Fair Haven

$3M From Feds Boost Health Clinic Expansion

by | Mar 21, 2023 5:04 pm | Comments (4)

Nora Grace-Flood photo

State Rep. Juan Candelaria, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Fair Haven Health CEO Suzanne Legarde and Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller accept the symbolic check Tuesday.

A Fair Haven-anchoring community health center has landed $3 million in federal funds to help cover the costs of constructing a new neighborhood clinic — as that same center gears up to tear down nearby apartments and relocate tenants in service of a broader campus expansion estimated to cost up to $40 million.

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Collective Consciousness Theatre Serves Up Grilling Comedy

by | Mar 17, 2023 9:03 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photo

Nelson on the set of Barbecue after rehearsal.

A family has gathered in a park. They’re worried about one of their siblings, who has yet to arrive. But it’s clear each of them has their own problems, too. Their conversation is fraught with personal history, some of it harrowing, most of it hilarious.

There’s a scene break. Now the family is back — same pavilion in a park, same cooler, same grill, same clothes. Except that now, all the family members are Black. They pick up right where the White family left off. As if they’re the same family, but different too. Something weird is going on.

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Bus Buzzes About Returning Fares

by | Mar 16, 2023 3:18 pm | Comments (18)

Thomas Breen photo

Wilfred Fuentes, Jayuan Carter, Tom Goldenberg aboard the 206.

Wilfred Fuentes is not looking forward to paying $1.75 again every time he needs to commute from his home in the Annex to his job in Hamden. 

Fuentes found a sympathetic ear in a Democratic mayoral challenger who rode the bus and talked to riders roughly two weeks before fares are set to resume for the currently free-to-ride state-run public transit system.

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In-Person Teachers Watch Online School Board

by | Mar 14, 2023 5:01 pm | Comments (14)

Maya McFadden photo

Monday's in-person watch party for online school board meeting.

Several dozen city teachers, parents, and public-school advocates were able to hear each other clap and cheer — live, in person, in the same room, together — during an in-person watch party for a Board of Education that has been meeting online only for the past three years.

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School Visits Reveal Multilingual Learners In Action

by | Mar 8, 2023 9:56 am | Comments (3)

Contributed photo

Fair Haven/East Rock Alder Claudia Herrera (center) with NHPS Asst. Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans (right) on multilingual classroom visit.

Three alders got a firsthand look at the classroom needs and experiences of students who enter school speaking a language other than English, as they joined district leaders on a three-stop tour to talk with multilingual learners and their teachers.

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Fair Haveners Eye New Community Center

by | Mar 7, 2023 1:00 pm | Comments (8)

Allan Appel photo

Gita Global arts collective members Erik Santana and Doris-Jean Teel brainstorm ideas for future Atwater community center.

A zumba and dance studio for the elderly, with safety rails and hand bars and mirrors and a soft floor design. A renovated kitchen and an altogether new computer/video room to support much wanted intergenerational programs. More art and photo displays tapping into the neighborhood’s rich oystering history. A reconfigured and more welcoming entryway; picnic tables and better lighting and security so gardening and greenhouse activities can occur in the underutilized outdoor spaces.

Those were only a few of scores of hopeful ideas put forward during a community brainstorming session at the Atwater Senior Center in Fair Haven.

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C-Towns Become Key Foods

by | Mar 7, 2023 10:44 am | Comments (4)

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Yezenia Lebron outside newly renamed Key Food at Ferry and Grand: Supermarket is "associated with this Latino community."

Yezenia Lebron succeeded in finding pork loin, bacalao, and Fiesta Campesina flower cookies at her go-to Grand Avenue grocery store — even as she struggled to get used to the supermarket’s new name above the door.

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Bank's Bid Beats Local Buyers

by | Feb 27, 2023 9:17 am | Comments (1)

Thomas Breen photos

Exchange St. resident Jackson, with court-appointed attorney Troiano: $298,000 "a little steep" for foreclosed house.

The country’s largest bank boxed out a group of potential local buyers at a Fair Haven foreclosure auction by submitting the only bid — at a price $18,000 above appraisal — for a boarded-up, squatter-occupied three-family house on Exchange Street.

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Alders Walk, Knock For Fair Haven's Future

by | Feb 22, 2023 9:22 am | Comments (8)

Laura Glesby photo

Fair Haven Alders Sarah Miller and Claudia Herrera (right) talking with Alexis Cruz on a recent neighborhood walk.

Caroline Smith at the triangular island at Monroe and Alton.

Litter on Monroe Street — and a perilously crash-prone intersection at Blatchley and Peck — led two Fair Haven alders and a handful of neighbors to knock on doors and talk with residents about how to improve the area’s quality of life.

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New Hamlet Q: To Beef, Or Not To Beef?

by | Feb 20, 2023 1:53 pm | Comments (2)

Brian Slattery Photo

Manuel Camacho, Eliza Vargas, and Catherine Wicks in Ice The Beef and Elm Shakespeare's new anti-violence production of Hamlet.

Student leaders and Shakespeare theater-makers came together to create a new performance of Hamlet that was part social justice theater, part violence prevention program — and all heart.

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Carmen Jones Makes Library Sing

by | Feb 17, 2023 9:04 am | Comments (1)

It’s America in the 1940s, and World War II is still raging. Carmen Jones has started a fight in the parachute factory she works in, and it falls to Corporal Joe to escort her to jail, miles from the military base where both of them work. Joe is engaged to be married, and just wants to get his duty over with. Jones has other plans. She’s flirting with him — hard — as soon as they’re on the road away from the base. Then Joe makes a poor navigation choice and drives the Jeep into a stream, forcing them to walk from there. Little does he know that he doesn’t stand a chance against Jones’s seductive skills. Little does Jones know that it will prove her own undoing, too.

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Mary Wade Feels The Love At Early Valentine's Day Fest

by | Feb 10, 2023 9:27 am | Comments (1)

Barbara Harris (middle) with husband Bill Wood (right) and Mary Wade staffer Maria Olmo Thursday.

Cupid alighted early this year at Chatham Place at the Mary Wade Home in Fair Haven — especially for Bill Wood and Barbara Harris. Who says new love doesn’t flourish in the later decades of life? 

The couple got married at the Mary Wade Home last year. On Thursday morning, they marked their first anniversary at a special Valentine’s Day party for the neighborhood-anchoring senior facility’s residents, friends, and staff.

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Chess Students Learn Power Of The Pawn

by | Feb 9, 2023 2:18 pm | Comments (5)

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Learning chess at S.P.O.R.T. Academy's Fair Haven School afterschool program.

Maya McFadden photo

"One, two, three... Chess!"

If your pawn game is good, you can do so much.”

So teaches Edward Trimble during an afterschool program he runs through his nonprofit S.P.O.R.T. Academy, which brought together dozens of young students at Fair Haven School this week to reflect on the life skills they’ve learned on the chess board — and also to shoot some hoops, eat pizza, and celebrate a path towards sharper problem solving for even the humblest of chess players.

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Statewide Rent-Cappers Canvass Fair Haven

by | Feb 6, 2023 1:04 pm | Comments (36)

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Bianca Flecha with "Cap the Rent" organizer James O'Donnell.

Bianca Flecha opened the door of her Poplar Street apartment building to find an Australia-raised tenant organizer with a pitch that resonated. 

She said her rent has gone up a couple hundred dollars every year that she’s lived in her Fair Haven home. 

James O’Donnell, a New Haven-based organizer with the Connecticut Tenants Union, told her that she’s not alone in experiencing such hikes — and that a new bill before the state legislature would help put a cap on those ever-rising housing costs for renters. 

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Artists Help Connect To Memory At Mary Wade Home

by | Feb 6, 2023 8:50 am | Comments (5)

Brian Slattery photos

Photographer Ian Christmann with mural-size work in Mary Wade.

On Saturday afternoon, residents, families, and neighborhood dignitaries streamed in and out of Chatman Place at Mary Wade on Clinton Avenue in Fair Haven. They were there to check out an art show — and along the way, learned how art can create concrete connections to place and wellbeing.

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Fair Haven Gets An Outreach Worker

by | Feb 3, 2023 1:00 pm | Comments (22)

Allan Appel photo

Frank Redente, Jr. pointed to an armful of tattoos remembering the names of young New Haveners who have lost their lives to street violence.

Born and raised in Fair Haven, Redente now hopes to be part of the solution to the complex and chronic issue of youth violence as he takes on the job of being the first street outreach worker ever dedicated solely to his home neighborhood.

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Fair Haven Health Clinic Expansion OK'd

by | Jan 25, 2023 9:32 am | Comments (7)

A visual rendering of the planned new Grand Avenue clinic.

A Fair Haven neighborhood-anchoring healthcare center won permission to build 26 new clinical exam rooms — along with a food pharmacy, community space for job and digital literacy training, and a splash pad — all as part of a now-approved expanded Grand Avenue campus.

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Student Council Gets Down To Governing

by | Jan 16, 2023 10:37 am | Comments (2)

Maya McFadden Photo

Student council prez Julieta Diaz leads Martinez school meeting.

John S. Martinez School eighth grader Julieta Diaz and her fellow student council classmates had a decision to make: Should they donate the proceeds of a middle school recycling drive to a local homeless shelter, or should they throw their financial support to the city’s animal shelter instead?

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Heights Park Quarried For Hidden Gems

by | Jan 10, 2023 9:01 am | Comments (2)

A Sunday walk in the Fair Haven Heights woods.

Talk about a geological, paleontological, and historical marvel. 

That’s Quarry Park Preserve, which was the site on Sunday of an hour-long walking tour that began at the Friends Meeting House at 225 East Grand Ave. in Fair Haven Heights. It was led by the New Haven Bioregional Groups Aaron Goode and Friends of Quarry Park Founder Tracy Blanford.

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Homicides Prompt Larger Police Presence In Fair Haven

by | Jan 6, 2023 9:45 am | Comments (10)

Allan Appel photo

District Manager Lt. Fumiatti, Asst. Chief Zannelli, and Chief Jacobson on Thursday.

If retaliation is to come — and the police have concern that it might — for the Jan. 1 murder of Dontae Myers in Fair Haven, it will likely arrive in the form of a vehicle bearing young men with guns.

That’s why the police brass turned out in force Thursday night to inform Fair Haveners that motor vehicle units have been deployed to the neighborhood to try to stop suspicious vehicles that may be carrying drugs or guns.

And they will stay, along with other resources, until the danger or crime spike is reduced.

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