Westville

Brennan: New Haven Needs To "Zone Up"

by | Aug 17, 2023 2:20 pm | Comments (21)

Thomas Breen photos

Liam Brennan (right) with Keith and Yolanda Harper talking through ...

... fewer empty lots, more housing, on Starr Street.

Keith Harper can still remember the three-family house that stood a few doors down from his own family’s Starr Street home. It’s now a vacant city-owned lot. 

Mayoral challenger Liam Brennan visited Harper’s Newhallville block to make his pitch for why a house should be standing there again today — and what rules need to be changed to make that denser land-use vision a reality.

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Yale Golf-Course Plan Met With Distrust

by | Aug 15, 2023 12:32 pm | Comments (11)

Allan Appel photo

Stevenson Road resident Henry Horton: Will Yale's tree-cutting plans make a bad flooding situation even worse?

Upper Westville neighbors of the Yale University Golf Course could have been pleased with the significant news that when it reopens in 2025, after a multi-million dollar environmental restoration, the formerly private, member-only greenway will be transformed into a public one where anyone can pay for a round and play. 

But, on Monday night, the neighbors weren’t happy — and were skeptical that the university would follow through on its many promises.

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Regicides Raise Roof And Funds

by | Aug 14, 2023 10:21 am | Comments (0)

Karen Ponzio

This photo says it all.

Under a Saturday night sky swelling with the threat of thunderstorms, The Regicides performed to a rapt and enthusiastic audience at A Broken Umbrella Theatre’s current location on Blake Street with a bonus: they were treated to a preview of the theater’s new performance space in the making, and a pitch for assistance to help it come to fruition — all while eating, drinking, and making merry in the truest laugh-a-minute fashion.

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Mind, Body, & Soul Arrive In Westville

by | Jul 28, 2023 10:09 am | Comments (12)

ASHER JOSEPH PHOTOS

Jordan Sloshower (center) celebrates the grand opening of West Rock Wellness with friends, family, & city officials.

The three new storefronts on Whalley Ave.

Westville small business owners and city officials cut ceremonial ribbons to celebrate the grand openings of a new mental health center, a new hair salon, and a new poké bowl restaurant on Whalley Avenue — bringing mind, body, and soul to a bustling commercial strip.

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Hi-Fi Pie Fest Makes Sure Everyone Gets A Piece

by | Jul 25, 2023 9:08 am | Comments (1)

Eleanor Polak Photos

Westville neighbourhood lines up to buy homemade pies.

The air over Beecher Park, located at Mitchell Library at 37 Harrison St., rang with chatter, music, and a heavenly mixture of sugar, spice, and everything nice. 

Westville Village Renaissance Alliance hosted on Monday evening the latest installment in Hi-Fi Pie Fest, its weekly summer pie baking competition, a community-centric event complete with food and live music. 

It’s really just getting people together,” said WVRA Executive Director Lizzy Donius, who sported a Hi-Fi Pie Fest t‑shirt bearing the words Come for the music, stay for the pie!” The slogan, said Donius, is interchangeable. Some people come for the pie and stay for the music.

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New Haven Has Its Cake And Hears It Too

by | Jul 20, 2023 9:26 am | Comments (0)

Natalie Somekh via Instagram

John McCrea.

The Westville Music Bowl really lives up to its name. Sitting in the center feels like being dropped to the bottom of an enormous serving piece, with nowhere to look but up at the great blue walls of seats around you, the evening sky above, or the stage straight ahead. On the menu for Wednesday evening: Cake, a now-venerable alternative rock band hailing from Sacramento, California.

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Elicker Ranked First In Westville Straw Poll

by | Jul 14, 2023 8:26 am | Comments (20)

Thomas Breen photo

Aaron Goode (right) overseeing Thursday's RCV mayoral straw poll in Westville.

There was no need for an instant runoff in Thursday’s Westville ward committee straw poll for mayor, as two-term incumbent Justin Elicker won a majority of votes on the first ballot. 

But, for the fun of it — and to practice running a ranked-choice-voting election — the neighborhood Democrats assembled in Edgewood School’s auditorium counted a second round of votes anyway, and shed a bit more light on this year’s mayoral race in the process.

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Kehler Liddell Show Celebrates 20 Years

by | Jul 14, 2023 8:15 am | Comments (0)

Frank Bruckmann

I-95 N. Benson Rd.

Frank Bruckman’s paintings of the highways around the state have been a thread running through Kehler Liddell Gallery’s programming for years. The technical ability and attention to detail brought to such a mundane subject has layers of meaning attached to it. On one level, no one said that paintings can’t be funny, and there’s humor in every brushstroke. But there’s also the message built into the skill and hours brought to the canvas: driving in traffic on the interstate may seem like something to get through, something to forget. But we all spend hours of our lives doing it. Maybe it’s important for that reason alone — as important, in its own way, as a naval battle, or a visitation from a saint.

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Timber! Yale To Fell 800 Golf-Course Trees

by | Jul 7, 2023 1:21 pm | Comments (22)

Thomas Breen file photo

The Yale Golf Course: 800 trees coming down, 2,000 going up?

Mia Cortés Castro Photos

Alders Festa, Punzo, Ficklin, and Miller at Thursday's CSEP meeting.

Yale plans to cut down roughly 800 trees at the university’s Upper Westville golf course, and plant another 2,000 in their stead, in order to create more grassy space for hitting the links — prompting pushback from neighbors and local environmentalists about the potential harms of felling so much wood.

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Seeing Sounds Grows Into Second Year

by | Jul 3, 2023 8:49 am | Comments (2)

Brian Slattery Photos

Celine Who at Seeing Sounds.

Celine Who let out a melisma of notes that floated through the air of the skate park in Edgewood Park. They commingled with the voices of vendors and of friends chatting, the scents of arepas and vegan Caribbean food. On the other side of the skate park, Eastine Akuni pumped out music from a second stage to a crowd brought to their feet on the lawn in the shade. It was early in the day for the second year of Seeing Sounds, the music and art festival organized by Trey Moore. Already a few hundred had arrived, and many more were coming.

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Whalley Wellness Center Explores Therapy's Frontier

by | Jun 16, 2023 10:56 am | Comments (0)

Brian Slattery Photo

Jamila Hokanson, Sasha Lehrer, Jordan Sloshower, Damian Paglia, Stephanie Kilpatrick, in West Rock Wellness's art gallery.

A team of clinicians and wellness instructors has opened a new mental health center in Westville, offering everything from psychotherapy to mind-body medicine to ketamine-assisted psychedelic therapies. 

This panoply of offerings is unified by their greater aim to create connection and community.

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Mauro-Sheridan Lends Its Ears To The Bard

by | Jun 6, 2023 8:43 am | Comments (2)

Eleanor Polak photo

At Monday's Shakespeare-in-the-schools rehearsal.

Nineteen middle-schoolers, all dressed in black, filed into the band room of Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School. They were preparing for the dress rehearsal of their production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Before they took the stage, however, they partook in a light refreshment of fruit snacks, Cheez-Its, juice boxes — and grapes. When the students dangled bunches of the purple fruit from their hands, they looked for all the world like the Roman citizens they were about to embody.

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Debate Portrays Housing As Politics Problem

by | Jun 5, 2023 9:18 am | Comments (13)

Thomas Breen photos

Elicker (right) catches up with nico w. okoro and family before forum's start ...

... as Abdussabur (right) greets Frank Cochran and Stephanie FitzGerald.

More emergency beds. A zoning overhaul. A freeze on taxes. A move away from being the methadone capital of Connecticut.”

The four Democrats seeking New Haven’s top elected office pitched those proposals when pressed during a mayoral candidate forum on what to do about the city’s lack of affordable housing and rising tide of homelessness.

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Four Artists Find The Depth In The Field

by | Jun 2, 2023 8:30 am | Comments (0)

Robert Bienstock

Concentricity 3.

Robert Bienstock’s Concentricity 3 is an abstract piece, but the lines are evocative of several natural forms at once. They could be the shapes on a topographical map, depicting hundreds of square miles of land. They could also be organic or inorganic forms growing under the light of a microscope. Bienstock may make conceptual art, but the patterns point toward the real.

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Football Star's Camp A Touchdown Success

by | May 25, 2023 8:40 am | Comments (1)

Lisa Reisman photo

Tyler Booker (center) with campers: “The kids got a whole lot out of it, and that’s the point, and they had a whole lot of fun."

The rain came in torrents. It kept coming. No one seemed to care. This was the long-awaited second annual Tyler Booker Football Camp, and a little rainstorm wasn’t going to get in the way.

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Four Artists Emerge For Spring

by | May 17, 2023 8:55 am | Comments (0)

Danae.

Anastasia Mastilovic’s painting Danae may be named after a figure in Greek mythology, but her style makes the figure evocative of more. The woman could be a goddess or a mermaid. She could be in repose, or unleashing magical powers. Or perhaps it’s all a metaphor, about power, latent and dynamic, and how it can be used to transform the world.

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