by | Mar 8, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Laureate Little with King/Robinson students.
Fifth-grader Aly Gaye knew where to start when New Haven’s poet laureate asked him to write verses about himself: My power lies in my brain, in my smarts.
by | Mar 4, 2024 4:21 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photo
Hugh Edwards celebrates auction win with Karlyn and Chris Duncan.
Hugh Edwards returned home to Newhallville — and left with a chance to revive a dilapidated home just a few blocks away from where he grew up.
by | Feb 29, 2024 4:21 pm | Comments (8)
Honda Smith and Diane X. Brown.
Diane X. Brown and Honda Smith grew up two blocks from each other in Newhallville during the 1960s and 1970s in families steeped in politics and a New Haven pulsing with the Black Panthers, racial unrest, and a burgeoning sense of possibility.
Brown, 66, became the first African American librarian in New Haven in 2006, transforming the Stetson branch into a thriving community and cultural hub. Smith, 59, a retired city public works employee and longtime civic activist, took the reins as West Hills alder in 2020 upon her retirement from a three-decade career working for the city government. She’s known for, among other initiatives, The Shack, which she revitalized into a thriving intergenerational community center on Valley Street.
The Independent sat down with Brown and Smith at The Shack to get their takes on observing Black History Month in 2024 New Haven.
Continue reading ‘Living Black History Today: 2 Leaders Look Back, To The Present’
by | Feb 28, 2024 3:05 pm | Comments (2)
Marcus Harvin and volunteers deliver meals to Varick Warming Center.
“This was our vision in prison,” said Marcus Harvin, as he led his team with boxes of meals past a queue of people waiting for the doors of Dixwell’s Varick A.M.E. Zion Warming Center to open.
by | Feb 28, 2024 12:14 pm | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen Photo
CMT Chair Kim Harris: How does the neighborhood benefit?
How will local bids for geothermal and political power translate into a more empowered Newhallville community?
That question arose repeatedly at the latest gathering of the Newhallville Community Management Team.
Continue reading ‘Neighbors Turn Up Political, Geothermal Heat’
by | Feb 28, 2024 9:30 am | Comments (8)
Elijah Johnson with students at King/Robinson.
Maya McFadden Photos
Elijah Johnson walked into King/Robinson School classroom in his United Airlines pilot uniform — on a mission to inspire some of the students one day to take flight.
by | Feb 22, 2024 3:09 pm | Comments (36)
Nora Grace-Flood
91 Shelton Ave. to stay deteriorated on the outside ...
... and musically inspired on the inside.
City Plan commissioners killed a request to turn a dilapidated former factory serving as local artist studios into storage units — after deciding the development sounded like “dead space.”
by | Feb 12, 2024 1:43 pm | Comments (29)
Contributed Photo
Sheila Harris: A "social butterfly" whom her daughter believes the police could have saved.
Sheila Harris was murdered by her domestic abuser minutes after five police officers left her home, and hours after she arrived, scratched up, at police headquarters to report a stolen gun.
Now Harris’ daughter Mercedes Harris is suing the city and 13 officers, arguing the police should have done more to protect her mom on the night of Aug. 19, 2023.
Continue reading ‘Suit: Cops Failed To Stop Domestic Homicide’
by | Feb 12, 2024 9:13 am | Comments (3)
Lisa Reisman Photo
David Daniels at author talk at Stetson Library.
The Sunday, Aug. 21, 1994, edition of the Connecticut Post pictures a young Black man in police blues holding a hangman’s noose. The man was David Daniels, a police officer. The noose was left on his patrol car.
by | Feb 8, 2024 4:02 pm | Comments (14)
Nora Grace-Flood Photo
You may stay? Musicians at 91 Shelton.
Developers returned to the City Plan Commission with a promise: If they get permission to transform a Shelton Avenue industrial building into self-storage units, the artists currently working there can stay.
by | Feb 8, 2024 2:25 pm | Comments (11)
Bryan Ramirez-Guttierez's reserved seat at the Hillhouse High graduation he never got to attend.
Police have made arrests in a pair of hit-and-runs that caused the deaths of two New Haveners, including 17-year-old Bryan Ramirez-Guttierez last February.
by | Feb 5, 2024 2:10 pm | Comments (1)
Lisa Reisman Photo
fREsh-taurant crew at Pitts Chapel; Marcus Harvin, in yellow shirt, left center.
(Updated) You can speak all you want into somebody’s ear. If their stomach is growling, they can’t hear it.
Those were the words of Marcus Harvin, the visionary founder of Newhallville fREshSTARTs, at Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church on Friday night. The occasion was the grand opening of the fREsh-taurant, a food recovery initiative that will provide free hot, nutritious meals for the community, either eat-in or take-out, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening. Everyone is welcome.
by | Feb 1, 2024 12:46 pm | Comments (53)
Laura Glesby Photo
Carlota Clark at Wednesday evening's open house at Science Park.
A rendering from Pine's presentation: Apartments up to $4,500 a month on Winchester Ave.
As Science Park developers presented renderings of a housing complex soon to rise on Winchester Ave., Carlota Clark wondered if one of the 283 apartments would someday be hers.
by | Jan 25, 2024 4:15 pm | Comments (21)
Nora Grace-Flood Photos
Kennies Earl: Not "invisible."
Mother Juniper members Lindsay Skedgell and Christian Abbott: Jamming conversion plans.
Mother Juniper frontwoman Lindsay Skedgell unplugged from her Vox AC15 and tuned into Zoom from a “vacant” ex-factory building to send developers a message: 91 Shelton is far from empty.
Skedgell was among dozens of artists who banded together to flood the City Plan Commission’s Zoom room after hearing earlier that day that their studio space, a five-story former factory building at 91 Shelton Ave., is slated for sale to a self-storage company.
Continue reading ‘91 Shelton Studios Smash Storage Space Sale’
by | Jan 15, 2024 11:47 am | Comments (1)
The Q House is celebrating the 100 years that have passed since the community fixture first opened its doors in 1924.
The space will be hosting events throughout 2024, which can be read about here, to honor Q House history and strengthen its current community. Below, we’ve included a letter sent by the Q House Centennial Committee with more details.
by | Jan 3, 2024 3:29 pm | Comments (54)
Laura Glesby photo
Streater: Lost 24 years of his life to a crooked prosecution.
On Monday Troy Streater was sworn in for his first full term a city alder. On Tuesday he sued the city for $50 million in punitive damages and $50 million in compensatory damages for the two dozen years he spent in prison on a wrongful conviction.
by | Jan 1, 2024 8:57 am | Comments (47)
Twining / L&M designs
Design for "Winchester Green" apartments and retail on a vacant lot within Science Park, complete with a new interior street grid.
The money’s in. So the next apartment complex slated for a fast-changing stretch of the Dixwell-Newhallville border is ready to rise.
Continue reading ‘$90M In Hand To Start Building "Winchester Green"’
by | Dec 20, 2023 8:24 am | Comments (6)
Allan Appel photo
Mother Helen Carr (center) with Babatunde Akinjobi and Marcus Harvin.
Marcus Harvin is working on a fresh start: for the food in his home community of Newhallville, and for formerly incarcerated people like himself who are looking to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them.
Enter Newhallville Fresh Start: a food pantry he’s in the process of founding to provide healthy produce and, eventually, programming for neighbors in need.
by | Dec 18, 2023 6:54 pm | Comments (5)
Maya McFadden photo
Gov. Lamont (right) "clearing the records" of thousands of Connecticut residents with years-old criminal convictions.
Helen Caraballo is looking forward to attending nursing school while raising her five children and bouncing back from an otherwise “rough year” — with the knowledge that she’ll no longer have to keep looking backward at a decade-old, low-level felony conviction, which will soon be erased.
Continue reading ‘80,000 Records To Be Cleared As "Clean Slate" Takes Full Effect’
by | Nov 22, 2023 8:42 am | Comments (2)
Lisa Reisman photo
"Marblehead" director-producer Darrell Bellamy Jr. and screenwriter Melo Ali El.
Exterior of Kennies Earl Kreative House on Shelton.
The scene was a bare-bones space with concrete walls in an industrial building on Shelton Avenue. Jeff Bell was pleading with Carter Goodrich not to hurt him.
“I have some money in my pocket and a watch worth five grand,” Bell told Goodrich, his voice quaking. “Just let me go. Please let me go.”
Off in the distance, a door slammed shut. A siren wailed.
“That’s a wrap,” said director and producer Darrell Bellamy.
Continue reading ‘Newhallville Casting Call Seeks Movie Talent’
by | Nov 22, 2023 8:32 am | Comments (4)
Lisa Reisman File Photo
Alder Troy Streater, who petitioned for Geneva Pollock Way, on the block between the two renamed corners.
Geneva Pollock and Pearlie Napoleon were friends who both dedicated their lives to their students and their Newhallville community. So it’s fitting that the street corners soon to be named after them will be located just one block apart.
by | Nov 21, 2023 8:49 am | Comments (2)
Lisa Gray Photo
Orsella Hughes, Ginne-Rae Clay, Fixing Fathers Inc. Founder Dr. David Asbery, and Larry Conaway.
In a music- and dance-filled celebration, the Prosperity Foundation distributed $900,000 in grant funds to 25 mostly Black-led organizations.
Continue reading ‘Prosperity Foundation Awards $900K In Cannabis-Legalization-Related Grants’
by | Nov 16, 2023 8:28 am | Comments (11)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Jacqueline James-Boyd at Newhallville meetup: Cannabis cash meant to address "all the issues we have in Black and Brown communities.”
Millions of dollars in cannabis-legalization money are slated to trickle back into New Haven’s neighborhoods most negatively impacted by the War on Drugs — and residents are responding with programmatic pitches to put those funds towards community revitalization, from serving the homeless hot meals to mentoring Black billionaires in the making.
Continue reading ‘Neighborhood Q: How To Spend State Cannabis Cash?’
by | Nov 13, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (1)
Christopher Wigren, Stacy and Frankie Vairo, Jane Montanaro, Lady Shalene McClam, Pastor Darrell McClam, and Mother Helen Jean Carr on Sunday.
The congregants of Pitts Chapel United Free Will Baptist Church are not only raising their historic sanctuary’s roof in dancing, singing, and exuberant prayer as they do every Sunday — now they are also able to fix it.
Continue reading ‘Newhallville Church's Roof Repairs Celebrated’
by | Nov 10, 2023 12:25 pm | Comments (16)
Nora Grace-Flood photos
Mt. Calvary Deliverance Tabernacle Pastor Robert Smith (right), with Youth Continuum's Tim Maguire: "The community is hurting."
A local homelessness services nonprofit is looking to open the city’s first warming shelter exclusively for young adults — but is still searching for a location after scrapping a Newhallville church partnership in the face of community opposition.
Continue reading ‘Youth Shelter Planned, But Not For Hazel St.’