A nearly 400-unit upscale apartment complex to be built atop a long-vacant former factory site on the Dixwell/Newhallville border earned a key city approval — as well as words of frustration from city planners over their lack of authority to mandate any kind of rent affordability provisions for the project.
Elks serve 70 guests at Thanksgiving Community Dinner.
File Photo
87 Webster St.
The Elks Club, an anchor institution in the African-American community, is looking for a new home after selling its 87 Webster St. location as part of a broader rebuilding effort in the Dixwell neighborhood.
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Thomas Breen |
Dec 11, 2019 5:28 pm
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Grand Avenue looking east from Olive Street: No longer part of the plan.
Rezoning skeptics at Tuesday night’s hearing.
Grand Avenue and affordability mandates were both dropped from a long-in-the-works rezoning initiative that now advances to the full Board of Alders with only Whalley Avenue slated to be affected.
201 Munson design. Below: Jeffrey Chung reports to neighbors.
Thomas Breen photo
The developer of a nearly 400-unit upscale complex planned for a former Newhallville factory site committed to setting aside 10 percent of the apartments at affordable rates — with no public subsidy required — and to hiring 25 percent of the construction labor from the Elm City.
Jackie Bracey, a founder of the Concerned Citizens for the Greater New Haven Dixwell Community House, and the Building Committee Co-Chair Curlena Mcdonald.
(Updated Wednesday 10:43 a.m.) Organizers of the under-construction Dixwell Community Q House are not wasting any time.
Also, the city revealed details about how the new institution will, at least at first, serve as a city government department, with a city employee running the operation.
The Dixwell block that the city is looking to redevelop. Below: LCI chief Serena Neal-Sanjurjo pitches plan.
The city is racing to buy and then redevelop a two-story church on Dixwell Avenue as a neighborhood daycare as part of a larger effort to buy up blighted properties on the block — before large private landlord groups scoop them up first.
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Allan Appel |
Nov 22, 2019 1:11 pm
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The Lacys with Gerry Garcia and wings.
Aspiring local restaurateurs Lachelle and Linwood Lacy had a productive Thursday: They graduated from the city’s small business academy, and they got word that the lease for their first restaurant, planned for Whalley Avenue near Ramsdell Street, had been signed.
Result: Opening day for the new business, dubbed Woody’s Wings, is coming, and Linwood cried with joy.
Long-in-the-works zoning changes designed to promote dense, sustainable, and affordable development along New Haven’s “commercial corridors” moved ahead for Whalley Avenue and Grand Avenue — and have been temporarily dropped for Dixwell Avenue, with neighbors thanking city staff for heeding their concerns about potential gentrification.
Jeremiah maneuvers the robot during its visit to Stetson on Saturday.
Jeremiah, a 12-year-old regular at Dixwell’s Stetson branch library, often comes for the art books. When he walked in on Saturday, he was greeted by a whirring, zippy, four-wheeled robot and the team of high-schoolers who built it — and discovered a new reason to show up.
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Simon Bazelon |
Nov 14, 2019 8:54 am
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Tenant Stasha Johnson at Wednesday’s clash with management.
Tenants moving back into rebuilt Goffe Street apartments have found much to appreciate — and much not to, as a confrontation Wednesday with management demonstrated.
Kimber: “White liberal women used the #MeToo movement to self-aggrandize themselves when it came to sexual orientation from men.”
Forty die-hard Toni Harp supporters rallied through Dixwell and Downtown to voice their enthusiasm for the incumbent mayor’s third-party run — and to rebuke a Democratic Party that the mayor said had “desert[ed]” her, “worked against” her, and no longer “represented the people.”
At the rally, a top Harp supporter criticized white women for allegedly acquiescing in a white male political assault on an African-American female mayor.
No one could resist the floral and botanical metaphors Wednesday afternoon as 50 celebrants marked the opening of a new Dixwell eatery that combines fresh pizza (even for breakfast) with job-training and community-development efforts.
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Allan Appel |
Oct 18, 2019 5:12 pm
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Jahad cuts the ribbon flanked by governor and senator.
New Haven’s reborn street anti-violence crew now has a clubhouse available 24/7 to bring kids in trouble, to feed them, to talk one on one, to mediate beefs, to substitute assistance and calm for violence.
The clubhouse also equipped with a spiffy recording studio so the kids can express themselves.
The crew now has a new, reliable stream of funding, contracts to do mediation and prevention inside the school system before violence occurs.
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Thomas Breen |
Oct 18, 2019 7:34 am
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A digital rendering of the proposed 201 Munson project. Below: The current site’s dirt stockpile, which can now remain in place through July 2020.
The new owners of 201 Munson St. plan to build 392 apartments on a large, vacant formerly industrial site on the Dixwell/Newhallville border — and have been granted an extra year to remove the towering stockpile of clean dirt that has been standing there since last summer.
Zoning chief Jenna Montesano with neighbors, rezoning map.
The latest passionate neighborhood wrangling over the city’s planned rezoning of its three major commercial corridors — Whalley, Grand, and Dixwell avenues — focused on whether to limit new buildings to four stories rather than the proposed seven-story 75-foot height limit.
Can you identify where the above pile of dirt is located?
Hint: It’s in the middle of a city where the landscape is transforming before our eyes amidst a years-long building boom. That means lots of big piles of dirt, for now.
Aïcha Woods, Arlevia Samuel, Jonathan Hopkins at WNHH FM.
“C’mon already. Let’s fix this.”
New Haven has basically said that about the need for a long-overdue change in zoning rules — so that neighborhood commercial districts can come alive again and regain their former bustle.
Ellington (above): “I don’t want to speak for the residents.” Santiago (below): “You’re doing that right now!”
One side brought petitions. The other side brought petitions. One knocked on doors and held a protest. The other knocked on doors and ran two community meetings.
Both sides said they represented “the neighborhood.” And they urged decision-makers to heed that neighborhood voice.
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Thomas Breen |
Sep 19, 2019 1:30 pm
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GE ‘s James Van Nortwick (center) at hearing.
Allan Appel photo
71 Shelton Ave.
General Electric plans to demolish a former nuclear manufacturing facility in Newhallville and truck hundreds of containers of uranium-contaminated dirt through Dixwell and downtown New Haven as part of a year-long environmental remediation and site-clearing project.
Skeptics testify: Ming-Yee Lin, Jayuan Carter, LTania Wiles (top row); Alexander Kolokotronis, Lillie Chambers, Patricia Kane (middle row); Mona Berman, Melissa Singleton, Johnny Shively.
Nearly two dozen critics of gentrification, market-rate housing, Yale expansion, and city-led planning initiatives stalled a rezoning project designed to rekindle commercial development along portions of Dixwell Avenue, Whalley Avenue, and Grand Avenue.
Skate park backers talk with skate park skeptics post-protest. Below: The skate park and rezoning protest in Scantlebury Park.
It started as a protest. It ended with both sides talking, and hearing each other out, about a controversial new skate park proposed for Scantlebury Park and Yale’s future role in the neighborhood.
