by | May 8, 2006 12:40 pm | Comments (0)
Community members walked Monday into a new Casa Otoñal, thanks to volunteer renovators like Chris Doraz (pictured drilling) who worked against the clock to make over the four-building campus during a restoration marathon.
by | May 8, 2006 8:43 am | Comments (0)
So a Bulgarian and a Nigerian walk onto a stage — and perform a traditional Eastern European wedding dance. Come see what K‑5 “mini-ambassadors” for countries the globe over shared with a packed auditorium of schoolmates, teachers, parents, and the mayor at a Davis Street Magnet School International Day event celebrating “Voices Linked Together by Humanity.”
by | May 5, 2006 9:40 am | Comments (14)
With city officials chomping at the bit, a room full of nearly 100 Worthington Hooker School community members agreed Thursday to let the city go full-steam ahead with an appeal to this week’s Superior Court decision that barred New Haven from building a new K‑8 school on Whitney Avenue.
by | May 3, 2006 1:14 pm | Comments (1)
This building has a history — and a future, if the state comes through with promised money. Read on to see why Allan Appel’s hoping it does.
by | May 3, 2006 8:10 am | Comments (2)
“It’s like someone puts a mask over your face and you can’t breathe,” said this 10-year-old boy (pictured at left). “Your heart starts zooming,” said his 7‑year-old brother. The trio came to the front of the room at a Dwight neighborhood meeting Tuesday to testify to the crippling effects of asthma and rally neighbors to negotiate with Yale-New Haven Hospital to keep as many cars as possible away from the proposed $430 million cancer center.
by | May 2, 2006 5:17 pm | Comments (0)
“No group,” writes Judge Anthony DeMayo (pictured), is “more appealing than schoolchildren.” Yet, he continued, he believes New Haven improperly used “spot zoning” to plan a new K‑8 Hooker School on Whitney Avenue. DeMayo’s ruling, released Tuesday, is a victory for neighbors trying to stop the school. Click here to read it. “The upshot of this ruling is that the city will not be able to build the school there,” said opponent Paulette Cohen of Everit Street. Said public school rebuilding chief Susan Weisselberg in a prepared statement: “We believe very strongly that the site we chose four years ago, with extensive neighborhood input, is the best location for the school. Our legal counsel advises us we have strong grounds to appeal. However, we want to hear from the parents and staff of the school before we proceed.” Hooker parents and staff get a chance to speak Thursday night at 7 p.m. in the church sanctuary at 7 p.m. (The general public does not; there were already public hearings.)
by | May 1, 2006 4:58 pm | Comments (0)
“What’re we writing about?” asked a kid who came late to New Haven Reads’ after-school program. They were writing about dreams.
by | Apr 27, 2006 11:47 am | Comments (4)
No, not in the flesh. The urban prophet died this week. But her ghost was everywhere on Audubon.
by | Apr 27, 2006 8:33 am | Comments (2)
Parents showed up at a public meeting Wednesday looking for summer jobs for their teens. They found out the deadline for the city’s biggest teen summer job program, Youth at Work, has already passed. How come “nobody heard about it” before? Dwight parents like Marissa Samuel (pictured with her 8‑year-old daughter, Riquee Toney) wanted to know. But after hearing about a range of programs, they came away with new ideas.
by | Apr 26, 2006 4:33 pm | Comments (19)
“I think they fightin’ over self confidence,” said Rietta, a Hillhouse High School sophomore, weighing in on the recent spate of youth violence in Dixwell and Newhallville. “They get along in school, but once they get out, they got the hood. It’s like they take on a different identity.”
by | Apr 25, 2006 8:00 am | Comments (1)
The city wants to tear down East Rock Magnet School —” a building some have compared to a concrete prison —” and build a new, smaller school on the same site. Younger families (like Joshia Brown, Sahar Usmani-Brown and daughter Athena, pictured) applauded the plan at a public meeting Monday night, while older neighbors opposed it.
by | Apr 24, 2006 1:26 pm | Comments (1)
The governor sent a delegation to New Haven Monday to meet with city officials about how to stop drivers from killing people on Ella Grasso Boulevard, where crashes have caused seven deaths in just the past three months. State traffic engineer John Carey (in top photo) left the meeting saying that quick fixes under consideration include putting up so-called “rubber duckies” like the one at left.
Continue reading ‘Will Rubber Duckies Stop The Boulevard Carnage?’
by | Apr 20, 2006 7:00 pm | Comments (0)
This invertible “body bag”, for picnic supplies or hands-free city trips, is one of the original handbags Ivy Mangan has crafted to stock her new store. The Simply Ivy boutique, at 957 State Street, holds its grand opening Friday.
by | Apr 18, 2006 3:31 pm | Comments (0)
In honor of the winners of Mayor John DeStefano’s first annual Green Awards, the sun shone brightly Tuesday, the birds sang sweetly, and a big crowd turned out to see a flowering cherry tree planted at Beaver Pond Park. (And the guns were fired noisily, but that’s another story.) The honorees were Oliver Barton, director of Common Ground High School, and Ed Grant, an environmental activist for decades, whose many claims to fame include the annual Freddy Fixer parade, which promotes clean-up and recycling in inner city neighborhoods. Grant is shown at left with several Common Ground students.
Continue reading ‘A (Special) Tree Grows in Beaver Pond Park’
by | Mar 7, 2006 5:11 pm | Comments (0)
Firefighters David Vargas and Isaias Miranda scaled down an East Rock cliff to rescue a stranded climber in November. Vargas and Miranda, both of Squad One on Whitney Avenue, received an official thanks from city aldermen Monday for saving the climber’s life. On Nov. 2, Kristie Barber, 37, made an emergency call from her cell phone as she hung, stranded, with no climbing equipment, on the face of the cliff. Vargas and Miranda rappelled down the face of the cliff, and, with the help of their squad, brought the woman to safety in just over an hour and a half. “It was a great team effort, but they’re the ones who went out on the line that day,” said Fire Chief Michael Grant.
by | Feb 24, 2006 9:55 am | Comments (1)
Westville’s Kehler Liddell Gallery entertained more than one kind of design Thursday night as some 40 neighborhood residents and politicians gathered to ask developer Tim Mulcahey (pictured) direct and specific questions about the future of the upscale apartment complex he’s building at 446 Blake St. The developer said the apartments will become “a community in and of itself,” while some residents worried that the upscale apartments would inevitably gentrify into a segregated enclave of the wealthy.
by | Feb 22, 2006 9:16 am | Comments (0)
A neighborhood teen center? A citywide youth summit? A “Teen Caf√©”? People in Dwight (including Gina Calder, pictured) tossed around those ideas for kids — and separate ideas about neighborhood safety — in a church basement Tuesday night.
Continue reading ‘“These Kids Are Going to Listen to People Who Know Who 50 Cent Is”’
by | Feb 16, 2006 8:44 am | Comments (3)
An optimist, a patrician developer (above left), a fast-talking activist, a brick-hauling lawyer, a framer, a proprietor, and a city employee all sat in City Hall Wednesday night at an informal gathering convened to discuss the latest alterations to Metropolitan Development’s plan to convert 446 Blake St. into an upscale apartment complex that will attract the ever-elusive “right” kind of tenants.
Continue reading ‘“Smirk All You Want, But This is The First Time You’ve Had a Face”’
by | Feb 14, 2006 4:42 pm | Comments (0)
Valentine’s Day brought a party to Casa Otonal, as a distinguished panel of judges selected the senior complex’s new royalty. Milagros Soler (in top photo), 78, said good-bye to her year as Queen of Casa. Vincente Aguilar, 69, and Luz Santiago, 63 (bottom photo), were proclaimed the new rey and reyna.
by | Feb 8, 2006 8:34 am | Comments (9)
Fearing an invasion of concrete parking “bunkers” and repeats of urban planning blunders past, neighbors packed the Timothy Dwight School Community room Tuesday night to hear —” and throw objections at —” plans for two big new developments on Howe Street and along Route 34. “People are worried,” said Alderwoman Joyce Chen (in photo).
by | Feb 7, 2006 1:43 pm | Comments (6)
The “open flag” that for 18 months has been flying in front of Kafe, the cozy bakery and restaurant just past the Grand Avenue bridge, is being lowered due to insufficient business, according to owner Duncan Goodall. But there’s still reason for optimism in the emerging neighborhood known as Quinnipiac River Village.
by | Jan 30, 2006 1:52 pm | Comments (0)
The flyer is all over Fair Haven. 19-year-old Jos√© Ort√ɬ≠z, who disappeared off Poplar Street a month ago on Dec. 28, smiles in his photo as he wears a white t‑shirt and Nike sweatband. Below him, block capital letters compare the investigation of his disappearance to that of the teenage girl in Aruba and ask the anguished question, “Is Jose A. Ortiz not important or is it that he’s from FAIR HAVEN!!”
by | Jan 20, 2006 8:40 am | Comments (2)
Believe it or not, this is a scene from a city neighborhood. Neighbors like Nan Bartow are organizing to keep it this way as Southern Connecticut State University expands.
by | Jan 17, 2006 1:50 pm | Comments (0)
After 36 years the merchants at Dixwell Plaza are forming a condominium association. “The renewal is finally at hand,” says Elizabeth Hayes, owner of Rite Way Cleaners, one of the plaza’s original businesses, where Angela Boomer (pictured above) is training new workers.
by | Jan 13, 2006 12:52 pm | Comments (4)
Look who’s moving into the Beaver Hills neighborhood: A wave of young families with children like Emma (pictured)— and a sober house of up to 12 recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. The families say they don’t want to be NIMBYs but they worry about the block’s future. The brewing battle touches on finer points of zoning law as well as broader questions about how and where to reintegrate addicts into society.