by | Oct 31, 2018 12:56 pm | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photo
722 Orchard St.
A faith-based nonprofit developer sold a rehabbed Orchard Street home to a low-income buyer, marking its fifth gut rehab and affordable housing conversion completed on a single block between Charles Street and Henry Street.
Continue reading ‘Latest Deals: Beulah’s 5th Rehab On Block’
by | Oct 26, 2018 1:06 pm | Comments (23)
Inside 115 River St.
Thomas Breen photo
Mayor Toni Harp with Hunan Boom CTO Haitang Yang at The Study.
Over a swanky breakfast and then on a tour of tech and manufacturing hot spots, city leaders sought to convert a newly forged Chinese business connection into the creation of up to 100 local jobs.
by | Oct 24, 2018 7:41 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Delossantos and McCarthy.
Angel Cruz is on his knees, trying to get through an Our Father. He’s in a prison cell and it looks like it might be his first night. He’s shaky. He’s scared.
“Our Father,” he starts, “who art in Heaven.”
That’s when the obscenities start, telling him to quiet down as he tried to stammer through the rest of the prayer. It’s funny and tense, all the same time — setting the stage, thematically and tonally, for everything that is to come in Collective Consciousness Theater‘s fleet, entertaining, and excoriating production of Jesus Hopped the A Train, running Oct. 25 to Nov. 11.
by | Oct 22, 2018 3:45 pm | Comments (0)
Markeshia Ricks photo
NHR’s Juan Salas-Romer.
A local developer who has made a name building apartments for middle-income renters is shedding smaller properties to invest in larger-unit ventures Downtown and in Fair Haven Heights, as reflected in some of the latest recorded land sales in town.
Continue reading ‘Latest Sales: NHR Sheds Small To Focus Big’
by | Oct 19, 2018 8:07 am | Comments (11)
Alders Decker and Douglass with DISTRICT’s Salinas.
Focus on talent, not taxes. Focus on growing companies that come here and want to be here, not dying ones that left.
Local pols heard that message in Fair Haven as they entered a different world from the one depicted on this year’s gloomy gubernatorial campaign trail.
by | Oct 17, 2018 3:02 pm | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen photos
Stretch of the Mill River just outside of the Eli Whitney Museum.
Derrylyn Gorski signs Mill River watershed map to pledge support at Tuesday’s event.
Add bioswales up and down James Street. Convert a portion of Exchange Street into a linear trail park. And always keep parking lot dumpsters closed to avoid stormwater runoff contamination.
Those are among dozens of environmentally-conscious recommendations included in the new Mill River Watershed Plan.
by | Oct 15, 2018 7:43 am | Comments (11)
Nobelprize.org
Shiller: Prices up 30 percent since 1975.
A three-family East Rock house sold for over double what it cost 30 years ago, and a major local property management company picked up four new units in two adjoining Fair Haven Heights homes, in some of the latest recorded land transactions in town.
by | Oct 15, 2018 7:38 am | Comments (2)
MOLLY MONTGOMERY PHOTO
After an afternoon of talking, dancing, and eating in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, New Haven social-justice advocates marched from Mill Street to the corner of Blatchley and Grand Avenue. Over the stoplight they strung up a Christopher Columbus piñata, and over the Christopher Columbus Family Academy sign they taped a banner that read “Mantowese School,” unofficially rechristening the elementary school after a Quinnipiac tribal chief.
Continue reading ‘School “Renamed”; Columbus Piñata Whacked’
by | Oct 11, 2018 2:49 pm | Comments (6)
Sonya Schoenberger Photo
Pellegrino, at right, with one of three prospective buyers.
Juan and his son showed up at another foreclosure sale in Fair Haven, hunting for a bargain.
They didn’t find it.
by | Oct 10, 2018 8:10 am | Comments (4)
Christopher Peak Photo
Martinez 5th-graders try desks that can wheel around the room.
In one math class at John S. Martinez Sea & Sky STEM School, students no longer sit in neat, orderly rows. On new four-wheeled desks, they swivel around the classroom without a seating chart.
Continue reading ‘Scores Suggest Personalized Learning Pays’
by | Oct 8, 2018 7:56 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Kane and Rae.
A big sign at the entrance to Studio I greeted visitors there for City-Wide Open Studios’ Erector Square weekend. “Welcome,” it read. “We invite you to interact with our visual explorations into the topics of change and empaths.” Inside, artists Jennifer Rae and Christine Kane, who share the studio space, chatted with people eager to do just that.
“Talk about change,” Rae joked. “You should have seen the studio last week.”
by | Oct 5, 2018 1:15 pm | Comments (14)
Pols Paolillo, Candelaria, Lemar (back row) press the cops.
Allan Appel Photos
Zannelli with successor O’Neill.
Brewing citywide frustration over the continual shuffling of top neighborhood cops boiled over in Fair Haven, where elected officials from throughout New Haven joined Fair Haven neighbors in blasting the latest reassignment of a district manager as an example of how “revolving-door policing” is replacing “community policing.”
by | Oct 3, 2018 4:37 pm | Comments (2)
Four New Haven schools Wednesday celebrated winning national recognition for becoming healthy places — while they also heard a warning about storm clouds brewing at the federal level.
by | Oct 2, 2018 12:09 pm | Comments (2)
Cara McDonough Photos
Bernsen.
The walls of Rachel Bernsen’s studio in Erector Square on Peck Street are bright white, adorned with posters from various artistic events. There are colorful throw pillows stacked in the shelving in one corner. A model skeleton greets visitors upon entering, hinting at this room’s purpose: it’s all about movement.
“A lot of things happen in this space,” Bernsen said.
by | Oct 1, 2018 3:07 pm | Comments (11)
Fair Haveners Sierra-Marie Gerfao and Helene Sapadin at brainstorming session.
Convert a funky parking lot into a local market that remains open at night.
How about another coffee shop?
Pick up the trash in the park more regularly.
Turn a long-vacant but historic school building into a model for inclusionary housing.
And don’t forget to launch that oyster boat business — a a local tourism-oriented vessel that echoes the oystering history of the area that would offer sunset cruises of the river and local historic locales.
by | Sep 21, 2018 8:09 am | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen photos
Democratic LG candidate Susan Bysiewicz with Grand Ave. bakery owner Yolanda Guzman on Thursday.
Hill Alder and Lamont staffer Dave Reyes (center): Muzzled by campaign.
Yolanda Guzman made sure that Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Susan Bysiewicz didn’t leave her Grand Avenue bakery without taking a slice of tres leches cake.
In fact, Guzman packed eight slices of the three-milk Mexican dessert bread for the Democratic nominee: one slice for Bysiewicz, and one for each of the seven other local businesspeople, politicos, and campaign supporters who gave the former secretary of the state a walking tour of five different Fair Haven small businesses on Thursday afternoon.
Continue reading ‘Bysiewicz Seeks Latino Support On Grand Ave.’
by | Sep 21, 2018 8:08 am | Comments (7)
Allan Appel Photo
Daniels parent Maria Flores at protest.
The John C. Daniels Inderdistrict Magnet School library has become a “ghost town.” The science fair, the school play, the book fair, and the student-made school bulletin are in jeaprody. The website is not being updated. Setting up and linking the teachers’ computers have also become difficult.
Meanwhile, the school’s longtime library media specialist, Patricia McGovern, the person who knows where to find the light switch in the auditorium and every room key, has been cut from full to half time. That has meant a loss of institutional memory in a school that has seen changing leadership over the last years.
Continue reading ‘Daniels Parents Plead With Birks On Staff Cuts’
by | Sep 18, 2018 2:39 pm | Comments (59)
Quinnipiac River Park.
Found on sidewalk.
Last week, over 30 minutes in mid-morning, my husband and I witnessed open-air drug deals outside of the church next door, followed by drug use next to a school bus. A knife-wielding man rampaged up the street followed by a highly intoxicated woman. Five minutes later, a John and a sex worker engaged in sex acts in the open.
Later that afternoon as I walked my dog in the park, I was overwhelmed by what I saw: a used condom on the sidewalk next to my house and dirty needles, bloody gauzes and empty drug bags littering nearly every bench.
by | Sep 18, 2018 12:13 pm | Comments (1)
Ian Christmann Photos
The city’s engineer and the fire department were given a late afternoon mystery to solve: Two barrels appeared to have been dumped by the banks of the Quinnipiac River.
Both were marked as containing hazardous waste. Polychlorinated biphenyl or PCB to be exact.
by | Sep 17, 2018 8:09 am | Comments (3)
The city’s health department issued seven lead paint abatement orders in two weeks to six different landlords in the Hill, East Shore, the Annex, West River, and Fair Haven.
One of those abatement orders is for a Chapel Street apartment complex that the city has cited three times so far this year for three different units containing dangerously high levels of lead paint and housing child tenants with high levels of lead in their blood.
by | Sep 13, 2018 3:34 pm | Comments (13)
Sonya Schoenberger Photo
Crowd gathers for foreclosure auction.
As a crowd looked on, two Fair Haven families competed to rescue a boarded-up two-story house on Blatchley Avenue.
by | Sep 7, 2018 12:12 pm | Comments (7)
Allan Appel Photo
New Executive Director Reyes with predecessor Sandra Trevino.
A little over a year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the organization that took the local lead in aiding victims and resettling 450 families in our area celebrated 49 years of service — and announced hiring a new leader for the future.
Continue reading ‘JUNTA Celebrates 49 Years, Welcomes New Leader’
by | Sep 5, 2018 1:57 pm | Comments (6)
Robin Ladouceur Photos
Cormorant colony discovered.
Volunteers clearing the Mill River Trail.
by | Sep 4, 2018 5:18 pm | Comments (14)
Christopher Peak Photo
District, a tech campus that will house Holberton School.
Holberton’s Julien Barbier.
A computer programming school is betting New Haven could become the next Silicon Valley, only without the Bay Area’s crushing cost of living.
by | Aug 24, 2018 9:21 am | Comments (14)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Seth Poole: “That’s less than it will cost to do the floors!”
Carly Wanna Photo
LCI’s board made a counter offer on this Grand Ave. building.
Plans to sell two city-owned properties changed after a board questioned whether New Haven government underprices the properties it sells.
Continue reading ‘LCI Pushed To Charge More To Sell Property’