Wooster Square

Busy Builder Pressed To Hire Local Workers

by | Feb 20, 2019 2:08 pm | Comments (9)

Paul Bass Photo

Laborers at work Tuesday on Spinnaker’s Audubon Square project.

District Manager Lt. Sean Maher, in foreground, with team chair Smith, surrounded by carpenters.

Hillhouse High School graduate and proud local young carpenter Davon McNeil, 27, is enthusiastic about his profession and his town. A carpenters union member, he commutes daily to a project in Bridgeport.

He’d love to hammer the boards and do the framing of the many rising new buildings in his native New Haven.

But the builders, when they acquire their properties in private transactions involving no city help, don’t have to hire local.

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Daycare Providers Press Commissioner For Promised Dollars

by | Feb 5, 2019 6:18 pm | Comments (1)

Allan Appel PhotoC

Hope Executive Director Georgia Goldburn, far right, with Mayor Harp, Beth Bye, and some of the kids.

With early child education slots a growing and pressing need statewide and in New Haven, you’d think a pioneering, successful early child care center serving poor and working families would have no trouble fill spots in a new, expanded Wooster Square location.

Think again.

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Building Boom Sparks Ideas For More Public Input

by | Jan 16, 2019 5:21 pm | Comments (5)

Some of the “deluge” of developments about to hit the city: Downtown Crossing, 87 Union St., Long Wharf, 848 Chapel St.

Thomas Breen photo

Acting Economic Development Administrator and Acting City Plan Director Michael Piscitelli.

Publish a single list of development projects that are open to public comment. Use online maps to explain a project’s history and timeline. And clarify land use-related meeting agendas, so that the public can easily understand what a developer is asking of the city.

City officials heard those and other good-governance recommendations from Downtown and Wooster Square neighbors about how best to keep the public informed and engaged during the city’s current deluge of development and construction.

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Wooster Square Coffee Shop Urged To Tilt

by | Jan 16, 2019 8:40 am | Comments (16)

Lucy Gellman Arts Paper Photo

The Wooster Square Coffee Shop

Jimmy and Sara Wang have been operating the Wooster Square Coffee Shop ever since they took over the Chapel and Chestnut corner caffeinating institution in 2017 from the former popular Fuel Coffee Shop.

Business is good, Zhiming Jimmy” Wang said, but to make it better the couple came before the Historic District Commission to seek approval for larger. more welcoming windows, removal of the canvas canopy, installing new lights, and other modest aesthetic improvements.

The commissioners listened, and asked politely if they would also consider tilting back the entire upper facade of their building to recreate the beautiful ensemble” of three structures that was there before.

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St. Michael’s Isn’t Giving Up On Plan

by | Jan 10, 2019 12:59 pm | Comments (9)

Thomas Breen photo

Pastor Robert Roy pitches zoners.

Three vacant Wooster Square buildings owned by St. Michael’s Church may be more attractive to a prospective future developer now that they’re en route to receive 15 on-site parking spaces from the adjacent St. Michael’s Church lot, despite some continued neighborhood opposition.

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Mandy Pulls Out Of St. Michael’s Project

by | Dec 18, 2018 8:52 am | Comments (2)

Buchanan Architects, LLC

An aerial-view rendering of Mandy’s proposed conversion of the old St. Michael’s Church school buildings.

A local mega-landlord has pulled out of a deal to purchase and convert three vacant Wooster Square church buildings into 23 high-end apartments, citing environmental clean-up costs as the project’s primary obstacle.

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“This Looks Like North Haven In The 1960s”

by | Dec 17, 2018 12:54 pm | Comments (2)

Allan Appel Photo

View of the site of the proposed 2-family house, from Olive Street.

Local developer Andrew Consiglio wants to turn a long vacant empty square of prime real estate at the corner of Olive and Greene streets into a two-family house.

That was well and good with the members of the Historic District Commission (HDC), to whom he applied for a certificate of appropriateness, because the proposed house sits in the heart of the Wooster Square Historic District.

However, commissioners said Consiglio did not provide enough detail — about the porch, windows, doors, roof, and general style. They urged Consiglio and his design colleague to look around the neighborhood and come back with a context, a vision, and a lot of the detail that the Historic District Commission (HDC) requires.

That was two years ago.

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Strip Club Stalls Eviction With Bankruptcy

by | Dec 14, 2018 8:41 am | Comments (0)

Thomas Breen photo

Scores strip club on St. John Street.

Scores lawyer Anthony DiCrosta and Clock Shop lawyer Jay Lawlor in court on Thursday.

A Mill River strip club filed for bankruptcy the afternoon before its eviction hearing, buying itself time before having to leave in order to make way for a new complex of 130 low-income apartments and artist lofts.

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On Election Day, History Called

by | Nov 7, 2018 4:00 pm | Comments (4)

Steele checks in with vote pullers Alex Perry, Sr. and Alex Perry, Jr. in the basement of Varick church.

Thomas Breen photo

Ann Robinson with pastor and vote-puller Kelcy Steele.

When New Haveners like Ann Robinson produced a 23,278-vote city victory margin Tuesday to elect Connecticut’s next governor, they weren’t thinking as much about Ned Lamont. They were thinking about Donald Trump.

And in Robinson’s case, about Greenville, N.C.

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As Lofts Loom, Strip Club Gets The Boot

by | Oct 31, 2018 4:20 pm | Comments (21)

Scores, looking down Saint John Street.

Thomas Breen photos

Attorneys DiCrosta and Lawlor in housing court.

New owners of a former clock factory on the industrial Mill River” side of Wooster Square have moved to evict a nearly two-decade-old strip club as they prepare to convert the complex into 130 low-income housing units and artist lofts.

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Grand Avenue Dreams

by | Oct 24, 2018 12:08 pm | Comments (12)

Allan Appel Photo

Grand looking west at Jefferson, at the City Seed building, site of the much missed Frank’s hardware store.

A grocery, a deli, florist, a coffee shop, or an all-purpose hardware store so you wouldn’t have to drive five miles to pick up a nut, bolt, or screw.

An ethnic restaurant with tables on the sidewalk, to be welcoming. Something that says neighborhood.”

And how about lowering traffic speeds, less loitering, and attracting foot traffic beyond clients of social service agencies?

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