But he was missing.
He never made it home.
Two years later, at a locally hosted memorial for lives lost on Connecticut’s roads, Roux described how scenes from that horrible day remain “etched” in her memory — and how a serious statewide focus on traffic safety could prevent future tragedies.
by | Nov 14, 2024 10:16 am | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman photo
Aerialist Ky Adams represents mothers and their children soaring.
From a table crammed with leaflets in the gymnasium at the Dixwell Community “Q” House, Sharnasia Booker watched a circus artist perform gravity-defying stunts on an aerial hoop, seemingly leaping through the air and taking flight — a representation of what young mothers and their children can do with the right support.
by | Nov 12, 2024 9:40 am | Comments (3)
Abiba Biao photo
De Leon and Holmes: 2 runners at different points in their careers.
Mid-distance runner Farah Santiago De Leon, 12, sat next to world-renowned Olympic athlete Alexis Holmes and looked into the future — imagining the athletic feats that she, too, might one day achieve.
Continue reading ‘Young Runner Sees Herself In Olympic Gold Medalist’
by | Nov 11, 2024 9:06 am | Comments (5)
Arthur Delot-Vilain file photo
Opuszynski (left): “I bought it from [Xu] after he didn’t want to deal with the headache.”
A Madison-based investor now owns two of three foreclosed former co-op properties on Henry Street — after buying the row home for $480,000 from Bethany-based landlord Jianchao Xu.
by | Nov 8, 2024 3:59 pm | Comments (18)
Thomas Breen photo
Varick Church: So long, 242 Dixwell?
A historic Black church that has spent the past century-plus in the heart of Dixwell is considering relocating — amid a broader building up of the neighborhood’s commercial corridor.
Continue reading ‘Dixwell's Varick Church Eyes Potential Move’
by | Nov 1, 2024 1:20 pm | Comments (15)
Laura Glesby photo
CT VIP Director of Operations Linda Baylor: “I want to change the mood when you walk in here."
When an 11-year-old made headlines for stealing a car, a team of violence preventers knocked on his door to ask him what he needed. They found only a mattress and a milk crate in his bedroom.
That child was on Len Jahad’s mind when a group of politicians arrived at Connecticut Violence Intervention & Prevention (CT VIP)’s headquarters to celebrate $275,000 in federal funds allocated for capital improvements to the building.
Continue reading ‘Anti-Violence Rx: Food. Laundry. Community’
by | Oct 31, 2024 2:03 pm | Comments (2)
Contributed photo
Scenes from LEAP's Oct. 25 halloween fest at the Q.
The following writeup was submitted by Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership, Inc. (LEAP) Communications Director Melissa Liriano, about a Halloween festival at the Q House last Friday.