by | Jan 26, 2022 11:33 am | Comments (6)
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Monday night's virtual CRB meeting.
The Civilian Review Board is gearing up for a showdown — or a friendly, clarifying conversation? or both? — with the Elicker Administration about exactly which types of police-misconduct complaints it is allowed to review.
Continue reading ‘Showdown Looms: What Exactly Can The Civilian Review Board Review?’
by | Jan 25, 2022 3:01 pm | Comments (27)
“Fully vaxxed” for city workers will now mean three shots, not two.
by | Jan 24, 2022 4:06 pm | Comments (14)
Mayor Elicker on Monday: Police chief search process should take at least four months to complete.
The search firm RFQ posting on the city website.
The Elicker Administration has formally begun searching for a search firm to help find a new permanent police chief, over a month after the mayor first committed to taking a nationwide look for a new leader of the local police department.
by | Jan 21, 2022 11:29 am | Comments (2)
Allan Appel file photo
Then-Lt. Gov. candidate Susan Bysiewicz with American GreenFuels staff at a campaign stop in 2018.
The industrial New Haven Terminal, with American GreenLeaf's rented property outlined in green in the bottom right.
An Annex plant that turns vegetable oil into biodiesel fuel won permission to expand its industrial waterfront operations — with a plea from City Plan Commissioners to do its best to swap out asphalt with concrete when possible to minimize its impact on a warming planet.
Continue reading ‘Biodiesel Expansion OK'd Amid Asphalt Concern’
by | Jan 20, 2022 4:13 pm | Comments (7)
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Designs for 10 new apartments planned for 232-238 Columbus Ave. (pictured below.)
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A local developer won permission to construct 10 new apartments atop city-owned land in the Hill — even as land-use commissioners lamented that most of that building’s future tenants will have only one way in and out of their apartments, and will have to walk around the block when taking out their trash.
Continue reading ‘10 Hill Apts OK'd After Backstairs, Dumpster Debate’
by | Jan 20, 2022 9:34 am | Comments (13)
PMC's proposed new 13-story apartment tower -- slated for a site that may allow for no more than five stories, even if it's upzoned.
78 Olive St. -- with dark gray representing the current Strouse Adler apartment building, and light gray representing the property's undeveloped portions.
A Philadelphia-based developer’s bid to upzone a stretch of Olive Street to make way for planned new apartments moved ahead — with a likely cap of five or six stories, rather than 13 stories, on whatever building ultimately gets built.
by | Jan 19, 2022 3:24 pm | Comments (3)
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The Elicker Administration's proposed $53M ARPA spending plan.
City Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli at least week's ARPA presser.
The mayor has formally submitted to the Board of Alders for review a proposed $53 million spending plan that would direct a bulk of the city’s remaining federal pandemic-relief aid towards a hodgepodge of housing, vocational technical education, youth engagement, business support, and climate resiliency initiatives.
Continue reading ‘City Submits $53M Fed Pandemic-Relief Spending Plan For Review’
by | Jan 19, 2022 9:29 am | Comments (11)
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300-unit apartment complex under construction on Union Street in Wooster Square. Under new law, buildings like these would have to set aside affordable apts.
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Legislation Committee Chair and East Rock Alder Charles Decker with City Plan Director Aicha Woods after Tuesday's vote.
Developers looking to partake in New Haven’s market-rate apartment boom will now be required to set aside a certain percentage of units at deed-restricted affordable rents, as the Board of Alders granted final approval to an “inclusionary zoning” law years in the making.
by | Jan 17, 2022 1:34 pm | Comments (25)
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High at Elm: Slated to become Yale-controlled ped plaza.
A deal for Yale to increase voluntary payments to the city by $52 million over the next six years — and design, convert, and control a publicly owned pedestrian plaza on High Street — has taken its first formal step towards potential approval, in the form of a package of legislation newly submitted by the mayor to the Board of Alders.
by | Jan 14, 2022 9:56 am | Comments (18)
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Fiber internet? Not for 2/3 of New Haven.
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Should the city partner with an existing internet service provider to boost broadband? Or set up its own network and side-step telecom monopolies?
Those questions are at the center of a revived city effort to at least think about how to bring faster and more reliable internet to all of New Haven.
by | Jan 12, 2022 6:35 pm | Comments (10)
City development chief Mike Piscitelli (right) at Wednesday's presser about a new $53 million federal-aid spending plan.
The Elicker Administration unveiled a proposed $53 million plan that would direct a bulk of the city’s remaining federal pandemic-relief aid towards a host of housing, employment, youth engagement, and climate resiliency initiatives.
Those include boosting vo-tech education in the public schools, expanding downpayment assistance for homebuyers, funding energy efficiency building upgrades, and creating a new “land bank” to purchase properties before megalandlords get there first.
Continue reading ‘Mayor Pitches $53M Housing-Climate-VoTech Plan With Fed Rescue Bucks’
by | Jan 12, 2022 1:01 pm | Comments (1)
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Yale New Haven Health Chief Clinical Officer Thomas Balcezak.
The number of Yale New Haven Health patients hospitalized with Covid has surged by nearly 40 percent over the past two weeks — as the regional hospital system continues to struggle with staff shortages and as the city prepares to distribute thousands of additional at-home test kits and N95 masks during the ongoing Omicron-induced surge.
by | Jan 11, 2022 4:44 pm | Comments (7)
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Couple picks up marriage license at Vital Statistics office.
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Monday night's Board of Ethics virtual meeting.
Should a city staffer whose job it is to process marriage certificates be allowed to perform weddings for pay during or after work time?
Or does that double duty as a for-hire justice of the peace create a conflict of interest — since the clerk’s City Hall job could give them an unfair advantage and a private financial incentive to use their public role to boost private clientele?
Continue reading ‘Reborn Ethics Board Tackles Wedding Quandary’
by | Jan 5, 2022 1:03 pm | Comments (12)
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Newly appointed Department of Community Resilience Acting Director Carlos Sosa-Lombardo.
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The mayor has tapped city social-services staffer Carlos Sosa-Lombardo to be the inaugural acting director of the Department of Community Resilience — a new city agency charged with finding a data-driven, coordinated response to social issues ranging from homelessness to mental health disorders to drug addition to prison reentry.
by | Jan 4, 2022 3:38 pm | Comments (15)
RJ DEVELOPMENT & ADVISORS RENDERING
Planned 176-unit apartment complex at Ashmun, Canal, and Henry Streets.
Alders unanimously approved a suite of zoning changes designed to allow for the redevelopment of a long-vacant Science Park lot into 176 apartments and 88 parking spaces.
by | Jan 4, 2022 1:13 pm | Comments (9)
Newly confirmed Board of Ed members Dr. Abie Quiñones-Benítez and OrLando Yarborough III.
The Board of Alders unanimously approved Dr. Abie Quiñones-Benítez and Dr. OrLando Yarborough III to serve on the Board of Education — praising the former’s bilingual-education bonafides, and the latter’s longtime commitment to youth mentorship.
Continue reading ‘Alders Confirm Quiñones-Benítez, Yarborough For Ed Board’
by | Jan 4, 2022 10:08 am | Comments (14)
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Newly reelected Board Prez Tyisha Walker-Myers.
West River Alder Tyisha Walker-Myers earned another two years as the head of the Board of Alders — with promises to find “creative” ways to direct the city’s sudden surfeit of cash towards promoting homeownership, increasing trade education, and slowing the expansion of New Haven’s megalandlords.
by | Dec 30, 2021 10:44 pm | Comments (11)
New Haven is no longer able to hold a mass distribution of at-home rapid Covid tests Friday and Saturday — because the tests aren’t coming.
by | Dec 21, 2021 9:52 am | Comments (28)
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Prospect Hill Alder Steve Winter: Where's the proof cameras work? Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison: Cameras are just one tool.
The Board of Alders granted final approval to the Elicker Administration’s plan to purchase 500 surveillance cameras to help solve the city’s largely unsolved shootings and homicides — a move some defended as necessary to fight crime, and others criticized as a short-sighted and unproven way to spend millions in “once-in-a-generation” federal aid.
by | Dec 18, 2021 6:21 pm | Comments (16)
ConnCORP rendering
Dixwell Plaza’s redevelopers won their final needed city approval to undertake an estimated $185 million overhaul of the fraying mid-century shopping strip — and turn it into a bustling mix of apartments, stores, and cultural venues in the heart of New Haven’s historic Black neighborhood.
by | Dec 16, 2021 9:52 am | Comments (20)
Design for Salvatore's next project, on Lafayette St.
Stamford developer Randy Salvatore won permission to convert yet another Hill parking lot into 112 new apartments, along with 178 underground and ground-level parking garage spaces.
by | Dec 14, 2021 4:14 pm | Comments (6)
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Leslie Radcliffe and Ed Mattison at WNHH FM.
New Haven’s City Plan Commission meetings may never return entirely to their old form, even when (if?) the Covid-19 pandemic passes.
by | Dec 10, 2021 3:18 pm | Comments (49)
Edwin Rodriguez outside of his home at 192 Exchange St.: Homeowners citywide received revaluation notices this week.
On Exchange Street in Fair Haven, Edwin Rodriguez opened his mail this week to find out that the two-family house his family has owned for three decades has increased in value by 68 percent.
On Livingston Street in East Rock, Nancy Angoff learned that the single-family home she and her husband “downsized” into less than three years ago has jumped in value by 31 percent.
Continue reading ‘Eye-Popping Revaluations Hit Different Blocks At Different Rates’
by | Dec 9, 2021 9:30 am | Comments (8)
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Vacant fire-damaged house on Monroe Street in Fair Haven.
Placards to be placed outside vacant buildings, displayed at hearing.
City plans to revive a vacant building registration program moved ahead, as the fire chief pitched alders on the “life-saving” value of knowing if a building has an open roof or holes in the floor or stairs missing before a firefighter rushes in to put out a blaze.
Continue reading ‘"X" Will Mark Vacant Spots -- To Save Lives’
by | Dec 8, 2021 12:22 pm | Comments (18)
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New market-rate housing being constructed on Howe St. in March.
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How IZ is designed to work.
An aldermanic committee unanimously recommended approval of a plan to require developers to set aside affordable apartments in new and rehabbed complexes — bringing one of the Elicker Administration’s long-in-the-works legislative priorities closer to a final vote.