by | May 16, 2019 5:09 pm | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen photo
Onix Ortiz.
150 West St. on Thursday.
Eleven days after leaping out a window to save his life, Onix Ortiz returned to his former home at 150 West St. — and emerged with only his Xbox One.
Continue reading ‘Tenants Return, Retrieve Burnt Belongings’
by | May 16, 2019 8:09 am | Comments (34)
Kenneth Boroson ARCHITECTS
Rendering of Paul Denz’s development at Orange and Chapel.
Attorney Carolyn Kone details Randy Salvatore’s Hill plan.
Two developers got the green light to move forward on projects that will transform two blocks in and near Downtown and bring 269 more apartments to the city.
by | May 15, 2019 12:32 pm | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photos
Brodie Fair Haven holdings: 52 Maltby, 127 Clay 143 Fillmore, 154 Fillmore., 114 Lloyd, 161 Clay, 176 Wolcott, 191 Wolcott, 176 Wolcott.
Note: This article has been substantively updated since its first publication, now with an interview with Brodie about his background and investment strategy.
A 33-year-old, Monsey, N.Y.-based landlord bumped his local apartment holdings up to 347 units with the recent purchase of eight two and three-family homes in Fair Haven, the Hill, West River, and Westville.
That’s 347 more than when he started out in real estate a decade ago, when he first learned about investment opportunities in New Haven through a chance encounter at a gym in upstate New York.
by | May 15, 2019 7:32 am | Comments (1)
Thomas Breen Photo
Boarded-up basement at 649 Washington.
The owner of a partially condemned Hill property has sold it to another investor, following the sale of another problem property that became the site of a fatal fire.
by | May 10, 2019 3:12 pm | Comments (2)
“If you wanna fight, let’s fight,” a tenant told his landlord during an altercation at 150 West St. — three nights before the same tenant would perish in a fire at the property.
Continue reading ‘Police Report: 150 West St. Landlord Assaulted Tenant Who Later Died In Fire’
by | May 8, 2019 5:42 pm | Comments (24)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
LCI chief Serena Neal-Sanjurjo: “We have to do better.”
The owner of a rundown two-family home in the Hill — which was apparently being turned into a death-trap rooming house — kept missing appointments with city inspectors to qualify for a needed license.
Then flames erupted in the house, tenants leaped from windows — and two men never made it out alive.
by | May 7, 2019 1:12 pm | Comments (7)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Election moderators check out gym doors at Clemente School.
The Registrar of Voters office, a new consultant and a handful of moderators got to kick the tires on New Haven’s upcoming mayoral primary with the first of a series of tours of polling places.
by | May 6, 2019 5:16 pm | Comments (20)
Thomas Breen photo
Tenants Hasson Hallet and Dershaya Hargrove describe surviving the fire — and slumlord’s indifference at 150 West (below).
Dershaya Hargrove and Hasson Hallet were asleep in the groundfloor bedroom of a carved up Hill rooming house when a loud noise jolted them awake.
That noise wasn’t the blaring of a fire alarm. It was a neighbor pounding on their bedroom window, shouting “Fire!” and urging them to leave the burning house as upstairs tenants jumped for their lives out of second and third-story windows.
Continue reading ‘Tenants Who Escaped Deadly Fire: Smoke Alarm Didn’t Sound. Slumlord Didn’t Care’
by | May 6, 2019 2:32 pm | Comments (3)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Hill Health Center was cleared out Monday afternoon and Roberto Clemente School placed under lockdown amid what turned out to be an inaccurate report of an active shooter in the area.
Continue reading ‘B.B. Gun Incident, False Rumors Clear Out Hill Health, Lock Down School’
by | May 5, 2019 8:03 pm | Comments (9)
Paul Bass Photo
Fire investigators Detective Mike Torre, Fire Capt. Ray Saracco confer with officers on scene Sunday after obtaining search warrant.
Contributed photo
(Updated) An investigation into a fire that killed two tenants in a crowded Hill rooming house appears bound to focus on whether the building met safety codes, including having working smoke alarms.
by | Apr 24, 2019 2:34 pm | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen photos
A community health mural created during one of the hospital’s public meetings about the 2019 assessment.
Bridgett Williamson.
The opioid epidemic is hitting the suburbs harder than the city. But New Haven is still struggling with PCP and crack addiction.
Continue reading ‘As Opioids Sock Suburbs, City Focuses On Crack, PCP’
by | Apr 10, 2019 3:05 pm | Comments (0)
Firefighters overnight put out a blaze that displaced three adults and two children on Stevens Street.
by | Apr 10, 2019 8:04 am | Comments (2)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Wilfredo Rodriguez explains features of the development’s facade at BZA Tuesday.
The final leg of Randy Salvatore’s three-part plan to build hundreds of new apartments along with storefronts on vacant Hill property got its final needed zoning approvals Tuesday night.
by | Apr 9, 2019 12:18 pm | Comments (17)
Christopher Peak Photos
Senior Denzel Caldwell at Monday night’s meeting.
Cyd Slotoroff, Kirsten Hopes-McFadden, Matt Wilcox, Nijija-Ife Waters, Steve Mikolike, Hyclis Williams speak out for school.
During her freshman year at High School in the Community, Sonimar Colon, a student with a learning disability, earned D’s and F’s in her classes. She started skipping school, because she thought no one would give her the help she needed. Administrators later kicked her out for fighting.
Now, as a junior at Riverside Education Academy, the district’s last remaining alternative school, Colon has a special-education plan and intensive therapeutic supports. She’s now earning top marks. But the latest round of proposed budget cuts had put her school at risk.
The Board of Education listened to Colon at a meeting Monday night, and it vowed to her that Riverside will remain open next year.
by | Apr 8, 2019 7:58 am | Comments (27)
SONYA SCHOENBERGER PHOTO
41 Button St. Vlock house: Next design won’t look like this.
The city has agreed to sell a vacant Hill lot to Columbus House for the construction of a new affordable home.
That agreement comes with a catch: the building, to be designed by Yale School of Architecture students, must fit the look and feel of the existing neighborhood. Or else no deal.
by | Mar 21, 2019 2:52 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Officer John Caron and Sgt. Brendan Canning.
The cops put the kibosh on a string of robberies of pizza deliverers in the Hill South neighborhood, where police believe a tech-savvy 15 year-old was using a scrambled phone number app he had downloaded in order to lure his pie-and-cash bearing victims.
Meanwhile, officers got word of a new problem — open gambling, smoking, and dealing a few blocks farther along on Greenwich Avenue at Galvin Park.
by | Mar 15, 2019 7:37 am | Comments (39)
Thomas Breen photo
St. Martin de Porres Academy President Allison Rivera at community update.
Don’t be fooled: Those towering, late-19th century red brick church buildings at Columbus Avenue and Cedar Street may look abandoned.
But they’re actually home to a thriving faith-based, tuition-free middle school that fully intends on staying in the Hill and building up the block.
by | Mar 8, 2019 8:45 am | Comments (5)
Christopher Peak Photo
Mila Nishball, 97, who fled Czechoslovakia after the Nazi occupation.
As a child growing up near Prague, Mila Nishball saw her weekly trips to the synagogue as a chance to gab with her girlfriends rather than to participate in her family’s religious tradition.
But today, Nishball still tears up when she recalls visiting the site in the late 1980s to discover that the synagogue was gone. It had been torn down by the Nazis after she’d gone into hiding and then fled Czechoslovakia with help from an American-born boy.
by | Mar 7, 2019 8:28 am | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photo
Marcus Rivera (center) in court.
According to a newly released police report, the officer who exchanged shots with a fleeing suspect in the Hill in January fired the first bullet — after the suspect responded to orders to stop and raise his hands by pointing a gun at the officer instead.
by | Mar 1, 2019 2:33 pm | Comments (3)
Christopher Peak Photo
Third-graders Payton and Gabriel with their model bike.
A fire extinguisher made from soda bottles. A pair of elevator doors made from aluminum foil. A roller coaster made from miniature gears.
by | Mar 1, 2019 2:30 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Principal DiNicola welcomes the volunteers in her “seussified” Strong School lobby.
There was a zug under the … rug, Mayor Harp said, calling the kids’ attention to the pleasurably goofy rhyme as she read to them from Dr. Seuss’s There’s A Wocket In My Pocket.
by | Feb 21, 2019 1:02 pm | Comments (3)
Noah Kim photo
Sgt. Justin Marshall presents on the latest crime statistics.
After applauding collaboration between neighbors and police officers, the top cop in the Hill received applause himself.
by | Feb 15, 2019 8:59 am | Comments (17)
Thomas Breen photos
Boxcutter-wielding landlord Xie Meiqiang flees a reporter Thursday outside his Orchard Street property.
68 Mechanic St.: Condemned.
The city condemned a two-family home that two Guilford-based landlords had illegally converted into a five-unit rooming house. Four tenants were displaced.
The landlords’ — and their citywide tenants’ — problems may have just begun.
by | Feb 8, 2019 1:37 am | Comments (1)
Thomas Breen photo
Marcus Rivera with Asst. Public Defender Kelly Billings in court this week.
Detectives are pouring through over 600 pages of medical records as they seek to prove that a chainlink fence — rather than a large, armed, unidentified assailant — was the source of a hand injury on a man accused of shooting at city police.
by | Feb 7, 2019 5:18 pm | Comments (10)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Serena Neal-Sanjurjo: “Changing the way we do business.”
A private buyer got a step closer to transforming a blighted two-family home in the Hill into affordable housing, after an extended debate that ended with a tighter rehab deadline and a vow to demand more from people who buy property from the city.