by | Jul 18, 2019 8:13 am | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photos
Developers and their attorneys on Wednesday night: Adam Haston; Carolyn Kone; Jim Segaloff; Michael Massimino.
New Haven’s market-rate apartment boom kept chugging Wednesday night as seven different developers looking to build over 200 new apartments won key city sign-offs
by | Jul 17, 2019 3:36 pm | Comments (7)
Laura Glesby Photo
Paul Hammer offers his pitch.
Paul Hammer has stayed in hostels across the globe, from Greece to Philadelphia to Mexico. He now hopes to open one himself, a bit closer to home in New Haven.
Continue reading ‘Hostel Pitched to Wooster Square Neighbors’
by | Jul 16, 2019 8:04 am | Comments (9)
Sophie Sonnenfeld Photo
Mayoral candidates Wendy Hamilton, Toni Harp, Urn Pendragon, and Justin Elicker at the Ward 8 Democratic committee meeting.
Seth Poole entered his 3‑year-old’s name into multiple school lotteries. His kid didn’t get into any of the schools.
He brought that up during a political gathering Monday night at which he and four other mayoral candidates agreed that the system needs to change for how kids get into desired New Haven schools.
by | Jul 12, 2019 5:56 pm | Comments (5)
Laura Glesby Photo
The protest across from 88 Olive St.
Wooster Square neighbors gathered across from 88 Olive St. on Friday to protest United Illuminating’s plans to demolish its old electric substation at the property.
Given the neighborhood’s response, the city intends to ask UI for a 30-day delay in the demolition to explore other options for the property.
by | Jul 12, 2019 11:36 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
The developers of the Greene Street Apartments — 23 one and two-bedroom units slated to emerge from the old St. Michael’s School and Convent buildings at 234, 240, and 250 Greene St. in Wooster Square — promised to stay true to history and true to the sun.
by | Jul 11, 2019 11:47 am | Comments (9)
Rocco DeMatteo, Doishellys Rodriguez: Dramatic turnaround.
Christopher Peak Photo
HSC graduates await their diplomas.
To the sounds of “Pomp and Circumstance,” 50 members of High School in the Community’s senior class marched in to the middle of Wooster Square. Wearing caps and gowns of turquoise and white, they took their seats in the middle of the park for their graduation ceremony.
That scene would have been hard to imagine just five years ago, when almost as many students were dropping out as were making it through.
Continue reading ‘Experimental School Rediscovers The Magic’
by | Jun 27, 2019 2:43 pm | Comments (2)
A mime, a biker, a stripper, and a hardcore punk rocker walk into a dilapidated former clock factory.
That’s not the setup for a joke. That was just 1980s New Haven, as featured in a new documentary about the rich and bizarre history of the former New Haven Clock Company factory on Hamilton Street.
by | Jun 21, 2019 12:17 pm | Comments (3)
Allan Appel Photo
Mayoral candidate Justin Elicker used to work as a waiter during his college years in Middlebury, Vermont.
There he learned that when you a carry a tray one-handed at the shoulder level or higher, don’t keep your hand flat. Instead, spread the fingers out, giving you five points of contact and support for your heavy-laden tray.
by | Jun 20, 2019 1:05 pm | Comments (11)
Thomas Breen photo
414 Chapel St. today.
Paris and Trachten.
Plans to convert a 68,000 square-foot office building on the edge of Wooster Square into 87 new market-rate apartments won a key city sign-off in the latest entry in New Haven’s ongoing apartment construction boom.
Continue reading ‘87 More Wooster Square Apartments Planned’
by | Jun 20, 2019 8:23 am | Comments (41)
Brooks and Dickinson photo and rendering / Thomas Breen photo
924 Grand Ave. before and after the proposed Y2Y buildout. Below: Y2Y supporters at Wednesday’s meeting.
A temporary housing facility for homeless youth won approval — and dodged a potentially contentious future public hearing — in its bid to build a 12 to 20-bed rooming house atop a single-story social services building on Grand Avenue.
The operative phrase is “rooming house.” Not “shelter.”
by | Jun 19, 2019 7:35 am | Comments (10)
Thomas Breen Photo
240 Greene St.
A developer Tuesday night unveiled details of a plan to turn three vacant Wooster Square properties into 23 luxury apartments, and heard some pushback about the market prices.
Continue reading ‘St. Michael’s Conversion: 700 Sq. Foot Apts. For $1.6K A Month’
by | Jun 14, 2019 2:46 pm | Comments (20)
Christopher Peak Photo
School board and staff at Adriana’s Restaurant.
Members of the Board of Education broke arancini rice balls — but no laws — at an informal dinner party.
by | May 24, 2019 7:48 am | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
UI Project Manager Shawn Crosbie answers neighbors’ questions.
The decommissioned 4 kV subtation at 88 Olive.
United Illuminating plans to knock down a decommissioned Olive Street electric substation and leave a vacant lot at the heart of Wooster Square in order to reduce its local property tax burden and cut down on security costs.
Continue reading ‘UI’s “Corporate Bulldozer” Targets Olive St.’
by | May 21, 2019 12:03 pm | Comments (6)
Christopher Peak Photo
John Taylor: We need space.
A Wooster Square school closed down by budget cuts may fill up with students again next year — this time, by a local charter operator that’s bursting out of their current space.
by | May 7, 2019 12:40 pm | Comments (0)
Thomas Breen photo
Scores owner Peter Forchetti and attorney Anthony DiCrosta in court.
A housing court judge has given a Mill River strip club eight days to post $1.2 million in cash or collateral to avoid immediate eviction from its dilapidated clock factory home.
by | Apr 28, 2019 6:38 pm | Comments (1)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
People got to learn Sunday, during the Historic Wooster Square 46th Cherry Blossom Festival, that “life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
Continue reading ‘Wooster Square Blossom Fest Dances In The Rain’
by | Apr 25, 2019 4:04 pm | Comments (2)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Resident leader Brenda Harris at the groundbreaking for the first phase of the Farnam Courts redo.
A longtime public-housing tenant leader is looking to bring her talents downtown to City Hall, at least for a while.
by | Apr 18, 2019 12:04 pm | Comments (6)
Thomas Breen photo
The former St. Michael’s School buildings on Greene Street.
Allan Appel file photo
Michael Massimino (center with scissors) at 2009 Bishop Woods development.
A Branford-based, mother-son development team has closed on its purchase of three long vacant St. Michael’s Church school and convent buildings. They plan to convert the buildings into 23 market-rate apartments.
Continue reading ‘St. Michael’s School Sold, For Apartments’
by | Apr 17, 2019 12:10 pm | Comments (9)
Allan Appel Photo
CRB candidates Elizabeth Larkin and Steve Hamm.
The first candidate is a Yale-trained young lawyer who works with one of the city’s most renowned civil rights lawyers on police-related cases.
The second candidate is the outreach supervisor for for one of the city’s anchoring social service agencies helping homeless kids confront racism and police profiling.
The third is a former New Haven Register police reporter and the creator most recently of a documentary about community policing in the Elm City.
Whom, among these embarrassment-of-riches very talented and qualified candidates, should a community management team choose to recommend as its representative for the evolving Civilian Review Board?
by | Apr 11, 2019 2:50 pm | Comments (3)
Allan Appel Photo
Wang with glass sample (and new design, below) for commissioners.
After four tries and two applications, owners of the Wooster Square Coffee Shop finally won permission from the Historic District Commission to put in new windows and doors to make their java junction attract more customers.
Continue reading ‘Coffee Shop Finally Meets Historic Muster’
by | Apr 3, 2019 7:35 am | Comments (13)
Thomas Breen Photo
Aaron Greenberg chairing the affordable housing task force.
Wooster Square will have two separate elections for alder this year, thanks to the resignation of Aaron Greenberg.
by | Apr 2, 2019 7:43 am | Comments (3)
Thomas Breen photo
Excavator on site at 87 Union.
Demolition has begun at the old Torrco site in Wooster Square, leaving a pyramid of cinderblocks and steel beams that will soon be replaced with nearly 300 new market-rate apartments.
by | Apr 2, 2019 7:34 am | Comments (1)
A federal judge fined two property-owning brothers $9,500 each and sentenced each to one year of probation and 50 hours of community service for illegal and dangerous removal of asbestos from a Mill River warehouse.
Continue reading ‘Landlords Fined For Illegal Asbestos Removal On Wallace Street’
by | Mar 22, 2019 12:24 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
None of the trees made the cut.
Or, rather, in a sad ironic way, they all did. Or soon will.
by | Mar 19, 2019 3:39 pm | Comments (4)
“Oaks spend a hundred years growing, a hundred standing still, a hundred dying.
“Someone’s got to speak up for the trees.”
Someone did.