Twining Properties / L&M Development Partners image
New "Winchester Green" apartments and retail to be built atop ...
Thomas Breen file photo
... current surface parking lot.
Thomas Breen file photo
New York-based redeveloper Alex Twining at an April 2021 Winchester Ave. meeting.
Developers won permission to build 287 new apartments, two new privately owned streets, and a new public plaza — continuing the transformation of the former Winchester Arms factory complex into a research, residential, and shopping hub.
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Kimberly Wipfler |
May 16, 2022 12:01 pm
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Metropolitan Business Academy 11th-grader Neiel Ventura at DAE.
High school junior Neiel Ventura took a chance on a new after-school computer science program in Fair Haven. Months later, Ventura has set her sights on a career goal in technology and has cultivated the skills to support it — and built her own website designed to sell sneakers.
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Brian Slattery |
May 16, 2022 8:31 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
The Town Green District’s New Haven Night Market once again drew throngs of people, as the event closed the intersection of Orange and Crown and its surrounding streets to car traffic, turning those city blocks into a bustling bazaar of food, art, and crafts. But there was also evidence that the event was expanding more informally, as artists and businesses beyond those blocks threw events to attract their own parts of the crowd.
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Laura Glesby, Nora Grace-Flood and Maya McFadden |
May 11, 2022 4:27 pm
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Independent reporters Laura Glesby, Maya McFadden, and Nora Grace-Flood on scene at New Haven's newest direct-connection destination.
It took less than ten minutes through TSA, two hours on a plane, and a timeless rock track sung by a musician moonlighting as a Lyft driver to transport a trio of New Haveners to Nashville.
In the same amount of time, three hyperlocal reporters and homebodies were transformed into tourists, traversing beyond transportation-themed press conferences into new territory bordered by bluegrass, barbecue and surprisingly substantial bike lanes for a car-centric state.
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Laura Glesby |
May 11, 2022 1:29 pm
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One recent Wednesday morning, before arriving to Whalley Avenue to open his pharmacy business for a day, Victor Fok drove to a patient’s house to teach them how to test their blood sugar levels, free of charge.
At Fok’s previous job at a large corporate pharmacy chain, he would never have had the time and incentive to prioritize patient education. Now, as a co-owner of the recently-opened True-Care Pharmacy in the Amity neighborhood, Fok and his team hope to reach community members where they live with personally-delivered prescriptions, immunizations, and education initiatives.
Hamden’s top planner and development chief delivered a pitch to allow an affordable-housing complex to rise on long-vacant manufacturer land — but unconvinced commissioners are holding out on giving the go-ahead.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 26, 2022 3:37 pm
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Thomas Breen photo
Construction underway at 101 College St., across from Alexion bioscience building at 100 College.
Mayor's proposed FY23 budget
Projected building permit revenue -- listed as "building inspections."
The Elicker Administration expects a $1.3 million bump in building permit revenue next fiscal year, as city inspectors take on complex — and costly — new buildings like the in-the-works 10-story bioscience tower at 101 College St.
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Courtney Luciana |
Apr 25, 2022 4:29 pm
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Eric Vidro.
Eric Vidro was headed to Chapel Street Monday morning during his morning shift — as a budding clothing designer — before his third-shift gig in a factory.
The latter pays the bills. The former fuels his dreams.
Josh Geballe ushered the DMV into the 21st century. Can he do the same for New Haven’s start-up economy?
He’s ready to give it his best.
Until two months ago, Geballe served as Gov. Ned Lamont’s chief operating officer (aka right-hand man), overseeing daily responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and, not incidentally, finally bringing license renewals online and revamping the seemingly hopeless Department of Motor Vehicles along with a team of other state officials.
Now Geballe has taken on another ambitious task: heading a new department at Yale charged with “supporting and expanding innovation and entrepreneurship across the university and throughout the Greater New Haven region.”
That’s the mission statement of the department, called Yale Ventures. It replaces Yale’s Office of Cooperative Research (OCR) set up in the 1980s to oversee “tech transfer” — helping researchers and profs patent and license their discoveries and turn them into new businesses.
The new Yale Ventures incorporates and expands that mission. It aims to work both within the university and in the broader community to train innovators to start companies, mentor them through the process, seek new corporate funding sources for start-ups, connect local companies as potential partners, help fill New Haven office and lab space, and help entrepreneurs as well as other New Haveners land jobs in the new companies.
Tech start-ups can produce jobs for New Haveners from all walks of life, Geballe (whose formal title at Yale is senior associate provost for entrepreneurship & innovation) stated during a conversation about the new venture Thursday on WNHHFM’s “Dateline New Haven” program: “The typical biotech start-up is going to have some leadership, they’re going to have some PhDs in white coats doing research. They also have lab techs, and office staff. There’s enormous demand, unmet need for those types of jobs.”
Planting start-up seeds throughout town also makes for a potentially stable, long-term economic strategy.
“It’s a much more robust form of economic growth, when you have many smaller firms that are growing,” Geballe observed.
“Some of them become Alexions or Arvinas that employ hundreds of people. But even then it’s not one massive employer that employs thousands of people, that if their technology shifts or they move overseas, then it’s a devastating effect. We have much more diversification.”
In a sense Geballe’s mission marks a third phase in the evolving town-gown effort to replace the tens of thousands of jobs lost to dying or fleeing manufacturers with a new tech-driven eds-and-meds economy. Phase 1 began in the 1980s with OCR’s creation and the creation of Science Park as a successor to the largely abandoned Winchester rifle complex. Yale President Rick Levin ushered in Phase 2.0 by embracing both OCR and Science Park rather than keeping it at arm’s length and working closely with New Haven’s DeStefano administration on economic development. Those efforts bore fruit, as evidence by the filling up of Science park buildings, 300 George St., 100 College St., and the not-yet-finished 101 College St.
Which gives Geballe and his team a chance to bring the effort to the next level.
An initial step will be the Yale-hosted annual Innovation Summit on May 17 and 18 (details here), which this year will feature more participation by innovators outside Yale’s community, who will have the chance to pitch venture capitalists and network with other new-economy movers and shakers.
Geballe: No danger of "getting bored."
Geballe, who is 47 and grew up in Stony Creek, comes to his new task with a combination of tech experience — including learning business management ropes at IBM, then running a successful software start-up (at the dawn of cloud computing’s rise), and finally diving into government service as Lamont’s COO. He said he can envision staying with his new job for decades, for the rest of his career.
He said Yale Ventures itself feels like a start-up. “We’re moving fast,” he said. “We’re not getting everything perfect. We’ll experiment.”
After two career-sector moves in five years, Geballe was asked how long he envisions staying in his new job.
“Rest of my life,” he responded. “ When you’ve got a university like Yale that’s spending a billion dollars a year on R&D, there’s never going to be an end to the new innovations coming out.
“If you ever get bored doing this work, you’re doing this wrong. “
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
Apr 22, 2022 10:24 am
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A rendering of 2972 Dixwell Ave.'s future with Vessel.
A New York City developer working to bring “aspirational” affordable apartments to New Haven, Stratford and New London has its sights set on a town-owned parking lot in Hamden — and is promising that the company will build on the town’s sense of community.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 22, 2022 8:14 am
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Biz-district leaders at Thursday's Finance Committee meeting.
Town Green District image
Town Green's downtown domain.
Downtown’s business improvement district is looking for an extra $60,000 from city taxpayers — and a 7.5 percent surtax hike on downtown property owners — to help fund its ongoing efforts to beautify and liven up the city center.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 20, 2022 3:56 pm
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Thomas Breen photos
Armada Brewing's John Kraszewski with the 4/20 special, "The Herbalist."
Lloyd Street entrance to Armada's River Street building.
The city’s newest brewery has opened its doors — and its taps — in a former Bigelow Boiler Factory building on River Street, with hopes that “danky” beers, dreamlike art, and spacious gathering spots will help spur an economic revival for Fair Haven’s derelict industrial waterfront.
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Thomas Breen |
Apr 18, 2022 10:27 am
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Thomas Breen photos
Sen. Blumenthal with Negaro and Immer at Atticus's Orange Street market.
Luke and Lisa Harrison eating lunch in the sun.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal stopped by Atticus Market to pick up a loaf of bread — and to celebrate the longtime local family-owned business’s recent award from the federal government.
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Kevin Maloney |
Apr 18, 2022 8:00 am
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Caroline Simmons, Stamford’s new mayor, wants any businesses interested in the city to email her at mayorsoffice@stamfordct.gov.
Just four months into the job, Mayor Simmons has become the city’s number one promoter. She joined “The Municipal Voice,” a co-production of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and WNHHFM, to talk about what drew her to local government, what she was able to accomplish in her first 100 days and what she has her eyes on for the future.
by
Maya McFadden |
Apr 15, 2022 11:01 am
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Still from video presented at liquor control hearing, capturing customers entering employee counter area.
The owner of a trouble-spot liquor store made a pitch about the challenges he faces with sometimes violent customers — and some promises to improve his operation — in hopes of keeping his liquor permit in the face of neighborhood opposition.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Apr 14, 2022 9:37 am
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As one of Hamden’s local Goodwill stores will be moving out of its 2369 Dixwell Ave. home, the chain’s officials have told the Independent the nonprofit is officially searching for a spot to reopen elsewhere in town.
New Orange Street intersection, slated to open on Monday.
Thomas Breen file photo
Donna Hall and Development Commissioner David Valentino on Sept. 2021 walking tour.
Goodbye, flashing lights and detours. Hello, new protected and signalized intersection: Starting next week, a long-in-the-works Orange Street crossroads connecting the Hill and downtown will finally open — and officials will begin pursuing the next step of “Downtown Crossing.”
State economic development deputy chief Alexandra Daum surrounded by Alders Carmen Rodriguez, Eli Sabin, and Richard Furlow, and city economic development deputy Carlos Eyzaguirre, at Tuesday's presser.
New Haven will get it right, down to the details.
So promised city leaders Tuesday as they celebrated a $5.3 million grant aimed at helping them redo something New Haven got very wrong a half century ago.
... to delivery. Developers finally get Pinto House into right position Monday.
New Haven’s 200-year-old William Pinto House inched closer Monday to its new destination: A plot of now-torn-up asphalt and dirt roughly 90 feet away from where it was originally built circa 1810.
