by | Mar 17, 2021 5:55 pm | Comments (2)
Courtney Luciana photo
Loretta and Louis Abate.
Regardless of lines going out of the door of New Haven’s renowned “Little Italy” restaurants, many owners didn’t think they were going to make it through the pandemic.
Continue reading ‘Wooster Square Rolls With Pandemic, Ready For Spring Rejuvenation’
by | Feb 25, 2021 10:58 am | Comments (16)
Dylan Sloan photo
Parisi, outside Wooster Square apt.: Rent’s too damn high.
A Wooster Square woman facing a $150 monthly rent hike has appealed to state court — putting on trial, so to speak, the way New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission handles landlord-tenant disputes.
by | Feb 19, 2021 12:45 pm | Comments (3)
Google photos
35-145 Cooper Pl.
A New Jersey investor has expanded his west side residential holdings by picking up a 137-unit Upper Westville apartment complex for $21 million — more than double the value the city places on the properties.
by | Feb 17, 2021 12:08 pm | Comments (0)
Laura Glesby Photo
The pole and its new support system, which tower 40 feet.
A 40-foot utility support pole plunked in the flowerbed at the corner of Wooster and Olive streets will return to its original location across the street, on a block being transformed into a six-story apartment complex.
The developer who first moved the pole made this promise to Wooster Square neighbors Tuesday evening.
by | Feb 4, 2021 9:16 pm | Comments (2)
Maya McFadden Photo
Operators of a newly opened Reentry Welcome Center in Wooster Square are calling on the community to join them in the quest to help formerly incarcerated New Haveners get back on their feet.
by | Feb 1, 2021 10:32 am | Comments (3)
Maya McFadden Photo
Honda Smith and Andrea Daniels-Singleton in the kitchen before hitting the road to deliver meals in West Hills.
As temperatures swooped below freezing, New Haveners delivered sustenance to their neighbors: bags of prepared beef and potatoes for seniors in West Hills, groceries for hungry families in the Hill, Mystic cheese and locally produced honey for farmers market shoppers in Wooster Square.
Continue reading ‘1 Day, 3 Pivots: Neighbors Feed Neighbors’
by | Jan 29, 2021 4:23 pm | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen pre-pandemic photo
Mendel Paris (left), the new owner of the former “Paradise” property at and behind 86 Fitch (below).
Local landlord Mendel Paris has purchased the former west-side headquarters of a scandal-plagued landscaping company, in one of the city’s latest property transactions.
by | Jan 20, 2021 1:48 pm | Comments (46)
Luke Melonakos-Harrison: “We’re facing a housing crisis of almost unimaginable proportions.”
Ahead of an anticipated deluge of evictions, advocates are pushing for the state to guarantee legal representation for tenants who find themselves in housing court.
by | Jan 15, 2021 5:02 pm | Comments (7)
Maya McFadden Photo
Matt Grabel: What’s that smell?
Matt Grabel caught a whiff of something that smelled like a gas leak coming from his basement. His Wooster Square neighbors smelled it, too, in their homes.
by | Jan 14, 2021 10:27 am | Comments (0)
Parker, Benton, Chew.
Drums, keys, and guitar meander for just a moment. A sampled voice intones, “the city, the city, the city — the city of Townsville.” Then adds, almost at a scream, “is under attack!” The instruments snap into focus, digging into an urgent groove that’s one part anxiety, three parts creative energy. “Watch me go!” Moon Cha sings, mixing fear and exhilaration.
It’s from “Mojo Jojo,” the second song off of 900 Grand, a new album from a new band, Mightymoonchew, that combines the talents of three young New Haven musicians — Thailend Parker (a.k.a. Moon Cha) on vocals and guitar, Marcus-Aurelius C. Benton on keys, and Chris Chew on drums — who mine the chaos of 2020 to blaze a wide trail into 2021.
Continue reading ‘Mightymoonchew Captures The Summer of 2020’
by | Dec 24, 2020 10:26 am | Comments (2)
Bruce Seymour Photos
“I was walking past Lucibello’s this morning,” Bruce Seymour wrote in on Thursday after visiting the Grand Avenue Italian pastry shop, “and was inspired to send you these pictures.
“The line runs AROUND the building. Everyone socially distancing, and getting some of the best cookies in the world.
by | Dec 18, 2020 1:21 pm | Comments (27)
Dylan Sloan Photo
Tenant Parisi at 14-16 Lyon … for now.
A Wooster Square woman in an ongoing battle with her landlord will have to pay an extra $150 a month in rent — more than she’d like, less than the landlord sought.
In setting that rate, fair rent commissioners waded into a dispute that involved a promise to vacuum common areas in return for lowered rent, what prices renters should pay these days in gentrifying Wooster Square … and whether the tenant is wrecking a landlord’s valuable investment. Or whether her landlord is wrecking her life.
by | Dec 16, 2020 10:53 am | Comments (1)
BROOKS AND DICKINSON Rendering
The planned new Y2Y homeless youth building at 924 Grand.
Thomas Breen photo
Shoveling dirt, six feet apart.
At the same time that Yale New Haven Hospital workers received the first local dosages of a Covid-19 vaccine, housing advocates in Wooster Square broke ground on a project to help solve “another, longer standing curse in our society, one that gets much less attention” than the novel coronavirus.
That is: the scourge of youth homelessness.
by | Dec 15, 2020 11:04 am | Comments (0)
Dan Katz
Dust Control at NG2BC, pre-pandemic.
Dust Control’s “Your Idea of Success” starts with a churning guitar, a growling bass, before the drums begin to propel everything forward, and the singer hollers out his truth. It’s the kind of music that needs and finds a home in every city, and as the title of the album — “Live” at Never Get To Be Cool — Dust Control found its home at Never Get to Be Cool, or NG2BC, a DIY music space in the Wooster Square neighborhood that gave up its lease at the beginning of December, about a week after “Live” was recorded.
Dust Control’s album thus marks the end of a run for NG2BC, of over two years, about 150 shows, and who knows how many recording projects.
by | Nov 18, 2020 12:37 pm | Comments (4)
A presentation slide from Tuesday’s meeting depicts the various areas of support that the drop-off center will target.
When a new drop-off center for people transitioning out of prison comes to Wooster Square in January, the program will have some friendly faces — and even a few potential new collaborators — in the neighborhood.
Continue reading ‘Wooster Square Neighbors Welcome Planned Re-Entry Drop-Off Center’
by | Oct 26, 2020 1:14 pm | Comments (24)
SPINNAKER REAL ESTATE PARTNERS / FIEBER GROUP
Current plan for the former Coliseum site.
(Opinion) When I first came back to New Haven in 1971 I was told by everyone to focus on the problems of the poor and the disadvantaged. Forty years later I see the mood of the City seems not to have changed. Affordable housing is critically important but there are several much larger issues which need to be the focus of our discussions, all of which conclude making the project financially successful for all income classes.
The current controversy over the Coliseum site is focused strictly on affordable housing, a subject which, by itself, is a nonstarter.
Continue reading ‘Opinion: Coliseum Site Needs A Neighborhood Builder’
by | Oct 26, 2020 1:07 pm | Comments (1)
Elm City Industrial Properties, Inc.
What the warehouses would look like from South Wallace Street.
A plan to fill in the long-vacant block bounded by Chapel Street, Ives Place,and East and Wallace streets with two large warehouses has received unanimous approval from the City Plan Commission.
by | Oct 22, 2020 10:48 pm | Comments (28)
WTNH
Paglino, Streicker, DeLauro at Thursday night’s debate.
Thomas Breen file photo
Christopher Columbus, mid-removal from Wooster Square.
The first and only Congressional debate this year took place in Woodbridge, but its spiritual center was Wooster Square.
by | Oct 21, 2020 1:54 pm | Comments (1)
Elm City Industrial Properties, Inc.
What the warehouses would look like from South Wallace Street.
The now-empty site of a factory by the Mill River that sent products to Home Depot could host warehouses for the delivery side of Home Depot, or another delivery-focused company like Amazon, by the summer of 2021.
by | Oct 7, 2020 4:16 pm | Comments (11)
Emily Hays Photo
Eric Mastroianni was mid-speech about his military record and his top issues when Roseann Iuvone stopped him to say what she really cared about: Cars nearly running her over in her own neighborhood.
by | Sep 29, 2020 5:56 pm | Comments (15)
Thomas Breen photos
Officials, developers break ground on Wooster Square’s “The Whit.”
Affordable housing advocates call for inclusive zoning in Woodbridge.
Developers raised shovels full of dirt in Wooster Square Tuesday to celebrate New Haven’s continued market-rate apartment boom — while affordable housing advocates headed to Woodbridge to take on decades-old laws that enable suburban segregation.
by | Sep 24, 2020 8:56 am | Comments (9)
Pizza, A Love Story — the movie that director Gorman Bechard calls “the quintessential New Haven film” — returns to the city for another party in the Sally’s parking lot, this one to celebrate its release on DVD and streaming services on Tuesday, Sept. 29.
by | Sep 16, 2020 5:22 pm | Comments (29)
Jenny Berkett: “A park without benches doesn’t make sense.”
Laura Glesby Photos
The Lenzi Park benches.
Neighbors succeeded in getting two wooden benches installed in a Wooster Square mini-park — and now in some cases are expressing second thoughts, because of who sits on them.
by | Sep 15, 2020 2:30 pm | Comments (8)
Thomas Breen photo
Metropolitan Business Academy at 115 Water St.
The state fined New Haven Public Schools $14,200 following an inspection of Metropolitan Business Academy that found faulty fume hoods, a broken eyewash station, obstructed fire extinguishers, and improper storage of hazardous chemicals in several of the Water Street high school’s laboratory classrooms.
by | Sep 2, 2020 8:38 am | Comments (6)
On a sunny day, the trees above the frames on the wall on Wooster Street dapple the art those frames contain. For the latest installment of Studio Duda’s outside art gallery — begun in May as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic — this interaction with nature is particularly apt.
Continue reading ‘Environmental Art Comes To Wooster Street’