by | Feb 3, 2025 10:33 am | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen photo
Cherif, with Scotch: Stipulation reached, eviction trial avoided.
(Updated) A mom of three young disabled children can stay in her Orchard Street apartment through the end of May — per a court-mediated agreement she struck with her landlord on the day her eviction case was set to go to trial.
by | Jan 2, 2025 3:32 pm | Comments (2)
The last stretch of 2024 in New Haven included a homicide, a stolen Amazon van, and two stabbings, including one at Union Station.
Continue reading ‘Homicide, Stabbings, & A Stolen Amazon Truck’
by | Dec 5, 2024 10:18 am | Comments (9)
Zachary Groz photo
Beam me up, YNHH.
High in the sky, two crewmen from CT Ironworkers Local No. 15 & 424 waited for a crane to haul in an enormous beam.
The workers started as motionless dots against the deep blue backdrop. As the beam neared, they went into action, harnessing each side and battling the wind to get the slab to click into place.
When it finally did, the external structure of the Adams Neurosciences Center at Yale New Haven Hospital was officially complete — eight years after concept, and two after groundbreaking.
by | Dec 2, 2024 8:27 pm | Comments (9)
(Updated) Christopher Santana had driven a friend to the parking lot behind a George Street apartment complex Monday afternoon when he was approached by two masked men.
One “abruptly shot” Santana — before both fled on foot, leaving the 25-year-old New Havener to die.
Continue reading ‘25-Year-Old Shot Dead At George And Winthrop’
by | Nov 12, 2024 2:32 pm | Comments (17)
Thomas Breen photo
Shovels up, for the Monarch ...
Honeycome Real Estate rendering
... the new Monarch apartments, that is ...
Thomas Breen photo
... and not the former linen-cleaning company (pictured).
The “route men” are long gone from the former Monarch Cleaners in West River.
So are the pleas of “Uncle Sammy, you got a summer job for me?” that sisters Cathy Dziekan and Jan Lougal still remember their dad being asked by extended family in need of work.
But the history of their family’s long-time laundry business will live on — in the name and in the story behind 64 new affordable apartments now on the rise on Derby Avenue.
Continue reading ‘Ex-Cleaners Ground Broken For 64 Apartments’
by | Oct 17, 2024 11:55 am | Comments (20)
Thomas Breen file photo
Barnard Principal Stephanie Skiba shows off a Yondr pouch, where the cellphone goes.
All New Haven public elementary and middle school students will have to stow their phones in magnetically sealed “Yondr” pouches starting in January — per a new districtwide policy designed to minimize pocket-buzzing distractions by creating cellphone-free learning environments.
Continue reading ‘K-8 School Cellphone Ban To Start In January’
by | Sep 20, 2024 3:27 pm | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photo
Owen Agba, Grace Sherman, and Nathaly Ynoa Martinez: No phones, no problems.
When Barnard School eighth-graders Grace Sherman and Nathaly Ynoa Martinez and Owen Agba arrived at school Friday morning, they put their smartphones in magnetically sealed pouches — which they likely wouldn’t unlock until the end of the day.
After participating in a year-long experiment in phone-free classrooms, they looked forward to another day of in-person learning and socializing with friends, unmired by the distractions of TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, their governor and one of their U.S. senators popped into their school to learn about how that’s all going.
by | Aug 20, 2024 9:43 am | Comments (2)
Lisa Reisman photo
Young entrepreneurs (clockwise from left) Erron Duncan, Chance, Tae Cunningham, Michael "MJ" Smith, Nyla Shepard, and Mathieu Duncan, with Gorilla Lemonade's Kristen Threatt.
On a recent sun-drenched morning, Nyla Shepard, a ninth grader at Eli Whitney Tech, approached a white Honda on the corner of Legion and Sherman Avenues, a bottle of lemonade in each hand. The driver shook her head, then redirected her eyes at the road.
“People are gonna do that,” she said, as the light turned green. “You just gotta get used to it.”
Continue reading ‘Young Entrepreneurs Learn The Art Of The Sale’
by | Aug 5, 2024 3:10 pm | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen file photo
Retreat's now-closed 915 Ella T. Grasso location.
Patient records, narcotics, and piles of mail allegedly remained inside a drug rehab center on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard a month after the facility abruptly closed — and were all accessible to anyone able to push through the shuttered complex’s back door.
Continue reading ‘Foreclosure Suit: Closed Drug Rehab Center Left Open To Trespassers’
by | Jul 19, 2024 3:04 pm | Comments (11)
Millie Grenough, Aaron Goode, and Frank Panzarella (behind) empty their bottles at the Peace Garden on Ella T. Grasso Blvd.
New Haven is proudly a United Nations Peace Messenger City — so says the beautiful gladioli-draped welcome sign that even many New Haveners may not know exists because they whiz by on speedy Ella T. Grasso Boulevard between Legion Avenue and North Frontage Road.
Yet New Haven is also a city that doesn’t always provide water hook-ups to all its public green areas, even a gateway location such as this one.
That means that Paul Bloom, Frank and Paula Panzarella, Aaron Goode, Millie Grenough, and other, dedicated, long-time members of the Friends of West River Peace Garden – the site in question — are “always carrying tons of water in our cars,” said Grenough.
by | Jul 2, 2024 1:50 pm | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen file photo
596-598 George St., to be sold to veterans housing nonprofit.
Alders signed off on selling a long-vacant, city-owned duplex next to Yale New Haven Hospital for $6,000 to a local veterans housing nonprofit that plans to rehab the property into six affordable rentals.
by | May 22, 2024 11:52 am | Comments (4)
Thomas Breen photo
St. Raph's ambulance drop-off area: Closing for construction. Temp drop-off area to be built next door.
How do you double the size of a hospital’s emergency department without displacing ambulances from a construction zone?
Yale New Haven Hospital is seeking to solve that riddle by shutting down a portion of Orchard Street for 18 months — and paying the city an extra $150,000 for the inconvenience — as it builds a larger emergency department for its St. Raphael’s campus.
Continue reading ‘YNHH Seeks Orchard Lane Closure During Construction’
by | May 21, 2024 4:08 pm | Comments (12)
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Broken past, fixed future for 596 George (pictured)?
The city has abandoned plans to convert a long-vacant duplex on George Street into owner-occupied housing — and is now looking to sell the boarded-up brick buildings to a local nonprofit with the goal instead of creating affordable rentals for veterans.
Continue reading ‘Plan Shifts For Historic George St. Duplex’
by | Apr 19, 2024 10:10 am | Comments (2)
Allan Appel Photo
Daniel Wood, Jeremy Tremblay, Stephany Miller, Paul Bloom, Aaron Goode, and Millie Grenough on Thursday.
City peace commissioners and a crew of freshmen from Albertus Magnus College ventured out to a green patch off of Ella T. Grasso Boulevard with rakes, gloves, bags, and high hopes for adding a little color and joy to the world.
by | Apr 10, 2024 4:10 pm | Comments (16)
Thomas Breen file photo
Joseph: "Verbal agreement" in place for med-office parking.
Should a planned new medical office building on a West River superblock be allowed to have 0 off-street parking spaces — when there’s a 700-space parking garage right next door?
by | Mar 28, 2024 4:27 pm | Comments (22)
Thomas Breen photos
Ceremonial shovels, at the ready...
... for 56 new apartments in West River.
Officials joined West River neighbors to celebrate the government-backed construction of 56 new affordable apartments where Urban Renewal’s bulldozers once plowed through the Oak Street neighborhood six decades ago to make way for a mini-highway.
by | Mar 26, 2024 3:27 pm | Comments (19)
Laura Glesby Photo
Developer Joseph: Big plans for Rte 34.
Four stories of medical research will join a daycare, a 130-room hotel, and a social services center — as the last development in the decade-long construction of the Route 34 West “superblock.”
by | Feb 27, 2024 11:33 am | Comments (0)
A second-alarm house fire on Winthrop Avenue Tuesday morning displaced seven New Haveners.
by | Jan 30, 2024 3:13 pm | Comments (8)
X'Nique suggests to City Engineer Giovanni Zinn that city prioritize shade and sensory play.
A tire swing. A skate park. “A lot of butterflies.” And toys promoting “sensory play.”
Neighborhood children eagerly offered those visions for a planned redesign of Kensington Playground, following years of adult-dominated debates over the future of the park.
by | Dec 8, 2023 1:03 pm | Comments (21)
Thomas Breen photo
The now-removed asbestos hazard sign, which was up at 16 Miller on Nov. 29.
The asbestos hazard signs have come down — and 56 new affordable homes are going up, now that a nonprofit development duo has officially acquired and begun construction at a cleaned-up, long-vacant strip of Route 34 land.
Continue reading ‘Construction Begins On Curtis Cofield II Estates’
by | Oct 27, 2023 5:36 pm | Comments (12)
Laura Glesby Photo
Jennifer Stanfield: "I can’t stand all that stress. Trying to move, trying to pack, and trying to keep up with my health as well."
Jennifer Stanfield is packing to go to a place she hasn’t yet found.
She’s removed all the art from the walls. Sorted summer and winter clothes into different boxes. Set aside whole weekends to clearing every possession from the turquoise house on Parmelee Avenue where she and her husband have lived, at times with kids and grandkids, for seven years.
“I don’t know where I’m taking it,” she said, “but I’m packing.”
by | Aug 2, 2023 9:07 am | Comments (32)
Thomas Breen photo
1476 Chapel tenant Shaquita Alston (right) with sister Katina Kitchens: "Why keep selling it if it needs to be torn down?"
An affiliate of Ocean Management has sold a 20-unit West River apartment complex, which is home to a newly formed tenants union, for $2.44 million — as the local megalandlord continues to unload rental properties at prices well above what it paid to buy them over the past decade.
Continue reading ‘Ocean Sells 15 Buildings In 7 Months For $7.8M+’
by | May 15, 2023 3:30 pm | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photos
The pastrami egg and cheese sandwiches were flying at a George Street construction site Monday as Jillian Ledic kept a food truck moving so her moms could bring some of the trickle-down dollars of New Haven’s construction boom to Vegas.
Continue reading ‘Word On George Street: Boomtime Breaktime’
by | May 11, 2023 10:44 am | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Sixth graders Tiranke Keita, Grace Sherman, and Issac Oliver in Barnard's garden bed.
Barnard sixth grader Tiranke Keita dug a hole in the bed of her school’s garden, Grace Sherman filled it in with a handful of rich compost, and Issac Oliver nestled in a starter plant of lettuce — kicking off the Derby Avenue PreK‑8 school’s latest effort in hands-on, hands-in-the-dirt learning.
Continue reading ‘Barnard's Classroom Garden Springs to Life’
by | Mar 24, 2023 11:09 am | Comments (17)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Tent City, bulldozed on March 16: It doesn't have to be like this.
(Opinion) Last week the City of New Haven bulldozed an encampment of tents and make-shift structures along the West River called Tent City that was built by people experiencing homelessness.
City residents responded with cheers, harsh condemnation, and everything in between.
While everyone will not agree on what to do about encampments, we can agree that we would prefer to live in a community where people do not feel that long-term camping by the river is their best option.