by | Jun 21, 2006 8:54 am | Comments (24)
Some called it “murder.” Others shed tears. A rare, stately copper beech tree was hacked down Tuesday morning to make way for a proposed home on an historic street in Beaver Hills. In its place stood heightened neighborhood tension, and this stump (pictured).
by | Jun 18, 2006 8:39 pm | Comments (3)
Clowns, music and dancing, games, lots of kids, teachers, parents —” even a handful of nuns —” all added up to a fun-filled farewell party for Welch Annex and Prince Street schools. In the fall, both student bodies will be consolidated into the brand-new John C. Daniels Dual Language School (named for New Haven’s first African-American mayor) on Congress Avenue, a few blocks away.
by | Jun 16, 2006 10:00 am | Comments (4)
At a screening of their new documentary on New Haven’s ruthless turf wars, youth media-makers like Chastity Navarro and Bianka O’Bryan (left and right) posed a challenge to the adults: We wouldn’t have to rep our ‘hoods so hard if you’d give us something else to take pride in.
by | Jun 14, 2006 5:59 pm | Comments (6)
Good news for downtown residents driven crazy by nightlife noise: Police have “put the kibosh” on massive juice bar parties for throngs of younger teens. But some neighbors, like Anna Souchuk (pictured), still find noise so loud they’re considering moving out.
by | Jun 13, 2006 2:21 pm | Comments (0)
Years ago, these woods held bustling mills and childhood skinny-dippers. Today, the Westville valley is a little-known trove of peaceful riverside trails. As part of the Festival of Arts & Ideas’ New Haven Preservation Trust walking series, this guy led a tour of the lush green space he seeks to preserve.
by | Jun 12, 2006 3:45 pm | Comments (1)
Thanks to a last-minute cash infusion from the state, the historic but crumbling Bigelow Building may be saved after all, reported Helen Rosenberg (pictured) of the city’s economic development office.
by | Jun 8, 2006 9:02 am | Comments (5)
An effort to bust a landlord for taking advantage of immigrant tenants turned ruinous Wednesday. Cops blew whistles while undocumented Mexican immigrants fled out the back door into the rain with whatever they could carry, wanting nothing to do with advocates who pleaded with them to wait.
by | Jun 6, 2006 8:26 am | Comments (2)
A few blocks away from this Westville creek, houses are sinking and no one knows why. Neighbors Monday questioned whether a nearby Whalley Avenue expansion project requiring altered drainage would further affect their flood-prone, cracking homes. And they called out for help.
by | Jun 5, 2006 8:42 am | Comments (2)
A local group of “Bioregionalists“ who connect to New Haven by walking it hit Fair Haven Sunday. Tour leader Lee Cruz (pictured pointing out landmarks where the Q River meets the Mill) made sure that besides being about land, the event was about people.
by | Jun 5, 2006 8:33 am | Comments (0)
The Rev.Curtis Cofield is addicted to books. Cofield (pictured with his wife, Elsie, at left and Brad Gallant, right, president of the library board) is trying to break his addiction —” not by going cold turkey, but by donating many of his 20,000 volumes a little at a time to the Stetson branch of the New Haven Free Public Library.
by | Jun 2, 2006 8:54 am | Comments (0)
For the past 20 years, people in the Hill have had to traipse downtown to take out a library book, check out a DVD or pick up a book on tape. A new, $6.5 million public library under construction on Washington Avenue will bring all that closer to home. It’ll also bring access to something many Hill residents don’t have at home: computers and the World Wide Web.
by | Jun 1, 2006 5:57 pm | Comments (0)
In the wake of a horrific attack on a prostitute in a cemetery across the street from their homes, Bright Street neighbors and a Fair Haven developer got into a front-stoop debate Thursday about how to make their block safer.
Continue reading ‘After Near-Fatal Cemetery Stabbing, A Front-Stoop Debate’
by | May 26, 2006 8:25 am | Comments (2)
Residents of Fair Haven Heights love their neighborhood across the Quinnipiac River from the rest of the city, but they feel under siege from all the construction projects and bridge closings that are hemming them in. Florence Tomassini (pictured), like other neighbors, was not shy about expressing her frustrations at a big neighborhood meeting Thursday night called by Alderman Alex Rhodeen at the Friends Meeting House on East Grand Avenue.
by | May 25, 2006 8:41 am | Comments (0)
What were these squeezable Conn-DOT construction hats doing on a table at Annex Club Wednesday? The state Department of Transportation brought them to East Shore residents’ anxious hands to ease the news on when the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Q‑Bridge would end: In the year 2014.
by | May 23, 2006 6:17 pm | Comments (8)
The city’s top building official Tuesday ordered the building at left partially demolished after the back of it collapsed in the downtown Ninth Square neighborhood. Meanwhile, downtown activist Scott Healy (above) charged the owners with endangering the public and marring the neighborhood through “demolition by neglect.”
by | May 18, 2006 4:59 pm | Comments (1)
“It’s beautiful,” said Bruce Williams (pictured), standing in front of the Hill neighborhood apartment building he’ll soon call home. Williams, a once-homeless U.S. Air Force veteran, is one of 19 people moving into the Legion Woods Apartments on the corner of Legion Avenue and Auburn Street. The property, formerly two separate lots with apartments, a lively church and bar, has stood vacant for nearly 10 years. Now that a non-profit agency’s turning it into a home for disabled people, neighbors are happy to see an end to years of blight and loiterers.
by | May 18, 2006 9:24 am | Comments (0)
It was democratic government in action at Truman School Wednesday night, as dozens of neighbors like Gail Batts got to bring their block-level complaints directly to city staffers like Carlos Eyzaguirre (above). The only person missing from this “Mayor’s Night Out” event was… the mayor himself.
by | May 18, 2006 8:31 am | Comments (1)
“Beaver Hill is a single-family neighborhood,” said Francine Caplan (pictured), protesting a troubled boys’ home moving onto a stately neighborhood street. “It spoils the fabric of the entire neighborhood.” In a clamorous meeting at Hillhouse High School Wednesday night, Caplan joined 75 neighbors in debate over whether the proposed home fits the neighborhood. Some applauded. Others called remarks “discrimination” against those in need.
by | May 18, 2006 8:12 am | Comments (0)
An Egyptian pharaoh who loves disco music (aka “Phar-Fro” Diego Barnes, pictured) is part of a crew of Hooker School students heading West for the world finals in a creative competition called “Odyssey of the Mind.”
by | May 16, 2006 10:14 am | Comments (3)
“Quinnipiac River Village” has been born — as a web site. Phase two in making it a viable new New Haven neighborhood also got underway as neighbors like Stewart Hutchings (pictured) gathered Monday night.
by | May 15, 2006 3:58 pm | Comments (1)
Those ribs have been smoked 18 hours before coming to Whalley Avenue. The tunes filling the joint? They’ve been seasoned far longer.
by | May 12, 2006 4:33 pm | Comments (3)
Carlos Sotos (pictured), who was teaching his son to fish along the Quinnipiac River this week, admits some fellow anglers in New Haven litter waterfront promenades with beer cans and fish guts. But he’s opposed to a proposed city ban against the pastime along Fair Haven’s Front Street and the Pardee Sea Wall in Morris Cove. Why should people like him, who don’t leave entrails on benches, be punished? he asks. “[Fishing] is the right of the people. What is the park for?”
by | May 10, 2006 9:41 am | Comments (0)
East Shore’s seawall, where locals stroll across the bay from twinkling downtown sights, just got a new set of lamps along the promenade. The old streetlamps sprayed light all over, glaring into neighbors’ homes, said Alderwoman Arlene DePino. So she and the Parks Commission pushed for classier, old-fashioned lanterns. They debuted a few weeks ago to neighbors’ delight: “They’re really amazing: They shine down, but they really don’t glare,” said East Shore’s Tina Doyle, applauding the new “necklace” at a neighborhood meeting Tuesday.
by | May 9, 2006 8:44 am | Comments (0)
“No one’s come to me,” said Hamden real estate investor Michael Bagley (pictured) to a group of Q House alums bent on reviving the historic Dixwell Avenue community center. Bagley, who has no Q House roots, is first in line to buy the building if it goes up for sale. He ruffled feathers of the Concerned Citizens for the Greater New Haven Dixwell Community House when he showed up to a meeting seeking cooperation towards the sale.
Continue reading ‘Q House’s Would-be Savior Gets A Cold Shoulder’
by | May 9, 2006 8:39 am | Comments (5)
Wait. Wasn’t the name of this building “Troup School”?