Final Word On 87 Union Trees: Goodbye
by | Mar 22, 2019 12:24 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
None of the trees made the cut.
Or, rather, in a sad ironic way, they all did. Or soon will.
Wooster Square
Last Stand Of The Trees
by | Mar 19, 2019 3:39 pm | Comments (4)
“Oaks spend a hundred years growing, a hundred standing still, a hundred dying.
“Someone’s got to speak up for the trees.”
Someone did.
Beach Feud Fuels Factory Foreclosure
by | Mar 18, 2019 3:23 pm | Comments (6)
Contested beachfront: Cirino’s property at left; Palmieri’s, right.
Close-Up TV News
Palmieri in a past interview about the family food biz.
The city has moved to foreclose on a Mill River spaghetti sauce manufacturing plant due to unpaid taxes.
Meanwhile, the plant’s third-generation owner owes over $430,000 to a Morris Cove neighbor whom he took to court six times over 15 years over who owns the beach abutting their properties.
5 Years Later, Wooster Sq. Ground Broken
by | Mar 14, 2019 3:26 pm | Comments (27)
Thomas Breen photo
City officials, economic boosters, and developers move some gravel to celebrate 87 Union St. groundbreaking.
Niles Bolton Associates
The latest design for 87 Union St.
It took five years and two different developers to get from the first community meeting to the groundbreaking.
Now work is beginning on a 299-unit, market-rate apartment complex on the border of Wooster Square and Downtown, and builders predict it will take far less than another five years to finish the job and fill the block with new tenants.
Healthful Eating Gets Jarring
by | Mar 14, 2019 7:48 am | Comments (16)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Mason Jar Exchange’s Marissa Vaspasiano at CitySeed Kitchen.
The Mason Jar Exchange
Marissa Vaspasiano wants to make it easier for you and your family to enjoy healthful fresh meals. Her secret weapon? A mason jar.
Rehab Crew Stumbles On AK-47, Mach 11
by | Mar 12, 2019 7:58 am | Comments (17)
Scene of discovery beneath clock factory floorboards.
The developers of the new Clock Shop Lofts apartments recently stumbled upon a half-dozen high-power firearms buried beneath the floorboards of the former Hamilton Street factory complex.
Avis Approved Again— This Time With New Curb Cuts
by | Feb 26, 2019 12:57 pm | Comments (1)
Arsalan Altaf rendering
The proposed new Avis Car Rental service on Olive Street.
Thomas Breen photo
Avis developer Arsalan Altaf, local attorney Carolyn Kone, and local engineer Tim Onderko at last week’s City Plan meeting.
For the second time in three months, the City Plan Commission has approved the site plan for an Olive Street rental car and truck facility.
This time around, the plan calls for not one curb cut, but two: one for cars, one for trucks.
Continue reading ‘Avis Approved Again— This Time With New Curb Cuts’
St. Michael’s School Conversion Resurrected
by | Feb 25, 2019 4:29 pm | Comments (7)
Thomas Breen photo
The now vacant former St. Michael’s school on Greene Street.
After a false start with a controversial landlord, St. Michael’s Church has found a new developer to purchase its vacant former school and convent buildings and turn them into apartments.
Continue reading ‘St. Michael’s School Conversion Resurrected’
Wallace St. Rehabs Eye Renters, Strippers
by | Feb 25, 2019 8:43 am | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen photo
Miguel Almodovar, lawyer for both projects, pitching zoners.
Twenty-five apartments in a rehabbed historic carriage factory. A “Planet Venus” strip club with liquor service in a 1960s-era concrete warehouse.
Both are planned for within a half-mile of one another on the same post-industrial stretch of Wooster Square.
Welcome to the new Wallace Street?
Continue reading ‘Wallace St. Rehabs Eye Renters, Strippers’
Neapolitan Brothers Take On Wooster Square Pizza
by | Feb 21, 2019 8:38 am | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen photo
Neapolitan brothers and new pizza restaurant owners Aleko and Jeshar Zeneli on Tuesday night.
Eataly photo
The third brother, Eataly NYC Flatiron Executive Pizza Chef Gazmir Zeneli, winning the Caputo Cup in 2017.
Three Neapolitan brothers plan to open their own pizza restaurant later this spring in the heart of the city’s Little Italy.
How will they compete with Pepe’s and Sally’s, not to mention the many farther flung famed local pizza joints?
With personal pies. Wood-fired stoves. And decades of experience.
Continue reading ‘Neapolitan Brothers Take On Wooster Square Pizza’
Coffee Shop Changes Still Percolating
by | Feb 20, 2019 2:40 pm | Comments (23)
Allan Appel Photo
Wang pitches historic commissioners on his plan.
All Jimmy Wang wants to do is put in bigger windows so pedestrian traffic can see how cozy his Wooster Square corner coffee shop is.
In an historic district, he’s learning, that’s not so simple.
Busy Builder Pressed To Hire Local Workers
by | Feb 20, 2019 2:08 pm | Comments (9)
Paul Bass Photo
Laborers at work Tuesday on Spinnaker’s Audubon Square project.
District Manager Lt. Sean Maher, in foreground, with team chair Smith, surrounded by carpenters.
Hillhouse High School graduate and proud local young carpenter Davon McNeil, 27, is enthusiastic about his profession and his town. A carpenters union member, he commutes daily to a project in Bridgeport.
He’d love to hammer the boards and do the framing of the many rising new buildings in his native New Haven.
But the builders, when they acquire their properties in private transactions involving no city help, don’t have to hire local.
Continue reading ‘Busy Builder Pressed To Hire Local Workers’
Olive Street Plan Sent Back To The Drawing Board
by | Feb 19, 2019 1:12 pm | Comments (9)
Allan Appel Photo
The corner lot in question looking north on Olive.
The long-empty lot on the important Wooster Square corner of Olive and Greene Street will remain empty for, well, longer than planned.
Continue reading ‘Olive Street Plan Sent Back To The Drawing Board’
Daycare Providers Press Commissioner For Promised Dollars
by | Feb 5, 2019 6:18 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel PhotoC
Hope Executive Director Georgia Goldburn, far right, with Mayor Harp, Beth Bye, and some of the kids.
With early child education slots a growing and pressing need statewide and in New Haven, you’d think a pioneering, successful early child care center serving poor and working families would have no trouble fill spots in a new, expanded Wooster Square location.
Think again.
Continue reading ‘Daycare Providers Press Commissioner For Promised Dollars’
Amid Freeze, Cops Look Out For Homeless
by | Jan 31, 2019 8:54 am | Comments (3)
Christopher Peak Photo
Officer Daophet Sangxayarath looks for people out in the deep freeze.
As temperatures dropped into the single digits on Wednesday night, beat cops fanned out across the city searching for anyone who might be at risk of freezing to death.
Building Boom Sparks Ideas For More Public Input
by | Jan 16, 2019 5:21 pm | Comments (5)
Some of the “deluge” of developments about to hit the city: Downtown Crossing, 87 Union St., Long Wharf, 848 Chapel St.
Thomas Breen photo
Acting Economic Development Administrator and Acting City Plan Director Michael Piscitelli.
Publish a single list of development projects that are open to public comment. Use online maps to explain a project’s history and timeline. And clarify land use-related meeting agendas, so that the public can easily understand what a developer is asking of the city.
City officials heard those and other good-governance recommendations from Downtown and Wooster Square neighbors about how best to keep the public informed and engaged during the city’s current deluge of development and construction.
Continue reading ‘Building Boom Sparks Ideas For More Public Input’
2 “Your Speed” Signs Coming To Wooster Square
by | Jan 16, 2019 4:54 pm | Comments (5)
Thomas Breen photo
A “Your Speed” sign at Dixwell Avenue and Argyle Street.
City transit chief Doug Hausladen.
Wooster Square will soon receive two new permanent “Your Speed” signs, including at an Olive Street intersection where a pedestrian was killed during an automobile collision three years ago.
Continue reading ‘2 “Your Speed” Signs Coming To Wooster Square’
Wooster Square Coffee Shop Urged To Tilt
by | Jan 16, 2019 8:40 am | Comments (16)
Lucy Gellman Arts Paper Photo
The Wooster Square Coffee Shop
Jimmy and Sara Wang have been operating the Wooster Square Coffee Shop ever since they took over the Chapel and Chestnut corner caffeinating institution in 2017 from the former popular Fuel Coffee Shop.
Business is good, Zhiming “Jimmy” Wang said, but to make it better the couple came before the Historic District Commission to seek approval for larger. more welcoming windows, removal of the canvas canopy, installing new lights, and other modest aesthetic improvements.
The commissioners listened, and asked politely if they would also consider tilting back the entire upper facade of their building to recreate the “beautiful ensemble” of three structures that was there before.
St. Michael’s Isn’t Giving Up On Plan
by | Jan 10, 2019 12:59 pm | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen photo
Pastor Robert Roy pitches zoners.
Three vacant Wooster Square buildings owned by St. Michael’s Church may be more attractive to a prospective future developer now that they’re en route to receive 15 on-site parking spaces from the adjacent St. Michael’s Church lot, despite some continued neighborhood opposition.
Lot-Street Swap Eyed For Cut-Through
by | Jan 2, 2019 8:35 am | Comments (11)
City Development Deputy Steve Fontana presents plan.
Thomas Breen photos
Fair Street: Revived connector?
The city plans to trade a publicly owned parking lot for a private stretch of Fair Street in order to build out a better bicycle-and-pedestrian-friendly connection between Downtown and Wooster Square.
More Apartments On The Way
by | Dec 20, 2018 9:02 am | Comments (2)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Architect Boroson explains the new Mid Block Development on Chapel Street …
The City Plan Commission advanced plans that will bring more than 200 apartments to New Haven in the next three years and put a rental car and truck facility in Wooster Square.
Mandy Pulls Out Of St. Michael’s Project
by | Dec 18, 2018 8:52 am | Comments (2)
Buchanan Architects, LLC
An aerial-view rendering of Mandy’s proposed conversion of the old St. Michael’s Church school buildings.
A local mega-landlord has pulled out of a deal to purchase and convert three vacant Wooster Square church buildings into 23 high-end apartments, citing environmental clean-up costs as the project’s primary obstacle.
“This Looks Like North Haven In The 1960s”
by | Dec 17, 2018 12:54 pm | Comments (2)
Allan Appel Photo
View of the site of the proposed 2-family house, from Olive Street.
Local developer Andrew Consiglio wants to turn a long vacant empty square of prime real estate at the corner of Olive and Greene streets into a two-family house.
That was well and good with the members of the Historic District Commission (HDC), to whom he applied for a certificate of appropriateness, because the proposed house sits in the heart of the Wooster Square Historic District.
However, commissioners said Consiglio did not provide enough detail — about the porch, windows, doors, roof, and general style. They urged Consiglio and his design colleague to look around the neighborhood and come back with a context, a vision, and a lot of the detail that the Historic District Commission (HDC) requires.
That was two years ago.
Continue reading ‘“This Looks Like North Haven In The 1960s”’
Strip Club Stalls Eviction With Bankruptcy
by | Dec 14, 2018 8:41 am | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photo
Scores strip club on St. John Street.
Scores lawyer Anthony DiCrosta and Clock Shop lawyer Jay Lawlor in court on Thursday.
A Mill River strip club filed for bankruptcy the afternoon before its eviction hearing, buying itself time before having to leave in order to make way for a new complex of 130 low-income apartments and artist lofts.
Continue reading ‘Strip Club Stalls Eviction With Bankruptcy’
Crash Injures 3, 1 Critically
by | Nov 22, 2018 10:52 am | Comments (0)
A driver crashed his Toyota Camry into a tree on Olive Street south of Chapel around 11 p.m. Wednesday.