by | Nov 13, 2024 2:49 pm | Comments (28)
Nathaniel Rosenberg photos
At Tuesday's BZA meeting, where commissioners heard plans ...
... for 8 rent-reduced apartments to rise at Lombard ex-laundromat site.
An empty Fair Haven lot that once sparked a high-profile arson trial could soon be the site of eight new affordable apartments.
Continue reading ‘8 Apartments Eyed For Burned-Down Laundromat’
by | Nov 12, 2024 11:13 am | Comments (0)
Chris Randall photos
Babz Rawls Ivy and Chrissy Tracey talk mushroom foraging.
Drummers greet visitors to new CitySeed HQ.
This citizen contribution was submitted by Naseema Gilson, CitySeed’s director of development.
The smells of Nepalese momos and jerk chicken wafted down the stairs, as guests poured into a former Fair Haven factory for “A Night of Food, Community, and Conversation.” The drumbeats and skirt swirls of Movimiento Cultural Afro Continental’s drummers and dancers greeted visitors at the top of the stairs, along with a message: Welcome to CitySeed’s new home.
by | Nov 7, 2024 9:35 am | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photos
Kendall Driffin and Susan Kulp in The Niceties.
Janine, a professor, has some feedback for her student, Zoe. “I’m glad you brought this in early. I can see you’ve done an impressive amount of work on it,” Janine says.
“Yeah, well. I tend to get a little intense about fulfilling requirements,” Zoe says. The tone in the room is still friendly, but something is changing.
“I wish you hadn’t plowed ahead like this — written the full draft without getting comments on the thesis,” Janine says. “I was just excited to lay out the ideas,” Zoe says.
“I’m afraid you’re in for quite a substantial rewrite,” Janine says. “Your argument is … fundamentally unsound.” She turns to the first page. “‘A successful American Revolution was only possible because of the existence of slavery,’” she reads out loud.
Now the mood has changed completely, though Janine doesn’t fully realize it. “Yes,” Zoe said. Janine challenges her, as only a professor at an elite college can: “Yes?” she says, the verbal equivalent. But Zoe, suddenly, is having no more of it. “Yes,” she says.
Continue reading ‘Collective Consciousness Peels Away "The Niceties"’
by | Nov 4, 2024 10:59 am | Comments (0)
Jabez Choi photos
Mari Rojas (right), with daughter Camila: "I just want her to learn her culture."
Skeleton floats get ready for the parade.
Sadie Rose doesn’t usually celebrate Día de los Muertos — but when Jack, her boyfriend of two years, died suddenly in June, she knew she had to find some way to honor him.
So, with a candle and a framed picture in hand, Rose came out to Bregamos Community Theater with dozens of others to help mark the Day of the Dead.
by | Oct 30, 2024 12:47 pm | Comments (3)
Allan Appel photo
Evelyn Jimenez (second from left) helps cut the ribbon on J&M Home Appliance.
Evelyn Jimenez was on the lookout for a location to rent in the Nutmeg State in order to expand her Philadelphia-based home appliance business.
By chance, she ended up in Fair Haven — and decided to put down retail roots.
by | Oct 30, 2024 11:14 am | Comments (3)
@NewHavenFire X photos
The early Wednesday fire at 36 River.
More than 100 firefighters from New Haven and surrounding towns rushed out to River Street early Wednesday morning to put down a four-alarm fire — with no reported injuries, so far — as exploding vehicle gas tanks contributed to a high-intensity blaze.
Continue reading ‘4-Alarm Fire Rips Thru Fair Haven Warehouse’
by | Oct 23, 2024 10:36 am | Comments (31)
Maya McFadden Photo
Leslie Blatteau and Elizabeth Baldetti work the phones for "pro-worker, pro-working-family candidates like Vice President Kamala Harris, former AFT member Tim Walz, and Senator Bob Casey."
Seven New Haven teachers gathered after school to make phone calls — not to students’ parents, but to registered voters in the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania, to encourage them to each make voting plans, and to boost Democratic candidates for president, vice president, and senate.
by | Oct 21, 2024 9:39 am | Comments (2)
Amelia Ingraham artwork
Hey, Erector Square! Who you calling "meat face?"
Erector Square was full of people and art, as the second year of the fully artist-run New Haven Open Studios packed the building complex — so much so that, in addition to the many artists who had flung open their studio doors to visitors, many more had set up displays in entryways, intersections, and hallways, giving the sense that everywhere one went, there was art on the walls, and conversation happening.
by | Oct 9, 2024 4:26 pm | Comments (4)
(Updated) A 21-year-old New Havener named Niygere Wicker was shot and killed while riding his dirt bike in the area of Ferry Street and Wolcott Street Wednesday afternoon.
by | Oct 9, 2024 2:47 pm | Comments (31)
Thomas Breen file photo
More like Underpass Haven: By Exit 6 ...
... near State and James ...
It doesn’t have to be like this.
The Elicker administration and East Rock / Fair Haven Alder Caroline Tanbee Smith have asserted as much — well, not in those exact words — about the current state of neighborhood-slicing highways, as they seek $2 million in federal funds to help plan a brighter future for underused underpasses.
by | Oct 8, 2024 4:54 pm | Comments (37)
Laura Glesby Photo
Near Grand Ave. and Murphy Dr., soon to be "Emma Jones Justice For Malik Corner."
The corner where East Haven police officers chased, shot, and killed 21-year-old Malik Jones in 1997 will not be called “Malik Jones Corner” after all.
Instead, the Board of Alders decided to name that intersection after Jones’s mother, Emma, and the campaign for police accountability she has carried forth after his death.
Continue reading ‘"Emma Jones Justice For Malik Corner" OK'd’
by | Oct 8, 2024 1:37 pm | Comments (6)
Jabez Choi photo
Grand Pharmacy now open.
Where once was pizza is now low-cost prescription medication — and the latest expansion of a Fair Haven-anchoring community health hub.
by | Oct 2, 2024 10:57 am | Comments (10)
Showing up: Street medicine outreachers Phil Costello, Emma Lo, Claudette Kidd at WNHH FM.
Teens have started jumping out of cars and attacking homeless people sleeping on the street in Fair Haven, according to a veteran street outreach worker.
Continue reading ‘Street Attacks On Homeless Reported On Rise’
by | Sep 30, 2024 1:31 pm | Comments (11)
City police are investigating a suspicious death after a 23-year-old Manchester resident fell from a downtown parking garage.
by | Sep 30, 2024 12:51 pm | Comments (16)
Laura Glesby photo
School Psychologist Yesenia Garcia calls for smaller class sizes at Monday's rally.
Fair Haven School has just one social worker, one psychologist, and one school counselor — to support over 800 students.
At one of three rallies that took place across the city’s public school district Monday morning, Mayor Justin Elicker said that the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) system needs an additional $35 million in order to fund a “reasonable” ratio of one social worker per 250 students.
Elicker offered that assessment as 50 educators, students, and allies gathered outside the Grand Avenue public school to call for that funding.
by | Sep 25, 2024 3:42 pm | Comments (18)
Thomas Breen file photo
Community Resilience Director Tirzah Kemp: COMPASS provides an "empathetic, compassionate, humane, and trauma-informed approach to care."
COMPASS data
COMPASS calls, by the #s, as presented in August report.
The city’s non-cop crisis response team will now be on call until 3 a.m. each day — with double the staffers working during the peak hours of 7 to midnight — as the Elicker administration again expands its effort to send social workers and not police to certain 911 calls about homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse.
by | Sep 20, 2024 10:40 am | Comments (6)
Allan Appel Photos
Library lovers Dave Caron and Mary Newell at Thursday's planning session ...
... with City Librarian Maria Bernhey and Deputy Director Luis Chavez-Brumell.
Library leaders and patrons gathered on Grand Avenue to think through how to keep the city’s public libraries among the most welcoming, friendly, helpful, diverse places in town — as part of a planning process designed to make them even more effective at serving the New Haven community a half decade from now.
by | Sep 18, 2024 12:09 pm | Comments (36)
Laura Glesby Photo
Two handmade signs, only one still legible, commemorate the Grand Avenue block where Malik Jones died.
Norm Clement joined a dozen public testifiers early in September to call for an official corner sign honoring Malik.
The words “Justice For Malik” have nearly faded from one hand-painted wooden board nailed to a Grand Avenue post.
A more durable sign bearing Malik Jones’s name may soon rise alongside it — inscribing the memory of a bright, adventurous 21-year-old whom an East Haven cop shot to death in 1997.
by | Sep 17, 2024 4:07 pm | Comments (4)
courtesy Marcus Carpenter
From left, servers Big Don McDaniel, Marcus Harvin, Greg Altieri, Adam Rawlings, Marcus Carpenter, Babatunde Akinjobi, and Bradley Woodworth.
One group brought a full-course dinner, complete with a choice of jerk chicken or fried chicken. Another brought a “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” DVD, a movie projector, and popcorn. Then a half-dozen smartly dressed servers showed up.
And just like that, with the inaugural “Dinner and a Movie” hosted by Best Video and the Newhallville nonprofit Fresh Starts, a dream, seven years in the making, saw its realization at Life Haven women’s shelter in Fair Haven.
Continue reading ‘Dinner & A Movie Served Up At Fair Haven Shelter’
by | Sep 16, 2024 4:16 pm | Comments (16)
Paul Bass Photo
DeLauro with Lina Khan Monday at CitySeed.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro brought a progressive star with MAGA cred to town Monday to help craft an election season message about high food prices: Blame corporate price-gougers.
Continue reading ‘Khan Helps DeLauro Pin Prices On "Gougers"’
by | Sep 11, 2024 9:49 am | Comments (12)
Thomas Breen file photo
English Station: Oh the potential, oh the decay.
A derelict power plant. A neighborhood school. A vibrant community history of hardship and resilience. And the ticking clock of climate change.
All these elements came together in the first of a series of walking tours — a collaboration among several public and nonprofit entities put together by Anstress Farwell, president of the New Haven Urban Design League — focusing on the decommissioned and toxic English Station power plant and the Mill River District in Fair Haven.
Continue reading ‘English Station Looms Over Fair Haven Walk’
by | Sep 9, 2024 8:45 am | Comments (2)
Karen Ponzio Photo
Michael Pollack and his pizza monument.
The subject of pizza is always on the minds of New Haveners, whether it’s deciding what kind to order and where to order it from or what makes the perfect pie and slice. On Friday night, those pies and slices were unveiled as the theme of a world premiere art exhibit at District NHV. “New Haven Pizza Club: Discover the Art of Pizza” showcased the four-year-long odyssey of artist Michal Pollack to commemorate everyone’s favorite meal as a contemporary symbol representing a local legacy.
by | Sep 3, 2024 3:35 pm | Comments (24)
Thomas Breen photos
Osvaldo Hernandez gets ready to ride to Wilbur Cross ...
... as parking authority's Norm Forrester and Doug Hausladen cut the ribbon on a revived bike share.
One hundred e‑bikes are now available to rent by the minute at 30 stations across the city — to help New Haveners like Osvaldo Fernandez make the active commute from a doctor’s appointment in Fair Haven to soccer practice at Wilbur Cross.
by | Aug 28, 2024 9:51 am | Comments (13)
contributed photo
Soon-to-be homeowner Stella Damoah. (courtesy Stella Damoah).
Soon after she moved into a rental in Fair Haven in the winter of 2022, Stella Damoah realized the heat didn’t work and the landlord couldn’t, or wouldn’t, fix it. She looked around for another place and found studio apartments starting at $1,800 and one-bedrooms for well beyond that. So she opted for space heaters, adding about $600 to her expenses.
“That was when I made up my mind to look for a place to own,” said Damoah in a recent Zoom interview.
Following an almost two-year odyssey, Damoah, an accountant who came to Connecticut from her native Ghana in 2005 to pursue a master’s degree at the University of New Haven, will close on a home in Naugatuck next month.
by | Aug 23, 2024 3:30 pm | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen photo
Shaylah McQueen-Lee: "Never give up on kids."
Step by step on Grand Avenue Friday morning, Shaylah McQueen-Lee walked towards her near future as a K‑2 teacher at Benjamin Jepson School — marking her return to the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district after graduating from Hillhouse more than a decade ago as both valedictorian and a teen mom.