Business/ Economic Development

20 Years On, Scientology Site Still Stalled

by | Mar 17, 2023 3:08 pm | Comments (14)

Thomas Breen photos

Neighbor Shawn Nesmith outside 949 Whalley: "Tell them to get rid of that blighted property."

Still fenced off. Still tax-exempt.

A former Westville department store remains fenced off, empty and rundown — 20 years after the Church of Scientology bought the property, five years after the church last won permission to convert the site into a religious hub, and one year after a city board found that the long-vacant building should stay off the tax rolls.

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$32M Plan Would Fund Long Wharf Overhaul

by | Mar 16, 2023 11:10 am | Comments (18)

City of New Haven rendering

A sketch of the proposed new Long Wharf Drive park.

An aldermanic committee endorsed the Elicker Administration’s plan to build a new community marina and expanded waterfront park on Long Wharf — as well as a cafe kiosk and bathroom on the Green and a family-friendly playground downtown — if the city manages to secure $32.1 million in infrastructure-boosting state aid.

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Ex-Factory Tax Break, Redev Plan OK'd

by | Mar 10, 2023 9:30 am | Comments (17)

Twining / L&M Partners image

A rendering of the future Winchester Green apartments.

Alders approved a 17-year tax abatement for dozens of planned new income-restricted apartments in Science Park — along with a rezoning plan that could allow for even more places to live, shop, and conduct research at the former Winchester factory site.

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State Street Overhaul Moves Ahead

by | Mar 9, 2023 11:26 am | Comments (14)

Tom Breen file photo

Alders Eli Sabin and Carmen Rodriguez on a State St. redesign walking tour last October.

A downtown-adjacent stretch of State Street is one step closer to seeing new life as a place to walk, bike, shop, and live — now that alders have formally accepted a $5.3 million state grant to remake a car-centric Urban Renewal-cleared corridor.

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Snow Shovel Collab Clears Upper State

by | Feb 28, 2023 2:31 pm | Comments (4)

Nora Grace-Flood photo

Caroline Smith and crew at work on Upper State.

Caroline Smith slid a shovel beneath some slush obscuring a State Street sidewalk — and cleared a pathway to keep some of the city’s small businesses open for snow day shoppers.

She was joined by a handful of other volunteers looking to lend some muscle to a slew of stores thrown off by the previous night’s snowstorm.

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Local Biopharma Jobs Pipeline Opens

by | Feb 13, 2023 9:30 am | Comments (9)

Paul Bass Photo

OrLando Yarborough and Erik Clemons at WNHH FM.

Once upon a time, New Haveners without college degrees could pursue well-paying careers making rifles at the old Winchester factory.

Today they’ll be able to pursue careers working in labs helping test drugs to cure diseases like cancer, thanks to a new pipeline created to help New Haveners find their way to some of the jobs of the future pouring into the city.

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Ex-Factory Tax Break, Redev Plans Advance

by | Feb 10, 2023 10:04 am | Comments (11)

Nora Grace-Flood photos

Vacant former Winchester factory at Munson/Mansfield ...

... Kim Harris with Harris & Tucker students: Hoping to see a "great, eye-popping development that will move everyone forward."

Alders endorsed a 17-year tax break deal for dozens of planned new below-market-rent Science Park apartments — as part of a broader set of local legislative proposals designed to further the redevelopment of the former Winchester Arms Factory’s remaining parking lots and vacant industrial buildings into new housing, retail, and bioscience labs.

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Talks Stall On Prime Property’s Future

by | Feb 9, 2023 4:02 pm | Comments (45)

Paul Bass file photo

The former Church Street South property, above and below.

Elicker (at bottom left): "Disappointed & frustrated." Northland's Gottesdiener (bottom right): City's version "inaccurate at best, a lie at worst."

Five years after bulldozers demolished the 30-building Church Street South community across from Union Station, the land remains a fenced-off wasteland of prime real estate with no signs of progress on plans to rebuild.

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APT, Gateway Eye Long Wharf Moves

by | Feb 9, 2023 3:05 pm | Comments (21)

CONTRIBUTED BY THE CITY OF NEW HAVEN

Rendering of a proposed new "Gateway District" on Long Wharf.

Laura Glesby Photo

Community members hear a presentation at the Betsy Ross School Parish Hall.

A park and pedestrian-friendly walkway where cars now roar down Long Wharf Drive. 

An automotive trade school where the former Gateway Community College building is starting to crumble. 

A new home base for all of the APT Foundation’s New Haven substance-use treatment programs in a building specifically designed to address neighbors’ concerns.

Those ideas stand at the center of a new plan put together by top city officials on how to transform Long Wharf — a waterfront neighborhood currently dominated by big-box stores, parking lots, and the highway — into a mixed-use district bustling with education, healthcare, and outdoor recreation.

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Townshend Estate Owners Eye 50 New Houses

by | Feb 8, 2023 4:11 pm | Comments (27)

Nora Grace-Flood photo

Townshend mansion: To host special events, to be surrounded by new houses?

Estate co-owner Chuck Mascola.

The owners of the 26-acre former Townshend family home and its surrounding properties are hoping to write a new chapter of accessible preservation into East Shore history by building roughly 50 homes behind the property’s 18th-century mansion — and by drafting a fresh set of zoning regulations to govern that development.

Chuck and Marcella Mascola, two of the three individuals who purchased that historic estate at 701, 709, 725, and 745 Townsend Ave. a year and a half ago, shared their plan to convert some of the Townsend Avenue property’s open space into housing as they pitched a broader idea to introduce special heritage mixed use zoning districts” into the city’s zoning code. 

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$1.3M Dixwell Deal Wins Final Approval

by | Feb 7, 2023 12:33 pm | Comments (10)

Laura Glesby file photo

Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison: Acquisitions “a step in the right direction."

3 of the 4 properties the city can now buy from Ocean, including the the Monterey Jazz Club in the center.

The Elicker Administration has won its final needed approval to acquire a slate of rundown properties, including a historic long-derelict former jazz club, from an oft-cited megalandlord to the tune of $1.3 million in an effort to revitalize a stretch of Dixwell Avenue.

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Cultured Cafe Brews Up The Remedy

by | Feb 7, 2023 9:04 am | Comments (2)

Karen Ponzio Photo

Alexander Silver Angeloff and a sampling of his creations.

When you walk into The Cultured Café on State Street, you are greeted by the feeling that you’ve walked into as natural a habitat as you can find that is not actually outside. Philodendrons wind around glass jars full of fermenting vegetables on a wooden counter. Above, cotton ball-like clouds dot a blue sky ceiling. What the café serves is also as close to nature as it can be, courtesy of the café’s owner Alexander Silver Angeloff, who is trying to make the path into the world of natural health safe, welcoming, and delicious. 

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Bye-Bye, Parking Lot? Lab Rezoning Advances

by | Feb 2, 2023 3:32 pm | Comments (48)

PDD update pitch, with planned new developments in red.

The current surface parking lot at 110 Munson.

Thomas Breen fill photo

Developer Alex Twining: Part of the "replacement of parking lots with places to work and live."

A 200-space Munson Street parking lot could be the site of New Haven’s next biotech lab building — according to a Winchester-factory-redevelopment zoning update that received a favorable, if still skeptical, recommendation from the City Plan Commission.

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Black Biz Backers Get $1M KeyBank Boost

by | Feb 1, 2023 12:30 pm | Comments (8)

At Tuesday's presser: KeyBank's Analisha Michanczyk, ConnCORP COO Paul McCraven, KeyBank's Matthew Hummel, ConnCORP Board Chair Carlton Highsmith; ConnCorp CEO Erik Clemons, Lab Executive Director Aya Beckles Swanson, and ConnCORP Chief Investment Officer Anna Blanding.

A vegan baker, a mobile notary, and a professional organizer were among the 20 hand-picked Greater New Haven minority business owners to embark on a rigorous entrepreneurial boot camp — and to benefit from a new $1 million grant designed in part to help that program and its participants thrive.

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